With the black friday/cyber monday coming soon, I have some money saved and I am planning to build a PC to replace my lovely MSI GT70 laptop. I have the build pretty much planned already, but any advice on parts or if there's anything you'd change in the build - let me know.
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 Motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury 8gb (1x8GB) DDR4 2133MHz Storage: A-Data Premier SP550 480GB SSD (Already purchased) Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Power Supply: EVGA SuperNova 750G2 80+ Gold 750w Fully Modular
All of this will be powering an LG 25UM57-P 2560x1080 (21:9) monitor. I will be using this as my main computer for everything imaginable (gaming mostly, browsing, a bit of video/photo editing, programming).
Pixel size - 0,228... It is smaller than 22" 1080p. If you are OK with the small pixels - go for it. I am planning to get this monitor as well, and many people have told me go for 29". This one is pretty small and I tend to agree. But I don't mind that. Otherwise I would go for another case simply because I don't like R5... You may be better with 2x4 ram instead of 1x8...
I already have the monitor purchased and it's certainly a huge upgrade from my 17" 1080p laptop screen :P Also, my wife has a 23" monitor and they both seem to be more or less same height (I haven't actually measured or put them side by side though) I do like the R5 as it seems to be a great balance between airflow, cable managment and noise, but if you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears.
I'm getting 1x8gb for now, because it's cheaper than 2x4gb and I will get a 2nd stick later on sometime in the future.
Ditch the cpu cooler and grab a second stick of 8gb ram. 8gb didn't cut it for me in games. It caused instability in certain games. 16gb is a much better option and you have the budget for it. You don't need the cpu cooler unless you plan on overclocking. Honestly, you can put one on later on if you think the temps are too high, but I REALLY doubt that it will be a problem unless you want a major overclock.
The only reason I'm getting the cooler with the system is because unfortunately the i5-6600k doesn't come with a stock cooler (they removed them, because most people that buy K parts don't use the stock cooler anyway), otherwise I'd just stick with that for the time being. I don't really want to dish out 30-40$ on a temporary cooler either, and the NH-D15 seems like a perfect "end-game" cooler.
Honestly, the improvement of the high end coolers over something like a Hyper 212 is minimal. Look into some numbers. The difference is negligible imo.
looks pretty sollid to me 750W might be a bit overkill for this setup. the EVGA Supernova 650W GS or G2 would be more then enough for a setup like that.
If you could afford the i7 for video editing, that would ofc help. But still the i5 wont be that bad either.
Airflow - closed restricted front intake. Only one exhaust fan if you want silence. Cable Management - no.. Not at all. Have you seen H440 or Enthoo Pro M or S340? That is easy cable management. Noise - same old song. I have 10 fans in total in my non silent case and it's silent, because they all run on low speed. The foam doesn't matter if you have noisy parts. If you have quiet parts - the case does not need foam to be silent optimized.
Yeah, I've been kinda going back and forth between 650W and 750W and even 850w for future crossfire compatibility, but realistically speaking, crossfire is probably not something I will ever bother with. The SuperNova 750 GS2 turns the fans off at low power consumption though, so I was thinking perhaps a 750w would be silent at almost all loads, but I don't know that much about PSU's, so I'm probably wrong about it all. Do you think the 650w would be good enough and still quiet'ish enough? This is my first fairly high-end build in almost 7 years, so I don't even know what a proper high-end PC sounds like these days. I do know that my wife's PC is much louder at idle than my gaming laptop, which obviously is to be expected, but it does bother me sometimes.
I was considering the H440, but watching reviews on it, it seems to lose against R5 in most areas. R5 has extra space behind the motherboard for cables, which is something that bothered me to no end when assembling my wife's PC with a Zalman Z9 Plus case as it was very difficult to close the side panel with the cables behind it.
Thats a good question, If you want your system to be as silent as possible, then the 750W might indeed be a better choice. I dont know at which particular wattage point the fan of the 750W unit kicks in. But ofc with the 650W version it will kick in rather sooner then later ofc.
On the other hand, i dont think that the psu fan itself is that loud.
I think I will choose whatever gives me the best bang for the buck when black friday / cyber monday deals come around, because you make very valid points about the 650w vs 750w PSUs.
Change your GPU for the Sapphire 390 Nitro OC with backplate. it should be arround the same price as the Msi 390 Gaming. But the cooling unit on the Sapphire is wayyyy better, and more silent then the msi one under load.
Hmm, the reviews seem to imply that MSI 390 OC's the best of all 390s, so I was thinking about going with the MSI for when I want to squeeze out a bit more performance. Since I have no experience with either of the cards myself and I don't actually know a single person that owns a 390, I just blindly followed the very scarce reviews. You think the Sapphire R9 390 is better than MSI R9 390? Perhaps I will add that to my price watch list too then...
About that, if you watch Hardware Canuks, they tend to lick some cheeks of some particular manufacturers in their reviews... Don't get me wrong, R5 is not a bad case. But neither the airflow is perfect (H440 is really bad in that), nor the cable management is great (H440, S340, Enthoo Pro M have way better), nor the silence is important. I am going way to deep into this, am I not?
THe Sapphire 390 Nitro with backplate is a newly released card from Sapphire. Since the original card has no backplate.
The 390 Nitro OC + backplate, also comes with an overclock out of the box. Not as high as the Msi one, but still a nice OC.
The Msi is indeed the fastest 390 out of the box. But the Sapphire has the best cooling unit on it, so thats basicly a toss up between those 2 cards. It depends on the price, it could be that the Sapphire version with backplate is more expensive in CA idk.
Does the backplate actually improve the cooling? I don't remember who, but I think someone of the "big" youtubers said they're mostly for show (or maybe it was just for a particular model of a gpu).
http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=news&action=file&id=5513 Yeah... Extra space... Lots of space at the bottom, but what about the distance between the back of the motherboard and the side panel? Because that's where I had issues with my wife's cheap case, especially with the SSD being mounted there. You also seem to imply that H440 has horrible airflow? Silence for me is not the highest priority, I just want a good case that is easy to work with and perhaps dampens the noise a bit. R5 seems to be a perfect fit of all the cases I've seen.