Upgrade Computer Build

[Baffin]

After four years, the upgrade bug bit me again! I like to order computer parts from B&H Foto during the USA holiday season in November-December because of the extended dates allowed for returns, as well as their price guarantee during that period. Here are some observations of the Motherboard/Processor/Memory/SSD upgrade:

ASUS TUF X299 Mk 1 motherboard: PROs: Has the features I personally like and works perfectly with CLoD. CONs: After a dozen or so uses, half of the SATA ports (4 of 8) on the board quit. New technology makes these less important than they used to be, but I still want it to work. B&H already has a new replacement scheduled for delivery tomorrow and my cost is zero. Stuff happens...

EDIT: The replacement board acts the same! It seems that this is normal with a 44 Lane CPU using a M.2 Internal SSD. It steals bandwidth from SATAs 5,6,7,8 to enable those "Rocket Ship" speeds. Even ASUS tech support missed this little feature so I'm RMA'ing a perfectly good M/B on their advice. Oh, well...

INTEL I7-7800X Processor with CoolerMaster Hyper 212 two fan Cooler: PROs: Fast, quiet and cool. CONs: None.

Crucial Ballistix DDR4 Quad channel, 2666 MHz. 32GB: PROs: Works and overclocks well. CONs: Expensive.

Samsung 960 EVO 1TB M.2 internal SSD: PROs: Lives hidden in the motherboard in what looks like an old-style memory stick. Very fast. CONs: Twice the cost of a top of the line SATA SSD of similar capacity.

Windows 10 PRO USB (Full Retail): eBay for $92 US, which is so much faster than CD/DVD media. No more OEM for me since Windows 10 now looks like a winner with staying power for future upgrades.

Except for the SATA defect, this is a spectacular system for CLoD. Windows 10 boots in 19 seconds (Including POST) and I have experienced NO problems in the first two weeks of use overclocked at 20%.

[MightyBouff]

I surprised you went with the 7800X over an 8700K (roughly same price I think).

I'm even more surprised with the SATA failure on the ASUS board - they are normally rock solid, but good that it is being replaced.

The M2's are nice, especially as I think that one is the NVMe one - there are about two faster drives out there and they are silly money.

Lovely build mate!

[Baffin]

I surprised you went with the 7800X over an 8700K (roughly same price I think).

I'm even more surprised with the SATA failure on the ASUS board - they are normally rock solid, but good that it is being replaced.

The M2's are nice, especially as I think that one is the NVMe one - there are about two faster drives out there and they are silly money.

Lovely build mate!

MB's and Processors are always a matter of personal preference.

My new Motherboard supports LGA 2066 (X299 chipset). Higher bandwidth at lower frequencies. (44 PCIe lanes)

Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core LGA 1151 Processor: $415

Intel Core i7-7800X X-Series 3.5 GHz 6-Core LGA 2066 Processor: $380

[FightingSteel1]

Do you use your computer for heavy video editing, or other intensive commercial tasks like large format photo editing, 3D modeling or run multiple Virtual Machines? If not, you'll never use the 32gb of RAM. Nowhere close actually.

[Baffin]

Do you use your computer for heavy video editing, or other intensive commercial tasks like large format photo editing, 3D modeling or run multiple Virtual Machines? If not, you'll never use the 32gb of RAM. Nowhere close actually.

I hope I can sleep at night, knowing this...

[FightingSteel1]

I hope I can sleep at night, knowing this...

To put it into some perspective, most games, including CLOD, don't utilize 8gb of memory. By the time you actually will use 32gb in the future (assuming you don't do the things I mentioned above), you will be looking at components for a new build.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/do-you-need-32gb-of-ram/

[69th_Zeb]

Do you use your computer for heavy video editing, or other intensive commercial tasks like large format photo editing, 3D modeling or run multiple Virtual Machines? If not, you'll never use the 32gb of RAM. Nowhere close actually.

Why yes! He can use it to edit those future kill cam vids in stereoscopic 4k!

[MightyBouff]

MB's and Processors are always a matter of personal preference.

My new Motherboard supports LGA 2066 (X299 chipset). Higher bandwidth at lower frequencies. (44 PCIe lanes)

Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core LGA 1151 Processor: $415

Intel Core i7-7800X X-Series 3.5 GHz 6-Core LGA 2066 Processor: $380

Agreed on personal preference, even more so iff comparing intel/amd!
I'm not sure I'd be able to fill 44 PCI lanes. Does the 7800 overclock well? The 8700k is 'really' 4.7Ghz (the k part means it is guaranteed to run all cores at that speed at the same time). Testing is showing that something like 80% of them can hit 4.9Ghz and a fair percentage can get 5+Ghz.

Benched the 8700k comes out on top, but not by enough that anybody would probably ever notice! http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare.../3937vsm304816

I hoping the prices of the 8700k come down. They were released at £350 in the UK, and then shot up. Starting to drift back down but still at ~£400 which is daft.

[Baffin]

Agreed on personal preference, even more so iff comparing intel/amd!
I'm not sure I'd be able to fill 44 PCI lanes. Does the 7800 overclock well? The 8700k is 'really' 4.7Ghz (the k part means it is guaranteed to run all cores at that speed at the same time). Testing is showing that something like 80% of them can hit 4.9Ghz and a fair percentage can get 5+Ghz.

Benched the 8700k comes out on top, but not by enough that anybody would probably ever notice! http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare.../3937vsm304816

I hoping the prices of the 8700k come down. They were released at £350 in the UK, and then shot up. Starting to drift back down but still at ~£400 which is daft.

I overclock 20% without even upping the voltage. As bandwith increases, the need for heat-producing frequencies diminishes. Performance on the user's specific system running his particular software application is what's really important to me. I have lost interest in Benchmarking for these reasons as well as unnecessary overheat risk, so wild overclocking is no longer my goal.

I was always told that "K" processors are unlocked, permitting overclocking...

EDIT: 20171205- I have played with the overclock and settled on 30% with stock voltage. Runs nicely @ 4.6 GHz with 104 FSB. Temps remain at or below 70c. I read where benchmark enthusiasts have pushed this processor to over 6 GHz... not me!

[Pans]

I was always told that "K" processors are unlocked, permitting overclocking...

The K means that the CPU has an unlocked multiplier. This makes it much easier to overclock in the BIOS/UEFI simply by increasing the value of the multiplier without having to specifically tailor frequencies and voltages.

[III./ZG76_Saipan]

I was always told that "K" processors are unlocked, permitting overclocking...[/QUOTE]

yep thats correct

[Lorena]

i can say about the 960evo, best option ever. my loading times are almost nonexistent because of this monster, after u buy those you already gonna know that is no more bottleneck because of mb/s , because this one is gb/s haha

[ATAG_SKUD]

Agreed on personal preference, even more so iff comparing intel/amd!
I'm not sure I'd be able to fill 44 PCI lanes. Does the 7800 overclock well? The 8700k is 'really' 4.7Ghz (the k part means it is guaranteed to run all cores at that speed at the same time). Testing is showing that something like 80% of them can hit 4.9Ghz and a fair percentage can get 5+Ghz.

Benched the 8700k comes out on top, but not by enough that anybody would probably ever notice! http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare.../3937vsm304816

I hoping the prices of the 8700k come down. They were released at £350 in the UK, and then shot up. Starting to drift back down but still at ~£400 which is daft.

I was looking to upgrade my venerable i7-2600K this year also. It's 6 friggin years old! Then I saw benchmark after benchmark show either very little , no, or negative FPS improvement in 4K gaming when the 8700K is compared to the 2600K. Plus it seems a lot of testers are reporting high temps. Also, my system monitors tell me my graphics card is still the bottleneck.

Skud

[Baffin]

I was looking to upgrade my venerable i7-2600K this year also. It's 6 friggin years old! Then I saw benchmark after benchmark show either very little , no, or negative FPS improvement in 4K gaming when the 8700K is compared to the 2600K. Plus it seems a lot of testers are reporting high temps. Also, my system monitors tell me my graphics card is still the bottleneck.

Skud

To the best of my recollection, my new system runs the coldest of any I have ever had. CPU's in the low 20's while I type this, and less than 50 during overclocked CLoD play (Hyperthreading OFF). This was a very pleasant surprise at break-in. The new ASUS software overclocking utility is also a vast improvement over older versions.

I've never had good luck using RAID storage in a gaming system. It seemed to always need to re-verify the files integrity, and seemed to slow things down. I've changed back to single drive while occasionally cloning the drive to a fast WD hard dive. In fact, I store a separate cloned drive away from the house in order to protect my system, programs and data against fire, theft, zombie apocalypse, etc. But I have no essential day-to-day business data on the gaming rig so a clone every couple of weeks is enough protection for me, personally. Your hardware looks a lot like what I just replaced which ran CLoD well. In my opinion, Titan XP (Pascal) should handle 4k very well except for flying and fighting low over Calais (AKA Stutterville). I wonder if any graphics solution will ever eliminate that...

[MightyBouff]

I was looking to upgrade my venerable i7-2600K this year also. It's 6 friggin years old! Then I saw benchmark after benchmark show either very little , no, or negative FPS improvement in 4K gaming when the 8700K is compared to the 2600K. Plus it seems a lot of testers are reporting high temps. Also, my system monitors tell me my graphics card is still the bottleneck.

Skud

2600 was a great processor (I had a 2500K for ages). Single thread the 8700k probably won't give that much more, but as soon as you look at multi core it will blow the house down in comparison.

I'm on a 4790k / 980Ti and I do occasionally see CPU bottleneck, but more often GPU bottleneck. One other advantage of switching is you'll be able to put faster DDR4 ram in, and an m2 (like the samsung mentioned above).

[ATAG_SKUD]

To the best of my recollection, my new system runs the coldest of any I have ever had. CPU's in the low 20's while I type this, and less than 50 during overclocked CLoD play (Hyperthreading OFF). This was a very pleasant surprise at break-in. The new ASUS software overclocking utility is also a vast improvement over older versions.

I've never had good luck using RAID storage in a gaming system. It seemed to always need to re-verify the files integrity, and seemed to slow things down. I've changed back to single drive while occasionally cloning the drive to a fast WD hard dive. In fact, I store a separate cloned drive away from the house in order to protect my system, programs and data against fire, theft, zombie apocalypse, etc. But I have no essential day-to-day business data on the gaming rig so a clone every couple of weeks is enough protection for me, personally. Your hardware looks a lot like what I just replaced which ran CLoD well. In my opinion, Titan XP (Pascal) should handle 4k very well except for flying and fighting low over Calais (AKA Stutterville). I wonder if any graphics solution will ever eliminate that...

Exactly... flying over Calais low is where it drops off 60hz n-sync limit down into the 40s and 50's. I have Windows and clod running off the SSD, would the RAID drives still interfere?. Offline I get 5 second screen freezes once per flight. Doesn't happen online. Haven't figured out what is causing it but FPS drops to zero.

Skud

[Baffin]

Exactly... flying over Calais low is where it drops off 60hz n-sync limit down into the 40s and 50's. I have Windows and clod running off the SSD, would the RAID drives still interfere?. Offline I get 5 second screen freezes once per flight. Doesn't happen online. Haven't figured out what is causing it but FPS drops to zero.

Skud

I simply don't know... The bad experience I had with RAID arrays may simply be due to my own lack of tenacity in making it work for me. The "clone" backup is probably clumsier than RAID's auto-backup, but it is 100% reliable and the hardware cost is identical.