New build for gaming.

Andyf

Daemon Poster
Messages
510
Location
UK
Hi, I haven't visited for years, but since the kind people here set me up with a nice P35/Q6600 build that's lasted for the better part of 10 years, I figured I'd post ideas for essentially a new build; what I'm playing now is just too CPU limited to play.

Usage: gaming mainly. I plan to have overclock room for the future, but only bother if I find the game needs it; even so I doubt I'll touch the RAM. But cooling is good on the basis that I hope I won't have to touch it for a long as possible; another 10 years maybe? So room for the future is probably a little more important than cheaper builds. I'm really not a fan of Xfire and SLI, and I don't see myself upgrading from my single 1080p screen.


Intel Skylake i5-6600k £198

Only a tenner more than the locked multiplyer; why not...

Gigabyte Z170X Gaming K3
£81 with discount

Z170 since I want overclock room for the future; I'd love an ASUS, but the cheapest with the various bits I need (mostly USB and SATA connectivity) is probably the Z170 Pro Gaming, which with the package I can find, would be £45 more expensive. youch. I prefer it in many small ways (USB, BIOS, M.2 placement, SATA, power phases, POST lights), but that's a huge saving. There's a £15 discount on this one with the CPU, and I can't find a cheaper Z170 with the I/O I want.

Ballistix Sport LP 8GB (2x4GB) 2400Mhz DDR4 £39

Not likely to overclock the RAM; in the long term it always seems to fall out with the MOBO first. But £5 for some nice heat spreaders; why not.

The big question is in the HD: I've yet to make the SSD switch. If I were to splurge, I could go:

Samsung 950 Pro 256GB M.2 PCI-E 3.0 NVMe
£140

The Mobo puts it in a bad position (under the GPU HSF and next to the CPU) but hopefully it won't be bad. The ASUS has it nicely out of the way by the chipset.

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SATA
£80

So the M.2 has the OS; the 850 some larger, more demanding games, and the rest of gunk I keep using my old Seagate barracudas. I suspect though, that a pair or even a single SATA 850 wouldn't be noticeably any different; I just figure unless I buy the M.2 for the OS now, I'll never bother to do it later.. Suggestions?

So total, that comes to...£540; a lot but I can bear that. Again, since I'm such an irregular upgrader, I'm happier spending more now for reliability and future proofing.

I've found a bracket kit for my old LGA775 CPU cooler (TRUE 120), which is good. As I say, modest overclocking and only if what I'm playing seems to need it; all the fancy coolers and RAM packages are just with the view that cooler = last longer. Probably could do with some bonding compound; MX-2 was the stuff back in the day, any other ideas?


Added to that I have from my old rig; an EVGA Nvidia GTX 660 Ti ; Corsair HX 520 PSU; A few Seagate Barracuda 7200.* HDs; lots of fans and a nice case. I'll see how I get on and look to upgrade the GPU sometime in the not-too-distant future, but hopefully it'll do until the next gen Nvidia come out and bump the prices down; which is when by the way?

Anyway, thanks very much for any help!
 
Last edited:
At work on my phone so just a fast reply, YES you would notice a huge difference even just switching to the SSD, another thing to look at is the ASRock motherboards, back in the day they were just a budget board but now there making some nice quality feature rich motherboards and they were the first ones I noticed with the M.2 slots so I would take a look and compare festers and prices on them.
 
No point in going with a dual SSD when for cheaper you can have a 500GB 850 EVO. As somebody who has M.2 PCI-E already I'd say getting the 950pro is kind of a waste for the time being. Might want to look into a large M.2 instead if you want to go that route. I think they make the EVO in 500GB M.2 as well.

You won't need to overclock and I think the TRUE would be kind of a waste on this setup. When you want to overclock you'll want an AIO cooler instead anyways as those old heatsinks can't stand up to the heat output that great anymore. Same goes for RAM, memory bandwidth is not an issue these days so you'll never need to go over 2400 or even 2133 for that matter.

When you get this rig setup your biggest hiccup will be the old 660ti. If you want a Maxwell chip I suggest getting them now before Pascal comes out. Nvidia is already saying Maxwell (current cards) will be discontinued so the price will go up, not down. Just like the 780/780ti before.
 
At work on my phone so just a fast reply, YES you would notice a huge difference even just switching to the SSD, another thing to look at is the ASRock motherboards, back in the day they were just a budget board but now there making some nice quality feature rich motherboards and they were the first ones I noticed with the M.2 slots so I would take a look and compare festers and prices on them.

Thanks; are they good? I'm just an old fogey who's not really heard of them, so prefer to stay away. I guess I 'trust' ASUS and gigabyte, not because their RMA sounds any good at all, just I've had a lot of their stuff before and been happy. Old habits die hard..

No point in going with a dual SSD when for cheaper you can have a 500GB 850 EVO. As somebody who has M.2 PCI-E already I'd say getting the 950pro is kind of a waste for the time being. Might want to look into a large M.2 instead if you want to go that route. I think they make the EVO in 500GB M.2 as well.

You won't need to overclock and I think the TRUE would be kind of a waste on this setup. When you want to overclock you'll want an AIO cooler instead anyways as those old heatsinks can't stand up to the heat output that great anymore. Same goes for RAM, memory bandwidth is not an issue these days so you'll never need to go over 2400 or even 2133 for that matter.

When you get this rig setup your biggest hiccup will be the old 660ti. If you want a Maxwell chip I suggest getting them now before Pascal comes out. Nvidia is already saying Maxwell (current cards) will be discontinued so the price will go up, not down. Just like the 780/780ti before.

Ahh really, the TRUE is not so great anymore? I figured it's all the same stuff really. I'm distrustful of everything liquid to be honest, particularly because I don't trust myself to keep an eye on it at all. A bracket for the TRUE is still a lot cheaper than a new HSF and I'm sure a fair ways better than the stock cooler. As you say, since overclock isn't on the immediate menu, I hope that'll do until I find I need the extra juice. Plus, it's a nicely made bit of kit, it'd be a shame just to chuck it.

Thanks for your input on the SSDs; I know nothing, are they okay to partition to use the same sort of plan (half OS, half games)? Will I notice any difference at all between PCIE M2 and SATA? I just figured since the OS gets used all the time, it's worth spending extra for even moderate gains.

Thanks again for the help. I'll have another think about that GPU..
 
Gigabyte has made meh boards for the past 6 years TBH. Asus just makes ok boards and charges a lot for them.

I have my old TRUE on the 955BE and it's only ok at keeping it cool with a single fan. Not like we're cooling the old Core 2's anymore. Also don't have to keep an eye on anything for an AIO. Literally just clean it the same way you do a TRUE in a timely manner. A lot less weight on your board too.

Why would you want to partition?
Will you notice any difference? Already answered that. Answer is no unless you're copying large files from SSD to SSD. There aren't moderate gains. I went from a 4 year old SATA Corsair Neutron to my Predator x4 and there was no difference in realistic noticeable performance. Not like moving from a HDD to SSD.

From the way things are looking Pascal may be on us this June. Got a little time to think about it.
 
No problem, Asrock at one time actually were the low end Asus boards and I did a build with one and it lasted well, Then they ventured on there own and really came into there own andmake some nice boards, I too have used Asus a long time and have served me well. On this build I ALMOST got a ASRock but the particular board I wanted was out of stock and had a few more features between the Asus I have, Correction the Asus board I got was the model down from this one but it had a bad RAM slot and wouldn't read all the ram so I ordered the one step up and returned the first one for a refund, New Egg is pretty good about that. But my next build might be either MSI or ASRock, Asus seems to be going downhill a bit over the years and there customer service has never been really good, Only time I dealt with them was in the core 2 duo days and after hours on the phone finally get a RMA and after weeks they sent it back and it was never fixed, But I gave them another shot and since then only buy from NewEgg because there return policy is pretty good.
 
Gigabyte has made meh boards for the past 6 years TBH. Asus just makes ok boards and charges a lot for them.

No problem, Asrock at one time actually were the low end Asus boards and I did a build with one and it lasted well, Then they ventured on there own and really came into there own andmake some nice boards, I too have used Asus a long time and have served me well. On this build I ALMOST got a ASRock but the particular board I wanted was out of stock and had a few more features between the Asus I have, Correction the Asus board I got was the model down from this one but it had a bad RAM slot and wouldn't read all the ram so I ordered the one step up and returned the first one for a refund, New Egg is pretty good about that. But my next build might be either MSI or ASRock, Asus seems to be going downhill a bit over the years and there customer service has never been really good, Only time I dealt with them was in the core 2 duo days and after hours on the phone finally get a RMA and after weeks they sent it back and it was never fixed, But I gave them another shot and since then only buy from NewEgg because there return policy is pretty good.

Ahh so... Part of the reason the Asus one I suggested is so expensive is that their lower end boards are all very lacking in I/O (which sort of backs up your impressions); and what with what you guys are saying about where ASUS and gigabyte are of recent, perhaps I should shed my fears. By the way, I always remember gigabyte doing everything on a nice translucent blue PCB, what happened to that?

How about this MSI board?
MSI Z170-A PRO DDR4
Affordable, will do me for I/O and features, lots of USB3.1. I have no experience with MSI products or BIOS, but reviews look fairly good. Plus I appreciate its total lack of stupid gam3rz bling.

ASRock, I can't find much in that price bracket; they all seem quite heavily kitted out and high-end focussed.


As to the m.2; I think you're right, I'll just go for a decent SATA SSD and be done with it, which will save a lot.

I didn't realise liquid coolers had come such a long way. Still, I think I'll stay with the TRUE for now, and see if I'm happy with the temperatures.
Thanks again.
 
Last edited:
The truth of the matter is everybody wants this or that on a board but it's not exactly necessary.

For instance, how many USB devices do you have that can saturate a 5Gb/s lane let alone a 10Gb/s lane? This was the question I asked myself when I ALMOST upgraded to X99. I was thinking, I have one external drive that is a SATA SSD so that's one port. I have 4 gen 1 ports and an *** load of USB2. I thought to myself again, Type C is going to saturate the market in no time and no other periphs that I have will even need more than Gen 1 USB3 and most are USB2. So that being said, I bought a 4port USB3 hub to place all my things on and called it a day. Wasn't even expensive. They also make AICs for USB3.1, type c, ect. I mean, these boards have SATA Express, but NOBODY in their right mind will use it lol, yet some people require it in a build then realize M.2 is the future. If we really wanted to get funky, one could get a Thunderbolt 3 AIC and then get a wicked hub to run absolutely everything off of that. SSDs, all periphs, media readers, high end flash drives, phones, whatever.

This is essentially why I tell most to just get the lower end boards because they're cheap. 99% of people buying won't overclock anyways. I mean you might, but I'm just putting that out there as a future reference so I don't have to type this again for another build.

Also, AIOs have been solid since day 1. My old H50 from 2009 still works. It's just the stigma revolving around water that people fear then you have the retard faggots who want to claim bull**** about pumps. In the 50+ builds I built for people last year (as in personally built) not a single AIO Corsair cooler has died or had issues.
 
Yeah the tendency is always to get more than you need; I doubt I'll make use of USB 3.1 beyond the odd USB drive transfer of large files; I have a lot of peripherals, but they'd probably all be just as happy on 1.1; it's the number of physical plugs more than anything else, and not requiring external hubs if there's no need to.

When I last knew what was going on, AIOs weren't even a thing, so liquid was all self-fill; it's a good upgrade that i'll keep an eye out for; any quick suggestion for a reasonably cheap, reliable one? That Corsair you mentioned?

Anyway, thanks for the ideas; I think I'm going to go through with the MSI board, and a single SATA 500GB SSD, if that sounds like a reasonable idea to you guys.
 
Last edited:
The deal with hubs from back in the day was USB2.0 being too slow to properly deal with all items at once and the controllers being wonky. These days it makes things way cleaner on the desk IMO. Just double side tape a USB3 hub to the back of your desk underneath, run one cable to your PC then plug periphs there. Samsung is starting to do sort of the same thing with their new I/O setup on their TVs.
What I do is have the hub in the back underneath where you can't see it, then run an extension cable from there to the front of my desk hiding it neatly. I use this port for any flash drives, headset cables, charge cables, camera plugins, or phone plugins that I need. This negates the need to get up to use a front port, makes 3-4 cables down to one going to the PC, and USB3 has enough bandwidth to properly handle all of it.

Any of the Corsair AIOs from the H60 up. Even the H55 would suffice if you wanted.
 
Back
Top Bottom