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New Computer Time Part Deux...
Ok. So, since quizzical did it, i thought i'd give my intended upgrade path and see if anyone has any input i hadn't considered.
Current setup is
i7-2600k at 4.1ghz (i went with a light OC).
Corsair 600D
Corsair AX750
EVGA 980Ti SC
Zalman CNPS9900
Gigabyte Z68X-UD5
16gb of ram (can't remember what brand /shrug)
1x 180gb OCZ Vertex 2, 1x 250gb Vertex 4
Monitor is the Acer XB270HU
Ok. So, the idea here is i recently upgraded my monitor and my GPU. My old monitor is an Alienware AW2310 120hz, blah blah. My old GPU(s) were EVGA 760 SC's.
Since christmas is coming up and my nephew doesn't have a PC. My thoughts are along the lines of this gives me a reason to get new shinies, and to give my nephew his own gaming PC.
So, i'm going to take my 980ti, AX750, and the 250gb Vertex 4 out of the old PC. I'm going to slap 1x of the 760's and a Corsair CM500 PSU i bought off a buddy for $20 and slap it into the old setup. I'm then going to give that and the Alienware monitor to my nephew for christmas.
The new parts i will buy are likely going to be (all prices are approximates):
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 $170
Intel 6700K $330
16gb DDR4 (whatever name brand i can find for a good price) $160
1x 512gb Samsung 850 Evo $185
Corsair Carbide Air 540 Case $135
Corsair H100i Cooler $110
Windows 10 Home USB Retail Version $120
So, i will repurpose the Vertex 4 as my OS SSD. Use the New 850 EVO for my steam/games drive. Slap all the new stuff into the new case along with my 980ti and the AX750 psu and call it a day.
Always welcome to thoughts/opinions, plus we're all hardware nerds here, so if nothing else its something to read lol ;-)
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Comments
I see no sense in spending $160 to get 16 GB of memory, unless you don't mean US$. New Egg has some perfectly good 16 GB DDR4 kits from G.Skill, Corsair, Kingston, and Crucial for $125 or less. Most likely, you just hadn't looked at prices there.
If you're getting a new SSD, I wouldn't install the OS on an aging OCZ Vertex 4. OCZ wasn't the best for reliability, and having a few years of use on it already won't help that. If an SSD had some games on it and you have to download them over again because the SSD failed, oh well. Losing your OS drive is a rather bigger nuisance.
Fair point on the SSD. I guess im at 1200 bucks roughly anyways, whats another 80 to 100 for a new OS drive. Plus it keeps me from having to dick with moving stuff temporarily off the old one and yadda yadda.
As to the RAM, yes, i looked a few days ago, so, that was probably some exaggerated pricing pre order type of thing.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of, go ahead and use the Vertex 4 (or give it to your nephew or whatever), but put games on it rather than the OS, so that a drive failure is less bad.
Oh ok, i see what you mean. Its definitely something to consider.
Whats your opinion on the closed loop water coolers like that. I really can honestly say i can't stand having massive blocks of metal hanging off my motherboard. So im willing to pay a premium for not having that, as well as (in theory) better/quieter cooling performance.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I have a good deal of experience with them.
They work well, as long as you have the right set of expectations.
They will not get you lower temps than a good air cooler necessarily - both ways your heat transfer is limited by the ambient air, so there's only so much you can do once you get up into higher efficiency models.
What it does do is let you control exactly where the heat gets dumped, which is good for all sorts of obvious reasons. And it lets you arbitrarily increase the surface area to however big of a case opening you are willing to put up with -- which doesn't necessarily get you cooler temperatures, but does let you use larger and quieter fans. I've got one custom system I built once that had a radiator large enough that it didn't have to use a fan at all.
And, as you say, you don't have a huge chunk of heatpipe mess sitting in the middle of your motherboard, which if your into aesthetics, can be important as well (and isn't bad for overall case airflow either).
The AIO closed loop systems are all fairly good. There are only a couple of manufacturers, and then the companies rebrand them, so most of what you pay for are the bells and whistles. Yes, leaks can happen, but the AIOs you almost have to intentionally cut something to do that. Yes, pumps can fail - but so can fans, and it's not really any different when/if it would fail anyway, and they tend to fail with about the same frequency (you can expect 5-7 years of life on a AIO on average - after all a pump is pretty much the same thing as a fan mechanically).
I've got some experience with the Corsair models and their software control. I'd almost say your better off with a separate fan controller for your system - it's neat and it works and all, but your locked into that proprietary software that isn't that great and ultimately it boils down to just three options: "Quiet", "Balanced", or "Performance", and being able to see a few temps you could see with some third party software anyway. Whereas if you just hook the fans up to a fan controller with a 5.25" or 3.5" bay controller and dials, you have better control and no software to mess with. Not really a deal breaker, just saying I wouldn't go out of my way to pay extra for any of the software-controlled models.
The only real caveat I'd say about the AIOs is whatever hose length you got - that's all you get. So plan your case and installation carefully. Most are adequate enough that you can mount pretty well anywhere inside a mid-tower case without too much issue, but an odd front orientation or a full sized case may run you out of hose.