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...I've saved up my gerbil funds and am moving away from Core 2 Quad. Thing is, I've not *actually* built an all new PC for so long I am out of the loop on what's best to go for in a new build. I'm really confused about my CPU upgrade choice, because benchmarks online and my own testing confirm that my current Core 2 Quad E - especially this overclocked - is within 3-5% of the total performance of an i5 4430 across typical gaming workloads. I also do a lot of video encode and conversion from ShadowPlay captures, as well as from my DVD collection to use on my Tablet. The Core 2 Quad E here is still able to hold it's own, but obviously consumes a lot of power to do so.

Unless I shoot for an i7 (or AMD FX something or other - apparently the FX-95 something is really good/fast at video encode. It gets bad reviews from a quick google tho?), do I stand to gain a lot more in CPU performance over what I have, or have things just moved into being a bit more efficient, and cooler running with less power needs?

My build budget is £2800, but that includes everything screens and all. I've already decided on wanting 3 x Asus VN247H 24" 1080p screens for my surround gaming needs, and that's already eating £485 into that total budget. You guys have around £2315 left to work with. The main use is Gaming and Video editing / Transcoding. The Crucial M550 SSD is also being transplanted from my current system, as it's highly serviceable and also quite new.

So, AMD or Intel - then the rest of the build fits around that I guess?

Did you check out the System Guide?

Seems like you have the funds to get a nice high-end Devil's Canyon i7 4790K with Z97 mobo and a GTX 770/780 or R9 290 or 290X for those three monitors and still have tons left over.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Unless I shoot for an i7 (or AMD FX something or other - apparently the FX-95 something is really good/fast at video encode. It gets bad reviews from a quick google tho?), do I stand to gain a lot more in CPU performance over what I have, or have things just moved into being a bit more efficient, and cooler running with less power needs?

FX-9xxx uses stupidly massive amounts of power, and requires a special motherboard (capable of supplying 220W to the CPU socket) and liquid cooling (to get rid of all the heat). The FX-8320/8350 are OK if you're on a budget, but are still not particularly efficient in terms of power usage. Being 8-core processors, they perform decently on highly threaded workloads (like video encode), but the single-thread performance is mediocre, and the chipset for Socket AM3+ is sorely in need of a refresh.

In other words, if you are building a performance desktop today and you've got the cash (sounds like you do), don't bother looking at AMD.

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Did you check out the System Guide?

Seems like you have the funds to get a nice high-end Devil's Canyon i7 4790K with Z97 mobo and a GTX 770/780 or R9 290 or 290X for those three monitors and still have tons left over.

I think 2 cards should be budgeted. I agree with everyone else, The intel i7 4790K and a good motherboard is the way to go.

With that kind of money, I think a good set of naming headphones and a sound card should be included.

Will you be reusing the power spply?

Losergamer04 wrote:

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Did you check out the System Guide?

Seems like you have the funds to get a nice high-end Devil's Canyon i7 4790K with Z97 mobo and a GTX 770/780 or R9 290 or 290X for those three monitors and still have tons left over.

I think 2 cards should be budgeted. I agree with everyone else, The intel i7 4790K and a good motherboard is the way to go.

With that kind of money, I think a good set of naming headphones and a sound card should be included.

Will you be reusing the power spply?

2 cards are a huge hassle unless absolutely needed. A single 780 or 290/290X will handle 3 screens pretty well, if not at complete ultra settings.

Thanks everyone so far - those TR system guides are mightily useful

I've decided I wont get an AMD processor, and have been looking at those Devils Canyon processors someone mentioned. My e-tail outlet has an i7 4790k for £269.99, but I also found a 6-core Intel processor for almost double the money - A 4930k processor. Are those worth the extra money at all, because the motherboards it needs are crazy expensive?

I've settled on my case (a personal choice IMO): XFX Type 1 Bravo - £129.90

It looks to have good room, loads of fan mounts, USB 3 front/top mount and audio connectors. It also looks mean yet stylish. I was looking at dual graphics because of all those screens, but will one really high-end single card really deliver smooth enough frame rates?

I'll also need a new PSU to answer someone else's question - my current one is 500w, but as old as the CPU it's also feeding (2008).

I almost went for the 4930K, but I didn't *really* need the 6 cores. I settled for a 4770K, which has been great so far. I'm slowly ripping all our DVDs for "instant access" on the Wii (via WiiMC), and it can churn through a number of MKV > MP4 tasks in a couple hours, while also running several ffmpeg batch scripts converting other MP4s to Xvid AVI's. It may not be as fast as a hexcore would be, but I'm rarely at my desk when the children are awake, so it works for me

FWIW, a new edition of the system guide is coming up in like 24 hours or less. Could be helpful!

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Thanks everyone so far - those TR system guides are mightily useful

I've decided I wont get an AMD processor, and have been looking at those Devils Canyon processors someone mentioned. My e-tail outlet has an i7 4790k for £269.99, but I also found a 6-core Intel processor for almost double the money - A 4930k processor. Are those worth the extra money at all, because the motherboards it needs are crazy expensive?

I don't think the performance benefit is worth the added cost, considering you have to get a motherboard with a different socket and there may not be one that ticks all the boxes for you.

On the other hand, if you're planning to never upgrade the "core" of the system (CPU/motherboard/RAM) and use it for 5-6 years, the extra cores might come in handy down the road.

deruberhanyok wrote:

I don't think the performance benefit is worth the added cost, considering you have to get a motherboard with a different socket and there may not be one that ticks all the boxes for you.

On the other hand, if you're planning to never upgrade the "core" of the system (CPU/motherboard/RAM) and use it for 5-6 years, the extra cores might come in handy down the road.

With lots of video encodes, the extra cores (and the extra memory bandwidth from quad channel memory) might actually be worth it, given the budget we're talking about. Note that the most recent rumors say Haswell-E is coming in a couple months and would support 8 cores and DDR4. Of course, as you noted, LGA2011 is going to increase costs quite a bit -- the boards are pricier, you need more RAM sticks (pricier), and DDR4 if chosen will be pricier. But your budget might still support it.

Also, note that the current generation of GPUs is getting a little long in the tooth. While the rumor mill is abuzz with stories of 20nm being pushed into next year, it also suggests things like higher-end 28nm Maxwell might be coming before that, and the impressive efficiency of GM107 could lead to very interesting results if that happens. Of course, it's impossible to predict, but if you're interested in such things, it might be prudent to skip the highest-end cards right now (e.g. skip the 780Ti) -- they're overpriced for the performance increase, and there's a chance it would have a short shelf life as "fastest single card", in which case you'd have money left over to upgrade to the new best thing a little later.

I just don't see the 4930K as worth it, even for things like video encoding. See my latest results with the six-core i7-4960X vs. the quad-core 4770K for video encoding here:

http://techreport.com/review/25293/inte ... reviewed/7

The 4790K is likely to be the fastest CPU of the bunch, at stock speeds. The memory channels just aren't much of a limiter, and the added cores don't get used by single encoding instances, at least in x264 and Handbrake.

The sample builds in the new System Guide will reflect this assessment.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

It looks to have good room, loads of fan mounts, USB 3 front/top mount and audio connectors. It also looks mean yet stylish. I was looking at dual graphics because of all those screens, but will one really high-end single card really deliver smooth enough frame rates?

I'll also need a new PSU to answer someone else's question - my current one is 500w, but as old as the CPU it's also feeding (2008).

Its a bit outdated, but TR did a triple monitor test 2 years ago: Link. The 7970 used in that article is pretty much the same as the 280X used as a comparator in this review of the 290X. The 290X provided about 40% more FPS, and better smoothness, compared to the 280X. Note that the review model used in the 290X review was a reference design with a not-so-amazing blower style cooler, which may have resulted in some throttling due to high temps. A card from a solid OEM that has a double or triple fan setup should not experience throttling. Basically, you may experience slightly better performance out of a card from Asus, Gigabyte, etc., than TR got in their review.

I'd definitely start with one card and see what results you get and then add a second card later if you really feel you need it. Thing is, if you want to use dual cards, you may want to go with a 780/780Ti since Nvidia seems to have the upper hand on dual card setups. That may have changed recently, but that's been the case historically.

As for the power supply, if you've got the cash, why not toss in a clean replacement for your new, high dollar hardware? Go for a modular 600ish watt (more if you go with dual GPUs and a big overclock on the CPU) Seasonic or Corsair that's at least 80plus Gold and you'll be doing just fine.

With £2800 to throw around, I would recommend:

1) Wait for Haswell-E this fall. 5820k or 5930k would be nice to have 6 cores. 5820k for 6 cores / 28 lanes or 5930k if you need 40 pcie-lanes.
2) Wait for Maxwell this fall. 28nm GM204 will be faster than a 780ti and cost less too.
3) ????
4) Profit

I feel like the "?????" in any list like that could probably be replaced with "use it to mine bitcoins" and it would work.

I'm with the "wait for the fall refresh of video cards" crowd. I'm looking to buy a card for gaming soon and decided to hold off.

The GeForce 700 series, launched in May 2013, is mostly "kepler" chips, which were actually released in March of 2012 with the 600 series, and is due to be replaced by "maxwell" (which has already shown up in the mid-range as the GeForce 750 ti) soon, likely this fall. There's a few low-end 700 cards that are based on an even earlier version of the tech, "Fermi".

Maxwell is a big efficiency increase despite being on the same manufacturing process, so it's possible that for the price of a 760 now, you could get performance of a 780 (or more) in the next generation.

The Radeon cards are mostly in the same boat - almost the entire R5/R7/R9 lineup is based on the GCN 1.0 architecture which launched in February of 2012, with exceptions for: R9 290 and 290X, and R7 260 and 260X, which are based on GCN 1.1, and a few of the really lower-end models, which are based on even older tech. The current series (R5/R7/R9) launched in October of 2013.

I don't know that there's anything concrete, yet, but expectations are that both companies will have a pretty big refresh coming this fall - Maxwell for NVIDIA and GCN 2.0 for AMD. Both will likely see sizeable bumps in performance for whatever price they're selling at.

If you want to have a video card for the interim, I'd keep an eye on ebay for GeForce 500 series or Radeon HD 7000 series cards. You can usually get an older "mainstream" card like the 560Ti for about $50 if you're patient, and it'll be capable enough to cover things until the new stuff comes out, better than an IGP would, at least.

For £276 (including VAT), a Radeon R9-290 is still a decent value, especially if you get one with a good cooler (e.g.: Sapphire VaporX or Asus DirectCu II).

If the main reason for those Asus monitors is the thin bezel, have you also considered the AOC i2267Fw? I saw one of these locally at Microcenter and was impressed at how small the bezels were.

As for the rest of the recommendations, I'll second the idea of a Core i7 4790k. Right now it is the best CPU you can get on the consumer side. The Core i7 4930k should only be considered for very niche scenarios. I personally own its predecessor, the i7 3930k, for usage in a hybrid NAS + virtual machine host box. The main gaming purpose is if you're considering 3 or 4 graphics cards in a single system as that chip supports 40 PCI-e lanes without the need for expensive bridge chips. If you look at high end socket 1150 motherboards that support 4 way SLI or Crossfire, the cost between them and LGA2011 is roughly the same. Haswell-E is due in a few months but that won't change much in terms of pricing or reasoning to get an Intel chip with more than 4 cores.

Video encoding is one of those niche scenarios where extra cores can help performance but the Core i7 4790k can still be faster due to QuickSync. That is Intel's marketing speak for a hardware video encoder and it is indeed remarkably quick. The only negative about it is that not all video editing applications can use QuickSync and it tends to produce slightly larger file sizes from my experience in Sony Vegas 12.

The raw pixel count is in between 2560 x 1440 found on in expensive 27" Korean displays and the bleeding edge 3840 x 2160 displays just hitting the market. A single Radeon 290(x) or Geforce 780 (Ti) could produce playable frame rates across three 1080p at high quality systems but it is hit or miss like 4K resolution. Adding a second card should make three 1080p displays playable but there is the multi-monitor + multi-GPU bugs that tend to crop up for being on the bleeding edge. There are rumors of a new generation of video cards form both nVidia and AMD arriving later this year. The high end cards from this coming wave should make triple 1080p gaming from a single card a no compromise scenario.

The only other thing to really chose would be the motherboard and typically comes down to feature set and support nowadays. Personally I'd opt for a board with a PCIe based M.2 slot so that you could get an NVMe SSD. Dealing with video editing is one area where the benefits of NVMe in your storage system could be felt.

Ebuyer have a good price right now on a 750W Corsair CSM modular PSU. I've been using CSM and CXM series for a a couple of hundred PC's over the last few years and not a single problem so far.

http://www.ebuyer.com/584217-corsair-cs750m-modular-750w-atx-psu-cp-9020078-uk

the wrote:

As for the rest of the recommendations, I'll second the idea of a Core i7 4790k. Right now it is the best CPU you can get on the consumer side.

There are rumors of a new generation of video cards form both nVidia and AMD arriving later this year. The high end cards from this coming wave should make triple 1080p gaming from a single card a no compromise scenario.

Yeah, I don't see a reason to wait on the processor. Get the Devil's Canyon processors while they are hot! (There's a pun in there somewhere, sorry).

As for the GPU - I still say a single GPU solution is the way to go, so waiting a few months and using that 750 ti you have on a single monitor may be your best bet to secure the kind of performance you really want at 3x1080p with AMD or Nvidia's next gen cards.

Oh yeah. If you already have a 750ti, milk it at least until 28nm Maxwell arrives! October will come soon enough

But also, shipping data for GM200 has surfaced today, if you care to wait until late Q1-early Q2 2015 to get Big Maxwell. You definitely have the budget for it.

http://videocardz.com/51032/nvidia-maxw ... an-ii-core

Thanks everyone for the reply's, and thanks TR for that new system guide I have just read. I've also decided the extra cost for the 6-core CPU's are not worth it now neither. Benchmarks show it's faster overall, but at double the cost of those very tempting Devil's Canyon processors (not to mention the crazy prices for the socket 2011 motherboard), I'll pass it up.

The current PC is being shuffled off to be my TV gamer downstairs, so I can't re-use that 750Ti in this build (It's a great little card btw!). I'm nabbing it's SSD though, and putting the mechanical Maxtor drive it was "born" with back into it.

I may have also saved up a lot more than I needed for this build it seems - Since when I last built a PC things were a lot more expensive for the high-end. Here's where I'm at so far then, and let us know what you think.

Proposed parts:
Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM - £259.99
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard - £209.99
Kingston HyperX 16GB (4x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2800MHz Quad channel Kit - Black/Red - £135.99
MSI Geforce GTX 780 Gaming Edition OC 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - x2 - £878.98
Crucial M550 512GB SSD (In current PC) - £0.00
EVGA SuperNova G2 850W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply - £99.95
XFX Type 1 Bravo - Midi-Tower - Black - £129.90
Corsair Hydro H110 280mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - £91.99
Pioneer BDR-209DBK 16x SATA Internal BD/DVD/CD Burner - £54.95
Aerocool Shark Black Edition Fan - 140mm - x2 - £15.98
Aerocool Shark Black Edition Fan - 120mm - x3 - £20.94
Asus VN247H 24" Widescreen LED Super Slim Bezel Monitor (Includes 3 x 1 display stand) - x3 - £485.96
Windows 8 x64 OEM - £62.99

Edit (Forgot to include peripherals):
Razer Blackwidow 2014 - Elite Mechanical Keyboard - Wired - USB - £124.99
Razer Taipan 2014 - 8200 DPI Gaming Mouse - Wired - USB - £69.99

Think that covers everything? I've added dual graphics after reading articles about performance scaling in SLI at high resolutions. For the most part in newer games, a 2nd card will get the average frames rates that this resolution up from around the low 40's to well over my target of 60 with all the eye candy turned up. This site's on inside the frame articles were pretty decent where SLI is concerned, and also Nvidia seem to have fixed that frame stuttering issue to the point where the average eye won't notice it?

I also wanted to ask about screens too - I really would like 3 x 1 displays. Yeah, gaming is going to be sweet on them, but multi-screens also help for my programming and design work (The PC has to serve a functional use too). My e-tail outlet has 2 other screens that caught my eye that have attractive prices:
- There's a Dell 24" UltraSharp 1920 x 1200 IPS screen for £200 a piece, down from £280
- An AOC 24" 1080p G-sync monitor popped up at £340 each

Now, the latter is clearly expensive, but does G-Sync work with SLI? If it does, that *may* be worth the additional cost, but I'm going to take advice on this (you guys!). My other choice at a much healthier £200 each 16:10 screen from Dell, and does anyone think that perhaps that's a better choice than the 1080p TN screens from the Asus screens I was looking at (they come bundled with a stand and healthy discount if you buy 3). Again, willing to take advice on here about this, as I really don't know!

I would recommend a Deathadder 2013 instead of the Taipan, but this is probably more personal preference than anything else. It's the go-to Razer mouse and I wouldn't ever consider using anything else.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Kingston HyperX 16GB (4x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2800MHz Quad channel Kit - Black/Red - £135.99

Any reason you can't/don't want to go with 2x8GB for memory? Price seems to be fairly close between the options in the States, and you may someday wish to upgrade to 32GB. I've always had better luck with performance and stability with as few sticks as required to fill the memory channels

geekl33tgamer wrote:

- There's a Dell 24" UltraSharp 1920 x 1200 IPS screen for £200 a piece, down from £280
- An AOC 24" 1080p G-sync monitor popped up at £340 each

I have a Dell U2412M at home and have been very pleased with it. Gsync does look really cool, though and if it works with SLI and Multiple screens (that's going be a longshot I would think) it could make sense to go that direction.

frumper15 wrote:

Any reason you can't/don't want to go with 2x8GB for memory? Price seems to be fairly close between the options in the States, and you may someday wish to upgrade to 32GB. I've always had better luck with performance and stability with as few sticks as required to fill the memory channel

I think he was looking to get a 4930K earlier, which would have required (or at least desired) a quad channel memory kit. A dual channel kit would be better for the 4790K.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

I would recommend a Deathadder 2013 instead of the Taipan, but this is probably more personal preference than anything else. It's the go-to Razer mouse and I wouldn't ever consider using anything else.

It is also £69.99 like the Taipan - The difference seems to be that the sensor is just higher DPI in the Taipan, unless I'm missing something else? Both look nice on the eye, and even look the same shape?

frumper15 wrote:

Any reason you can't/don't want to go with 2x8GB for memory? Price seems to be fairly close between the options in the States, and you may someday wish to upgrade to 32GB. I've always had better luck with performance and stability with as few sticks as required to fill the memory channels.

I assumed you needed 4, but I realise my mistake now (Socket 2011). Your correct about prices, as 2 x 8GB is actually a little cheaper. I could then upgrade to 32GB later but is anything really going to need that??? Heck, I thought 16GB was pushing seing how my current 8GB hasn't appear to give me any problems.

frumper15 wrote:

I have a Dell U2412M at home and have been very pleased with it. Gsync does look really cool, though and if it works with SLI and Multiple screens (that's going be a longshot I would think) it could make sense to go that direction.

I currently have a Samsung T260HD 1920 x 1200 screen and a smaller 19" Viewsonic VA1916W at 1440 x 900 - Heh, 16:10 was a big thing back in 2008, but not so much now. In-fact it's hard to find actually, but I honestly think the £200 asking price for one of them may be worth it, considering 1080p screens also using IPS technology are similar prices?

Took ages to find this, but there's no luck on the G-Sync with SLI and/or 3 x 1 screen setup. According to the guys at Nvidia themselves it's not possible (Only because there isn't enough Display Port outputs on a card):
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topi ... -it-work-/

Balance tips in favour of the Dell screen hugely now, unless 5760 x 1200 as a resolution carries next to no support in games compared to 5760 x 1080 - Does anyone on this site use it and have any feedback at all?

The Taipan is a laser sensor and the Deathadder is an arguably superior optical sensor.

Higher DPI =/= better mouse.

I game at 200dpi in the Razer Synapse control panel as I am a low-sens precise aim kind of player with a big-ass mousepad so 6400 vs 8200 dpi is quite the non-issue to me.

The Deathadder also has a more ergonimic shape and more comfortable thumb buttons.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

MSI Geforce GTX 780 Gaming Edition OC 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - x2 - £878.98
I've added dual graphics after reading articles about performance scaling in SLI at high resolutions. For the most part in newer games, a 2nd card will get the average frames rates that this resolution up from around the low 40's to well over my target of 60 with all the eye candy turned up. This site's on inside the frame articles were pretty decent where SLI is concerned, and also NVidia seem to have fixed that frame stuttering issue to the point where the average eye won't notice it?

I strongly advise against SLI/Crossfire insanity.

http://techreport.com/review/26747/tr-j ... em-guide/5

Cyril wrote:

We wouldn't advise building a multi-GPU setup unless you absolutely must. Multi-GPU configs open up a whole can of worms, with occasionally iffy driver support for new games and potential microstuttering issues. There's a heat, power, and noise cost involved, too. We've found that it's almost always preferable to buy a faster single-GPU solution, if one is available, than to double up on GPUs.

£276 Radeon R9-290 4GB
£360 Radeon R9-290X 4GB
£354 Asus GeForce GTX780 3GB
£450 GeForce GTX780Ti 3GB
£720 GeForce GTX Titan 6GB
£750 GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB
Choose just one of those. I recommend the Radeon R9-290 as an excellent value. Keep in mind that better/faster/cheaper/cooler GPUs with DirectX 12 features, fabricated on a new 20nm process, should be available in the first half of 2015. I believe that you would be happier if you left that extra £603 in your bank account until next year.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

I also wanted to ask about screens too - I really would like 3 x 1 displays. Yeah, gaming is going to be sweet on them, but multi-screens also help for my programming and design work (The PC has to serve a functional use too). My e-tail outlet has 2 other screens that caught my eye that have attractive prices:
- There's a Dell 24" UltraSharp 1920 x 1200 IPS screen for £200 a piece, down from £280
- An AOC 24" 1080p G-sync monitor popped up at £340 each
My other choice at a much healthier £200 each 16:10 screen from Dell, and does anyone think that perhaps that's a better choice than the 1080p TN screens from the Asus screens I was looking at (they come bundled with a stand and healthy discount if you buy 3). Again, willing to take advice on here about this, as I really don't know!

I agree that having two screens is helpful for productivity. For gaming and productivity, I really like a big screen. At work, I frequently run side-by-side windows on a 1920x1200 display. At home, I run my games at 2560x1600 on a Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP with a web browser, etc. beside it at 1200x1600 on an UltraSharp 2001FP (in portrait mode). I believe that the current sweet spot for monitors is at 2560x1440.
£240 Hazro HZ27WiE 27" 2560x1440 AH-IPS
£380 Iiyama Prolite XB2779QS-S 27" 2560x1440 AH-IPS
£380 AOC Q2770PQU 27" 2560x1440 PLS
£440 Dell UltraSharp U2713HM 27" 2560x1440 AH-IPS
£480 Asus PB278Q 27" 2560x1440 PLS

While NVidia's proprietary G-Sync is potentially nice for the next few months, it is currently only offered in monitors with inferior TN LCD panel technology. I'm waiting until the first half of 2015 to consider 3840x2160 displays, when we should see widespread adoption and multi-vendor support of the DisplayPort 1.2a standard with Adaptive-Sync.

O......k, so here's where were at. I might actually just buy the screen(s) I want now, and the keyboard and mouse since they can be transferred easy enough (and I do need new ones. My Microsoft Razer Habu and Reclusa are packing up/worn out).

I'm going to wait until Intel's X99 chipset and it's CPU's pop-up before the years out, and subject to it not costing the earth plump for the 8-core one. I will mate it to cheapie 2nd 750Ti I'm sure I could find on eBay closer to the time and upgrade to "Mega Maxwell" early 2015?

The new system (I hope) will easily last as long - If not longer - than the one I have now. I'm not in any hurry with the new toys out very soon...