TR Forums

I am a new member making my first post and I am sorry if this topic has been covered before.

Would the Asus X99 - A2 Motherboard and the Be Quiet 650W PSU - BN251 Dark Power Pro 11 be compatible please.

Thank you in advance.

Yes it is compatible.  That's some pretty serious hardware.  Care to share the rest of the component list?

DPete27 wrote:

Yes it is compatible.  That's some pretty serious hardware.  Care to share the rest of the component list?

Thank you for your reply and that is excellent news..
Case: Be Quiet! Silent Base 600 (no window)
CPU: Intel Core i7-6800k
CPU Cooler (Air): Be Quiet! BKO18 Dark Rock 3
Motherboard: ASUS X99 A2
Ram Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB ( 2X8) DDR4 3000mHz
Graphics Card: ASUS DUAL GTX1070
PSU: Be Quiet! 650W BN251 Dark Power Pro 11
O/S Boot and Applications: Samsung 960 Evo Polaris 500GB 
Drive: Samsung 850 Evo 1TB
O/S: Windows 10 Home Edition
Networking: ASUS (PCE-AC55BT) AC1200 (300+867)
Total Price which includes Components, VAT, Build and 1 year warranty return to base which is 2 miles from home £2,339
Not sure if I require any additional fans for air cooling and air flow.
I will be adding that build to a monitor - AOC Q2577PWQ (WQHD) Resolution 2560 x 1400p Price £230
At present I will be using mainly for photo editing.
Will be using in the future for video editing and might upgrade to a 27 inch 4K monitor.
My current PC must be about 10 years old which is a DELL XPS420 and I am hoping that the new build will last as long, I will be 76 years old ( young ) then.

That's a good investment platform-wise and well-suited to your workload mate. I wouldn't expect another architecture refresh out of X99, but you should have performance on-tap for quite a while!

If you haven't ordered already, grab an additional Be Quiet! 140mm fan for the front of the case - they're dead-silent and you'll need a bit more flow as it's not a high-flow front on that case. I've built in it before and like it, there's just a bit of extra restriction at the front if you leave the 3.5mm cages in-place, so worth another blower there, especially with a bigger CPU and pair of GPUs.

Also, if it's a ten-year machine, spring for 32GB of RAM at some point. Doesn't have to be at purchase of course, but worthwhile for longevity.

Enjoy! Would love to see some pics when you're up and running if you can be bothered

EDIT: I cocked my SKUs up, the 6800K is the neutered one, not the 6820 this time! Any chance of bumping to the 6850K, to gain the additional PCI-E lanes you'll want for SLI and M.2 together?

Given those specs and your intended usage, you ought to be looking at 2x16GB RAM modules from the start.

That's a beast of a machine for photo and video editing.  Sounds like you're a pro user.  I'm not familiar with that particular monitor, but hopefully you've done your research.  For photo and video editing, monitor is arguably the most important part of the machine.

juzz86 wrote:

That's a good investment platform-wise and well-suited to your workload mate. I wouldn't expect another architecture refresh out of X99, but you should have performance on-tap for quite a while!

If you haven't ordered already, grab an additional Be Quiet! 140mm fan for the front of the case - they're dead-silent and you'll need a bit more flow as it's not a high-flow front on that case. I've built in it before and like it, there's just a bit of extra restriction at the front if you leave the 3.5mm cages in-place, so worth another blower there, especially with a bigger CPU and pair of GPUs.

Also, if it's a ten-year machine, spring for 32GB of RAM at some point. Doesn't have to be at purchase of course, but worthwhile for longevity.

Enjoy! Would love to see some pics when you're up and running if you can be bothered

EDIT: I cocked my SKUs up, the 6800K is the neutered one, not the 6820 this time! Any chance of bumping to the 6850K, to gain the additional PCI-E lanes you'll want for SLI and M.2 together?

Thank you very much for the advice.
I will contact my PC builder and have the extra fan added as you advised, although I am researching for the next couple of weeks to ensure the build is right for me.
Yes my intention in the future was to add another 16GB and thank you for reminding me.
I am over budget now and replacing the 6800k with the 6850k would add more to the cost, but while we are on the subject do you think the 6800k would be adequate and compatible for my configuration?
I appreciate your input
Cheers

DPete27 wrote:

Given those specs and your intended usage, you ought to be looking at 2x16GB RAM modules from the start.

That's a beast of a machine for photo and video editing.  Sounds like you're a pro user.  I'm not familiar with that particular monitor, but hopefully you've done your research.  For photo and video editing, monitor is arguably the most important part of the machine.

No I am not a professional but have worked in electronics all my working life and I am an enthusiastic amateur photographer owning the Fuji X-T1 and various lens.
If you can imagine me using a O/S Vista PC with ancient specification and a 22 inch Samsung monitor 720p anything is going to be better.
Because of the O/S Vista my Adobe photo editing software is Elements 12, I want to have a better and more up to date software installed.
Your point about the monitor is important and I agree with you 100% but I  am over budget with the configuration, a different monitor is about 3 years away to be honest. Look up the specification of the AOC Q2577PWQ 25 inch if you have the time, tell me what you think.
Thank you for your response.

I'm having a hard time navigating UK based retailers, but a LGA 1151 (Z270) platform may serve you just as well and put some money back in your pocket for more RAM and/or a 27" monitor.

Just my rudimentary browsing: AsRock Z270M Pro4 / Asus Prime Z270M / MSI Z270M Mortar and i7-7700K is £220 cheaper than the CPU and mobo you listed and would still be a strong system.  Granted, the 7700K is 4C/8T and the 6800K is 6C/12T but I'm not sure the 6800K is absolutely necessary for "civilian" use.  Looks like about £100/16GB RAM on overclockers.uk, so some of your savings could get you 2x16GB RAM instead of 2x8GB.

Also, not sure how much you follow computer hardware.  But AMD is set to launch their Ryzen processors in about a month.  They will bring much needed competition to Intel and it's sounding like they'll offer more cores/threads than comparably priced Intel processors.  If your timeline allows, it wouldn't hurt to wait.  Even if you don't end up going with Ryzen after the reviews come out.

DPete27 wrote:

I'm having a hard time navigating UK based retailers, but a LGA 1151 (Z270) platform may serve you just as well and put some money back in your pocket for more RAM and/or a 27" monitor.

Just my rudimentary browsing: AsRock Z270M Pro4 / Asus Prime Z270M / MSI Z270M Mortar and i7-7700K is £220 cheaper than the CPU and mobo you listed and would still be a strong system.  Granted, the 7700K is 4C/8T and the 6800K is 6C/12T but I'm not sure the 6800K is absolutely necessary for "civilian" use.  Looks like about £100/16GB RAM on overclockers.uk, so some of your savings could get you 2x16GB RAM instead of 2x8GB.

Also, not sure how much you follow computer hardware.  But AMD is set to launch their Ryzen processors in about a month.  They will bring much needed competition to Intel and it's sounding like they'll offer more cores/threads than comparably priced Intel processors.  If your timeline allows, it wouldn't hurt to wait.  Even if you don't end up going with Ryzen after the reviews come out.

All valid points to be honest. I was looking at the 6700k before but I thought it was more geared towards gaming and at first I was going to build around the Z270 Motherboard platform. Most reviews I have read advise on 6C not 4C for photo and video editing.
 Yes I think everyone is waiting in anticipation for the new AMD processors. I hope they come up with the goods, should be very interesting and a challenge to Intel to raise their bar even more and at the same time hopefully making prices more competitive and lower. 
I think what ever configuration I choose it will be a winner.
It is a conundrum.
You have given me something to think about and you have been more than helpful.
Thank you.

The other thing I am not sure you need is dual GTX 1070 cards. For photo and video editing you are unlikely to need more than one card, at least for displaying your images. You could probably economize by dropping back to one card.

(If you are using a program that can use the GPU for speeding up rendering processes then that's another story of course...)

K-L-Waster wrote:

I am not sure you need is dual GTX 1070 cards.

The card is named Asus GTX 1070 Dual.  As in dual fans, not dual GPUs.

Regarding the core count:  My single data point is my buddy who is a graphic designer.  He uses 4C/4T (desktop i5) machines at work with 8GB RAM and his personal laptop i5 (2C/4T) with 6GB RAM for freelance work.  Most people at TR would $#!7 a brick if someone recommended that for a Photoshop build, but it serves my friend's needs just fine.  Point is, everyone uses those type programs differently.  I don't know what sorts of projects you're doing and how complex they are, so I can't say whether an i7-7700K or i7-6800K is better for you, but I figured I'd at least mention the alternative.  One thing is for sure, it's not like an i7-7700K won't be able to accomplish your tasks in these programs, the 6800K might finish complex tasks a few seconds faster at times though.  Certainly if you run out of RAM and overflow to scratch disk, any gains you thought you had with the 6800K are going to be moot.

K-L-Waster wrote:

The other thing I am not sure you need is dual GTX 1070 cards. For photo and video editing you are unlikely to need more than one card, at least for displaying your images. You could probably economize by dropping back to one card.

(If you are using a program that can use the GPU for speeding up rendering processes then that's another story of course...)

Oh only 1 GPU in my configuration, Dual is only part of the name.

DPete27 wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

I am not sure you need is dual GTX 1070 cards.

The card is named Asus GTX 1070 Dual.  As in dual fans, not dual GPUs.

Regarding the core count:  My single data point is my buddy who is a graphic designer.  He uses 4C/4T (desktop i5) machines at work with 8GB RAM and his personal laptop i5 (2C/4T) with 6GB RAM for freelance work.  Most people at TR would $#!7 a brick if someone recommended that for a Photoshop build, but it serves my friend's needs just fine.  Point is, everyone uses those type programs differently.  I don't know what sorts of projects you're doing and how complex they are, so I can't say whether an i7-7700K or i7-6800K is better for you, but I figured I'd at least mention the alternative.  One thing is for sure, it's not like an i7-7700K won't be able to accomplish your tasks in these programs, the 6800K might finish complex tasks a few seconds faster at times though.  Certainly if you run out of RAM and overflow to scratch disk, any gains you thought you had with the 6800K are going to be moot.

I wonder if my configuration is over the top maybe, but there again I want to think in about 10 years time if it will still be satisfactory for me. Just imagine the technology improvements in 10 years time, let's not go there.

Alun wrote:

juzz86 wrote:

That's a good investment platform-wise and well-suited to your workload mate. I wouldn't expect another architecture refresh out of X99, but you should have performance on-tap for quite a while!

If you haven't ordered already, grab an additional Be Quiet! 140mm fan for the front of the case - they're dead-silent and you'll need a bit more flow as it's not a high-flow front on that case. I've built in it before and like it, there's just a bit of extra restriction at the front if you leave the 3.5mm cages in-place, so worth another blower there, especially with a bigger CPU and pair of GPUs.

Also, if it's a ten-year machine, spring for 32GB of RAM at some point. Doesn't have to be at purchase of course, but worthwhile for longevity.

Enjoy! Would love to see some pics when you're up and running if you can be bothered

EDIT: I cocked my SKUs up, the 6800K is the neutered one, not the 6820 this time! Any chance of bumping to the 6850K, to gain the additional PCI-E lanes you'll want for SLI and M.2 together?

Thank you very much for the advice.
I will contact my PC builder and have the extra fan added as you advised, although I am researching for the next couple of weeks to ensure the build is right for me.
Yes my intention in the future was to add another 16GB and thank you for reminding me.
I am over budget now and replacing the 6800k with the 6850k would add more to the cost, but while we are on the subject do you think the 6800k would be adequate and compatible for my configuration?
I appreciate your input
Cheers

I fear I may have misunderstood a fundamental you mentioned below - your card is actually called a 'Dual', you're not running dual cards. Sorry, this changes things a bit.
If no plans to add a second GPU, stick with the 6800. I had interpreted that you were going SLI, in which case your cards would drop back to 8x on the 6800 and leave you with enough for a single M.2 otherwise, and not much else. My suggestion for the 6850 was to get around that, as you jump from 28 to 40 PCIE lanes by going up a model. Unnecessary and the performance gains would be minimal - stick where you are.
So disregard that. Other advice on fans and RAM still stands - if you're building another ten-year rig, you have more performance upgrade potential with X99 than a mainstream socket when you need it down the track, not to mention RAM capacity. When you need more cores and lanes you just buy a CPU, rather than the whole platform jump you'll need on the mainstream socket.
 

juzz86 wrote:

Alun wrote:

juzz86 wrote:

That's a good investment platform-wise and well-suited to your workload mate. I wouldn't expect another architecture refresh out of X99, but you should have performance on-tap for quite a while!

If you haven't ordered already, grab an additional Be Quiet! 140mm fan for the front of the case - they're dead-silent and you'll need a bit more flow as it's not a high-flow front on that case. I've built in it before and like it, there's just a bit of extra restriction at the front if you leave the 3.5mm cages in-place, so worth another blower there, especially with a bigger CPU and pair of GPUs.

Also, if it's a ten-year machine, spring for 32GB of RAM at some point. Doesn't have to be at purchase of course, but worthwhile for longevity.

Enjoy! Would love to see some pics when you're up and running if you can be bothered

EDIT: I cocked my SKUs up, the 6800K is the neutered one, not the 6820 this time! Any chance of bumping to the 6850K, to gain the additional PCI-E lanes you'll want for SLI and M.2 together?

Thank you very much for the advice.
I will contact my PC builder and have the extra fan added as you advised, although I am researching for the next couple of weeks to ensure the build is right for me.
Yes my intention in the future was to add another 16GB and thank you for reminding me.
I am over budget now and replacing the 6800k with the 6850k would add more to the cost, but while we are on the subject do you think the 6800k would be adequate and compatible for my configuration?
I appreciate your input
Cheers

I fear I may have misunderstood a fundamental you mentioned below - your card is actually called a 'Dual', you're not running dual cards. Sorry, this changes things a bit.
If no plans to add a second GPU, stick with the 6800. I had interpreted that you were going SLI, in which case your cards would drop back to 8x on the 6800 and leave you with enough for a single M.2 otherwise, and not much else. My suggestion for the 6850 was to get around that, as you jump from 28 to 40 PCIE lanes by going up a model. Unnecessary and the performance gains would be minimal - stick where you are.
So disregard that. Other advice on fans and RAM still stands - if you're building another ten-year rig, you have more performance upgrade potential with X99 than a mainstream socket when you need it down the track, not to mention RAM capacity. When you need more cores and lanes you just buy a CPU, rather than the whole platform jump you'll need on the mainstream socket.
 

The word "Dual" is very misleading to say the least, never mind.
I appreciate your advice and help on the configuration.
Cheers!

Very much looking forward to seeing it come together for you mate, it's a lovely build. Enjoy!

If you haven't bought anything yet, you should take a look through the February system guide -- just published today.

http://techreport.com/review/31389/the- ... 17-edition

IIRC, the TR System guide has a substantial amount of weight on gaming performance.  Take that into consideration with your usage.

K-L-Waster wrote:

If you haven't bought anything yet, you should take a look through the February system guide -- just published today.

http://techreport.com/review/31389/the- ... 17-edition

Just had a look. I think I'll stick with my configuration + an extra case fan.

DPete27 wrote:

IIRC, the TR System guide has a substantial amount of weight on gaming performance.  Take that into consideration with your usage.

Hoky doky!!!

Alun wrote:

I was looking at the 6700k before but I thought it was more geared towards gaming and at first I was going to build around the Z270 Motherboard platform.

I don't know what makes you equate the 6700K to gaming. Granted, more reviews are geared towards gamers since their numbers are more than people who work on photo/video editing. However, it is a fine, high clocked, and well-threaded CPU.

Alun wrote:

Most reviews I have read advise on 6C not 4C for photo and video editing.

I would actually like to see those reviews. Which programs do you use? Photoshop? Lightroom? Premiere? Just the 2 photo apps, or all 3? Each of those have slightly different profiles. Keep in mind, at the same clock speed, of course more cores are going to perform better. But keep in mind the 6700K actually clocks higher than the 6800K. How do those actually compared? The one I looked at force the number of cores and most of the results show diminishing returns starting at 4 cores. Is the small gain (which will be partially, if not totally offset by the higher clock) worth that much difference in the motherboard and the Broadwell-E? Not to mention you will start off with less memory which I can almost guarantee that you will run into, unless you only deal with 1 or 2 images at a time. No matter the cores or the GHz, running low on RAM will be the biggest performance killer. You need to evaluate what apps (and don't forget 3rd party plugins/filters) you use, what their performance profiles are, what kind of workflows you will be engaging in to more accurately gauge your needs.

juzz86 wrote:

you have more performance upgrade potential with X99 than a mainstream socket when you need it down the track, not to mention RAM capacity.

I disagree. Broadwell-E is end of the line for X99. Yes, you can try to buy another CPU with more cores, but in 10 years they will still remain boutique items and you can try your luck on eBay but I don't think those things will ever come cheap. Not to mention the diminishing returns starting at 4 cores, and onto 6 or even 8. If we are talking potential CPU upgrades, then the HEDT platform of the Skylake-E/X may be better since you may get the Kaby version at a later time. We will have to see if Coffee/Cannon-E (if it does come out) will still be on that socket.

Alun wrote:

I think what ever configuration I choose it will be a winner.

Sorry, I don't think you have a winner. It may be just vanity rearing its ugly head that you feel you are getting a "high end" platform.
1. Are you working in AdobeRGB or sRGB? If former, then your monitor choice would be a fail. Even if you work in sRGB exclusively, I would say 25" at 1440p may be a bit small. I would not go lower than 27" myself at that resolution. Monitors can indeed last 10 years (or more). Depending on how large your workspace is, I would consider getting 2, or entertain those curved 34" ultrawides (1440p vertical, don't go for the 1080p ones). Not sure about curved monitors and image/video editing though. I have not researched the viewing angle impact with those.
2. My next system will have 32gigs RAM minimum. A high-end rig like yours at 16gigs is bottlenecking the system, especially if you load up a bunch of large RAWs and processing them at the same time.
3. From above: The consumer K CPUs run at higher clocks, which could offset the core differences, depending on the operations that you will be applying to your images in your workflow. You may actually lose out on performance because of the lower clocks (not to mention if you dabble in overclocking, the GHz difference just widens).
4. I don't see the upgrade potential for the X99 anyway, as pointed above.
5. You kept saying you are already over budget. I don't consider that as a winner already. May I ask by how much? I am usually ok with a 10-15% variance of the set budget. Given the uncertainty whether you will actually see (or even feel) the performance difference with the "lower clock, but more cores" approach, and the somewhat low starting RAM size, and the fact that you are already over budget? I am sorry, but it does not sound like a "winner" to me.

Flying Fox wrote:

Alun wrote:

I was looking at the 6700k before but I thought it was more geared towards gaming and at first I was going to build around the Z270 Motherboard platform.

I don't know what makes you equate the 6700K to gaming.  Granted, more reviews are geared towards gamers since their numbers are more than people who work on photo/video editing.  However, it is a fine, high clocked, and well-threaded CPU.

Alun wrote:

Most reviews I have read advise on 6C not 4C for photo and video editing.

I would actually like to see those reviews.  Which programs do you use?  Photoshop?  Lightroom?  Premiere?  Just the 2 photo apps, or all 3?  Each of those have slightly different profiles.  Keep in mind, at the same clock speed, of course more cores are going to perform better.  But keep in mind the 6700K actually clocks higher than the 6800K.  How do those actually compared?  The one I looked at force the number of cores and most of the results show diminishing returns starting at 4 cores.  Is the small gain (which will be partially, if not totally offset by the higher clock) worth that much difference in the motherboard and the Broadwell-E?  Not to mention you will start off with less memory which I can almost guarantee that you will run into, unless you only deal with 1 or 2 images at a time.  No matter the cores or the GHz, running low on RAM will be the biggest performance killer.  You need to evaluate what apps (and don't forget 3rd party plugins/filters) you use, what their performance profiles are, what kind of workflows you will be engaging in to more accurately gauge your needs.

juzz86 wrote:

you have more performance upgrade potential with X99 than a mainstream socket when you need it down the track, not to mention RAM capacity.

I disagree.  Broadwell-E is end of the line for X99.  Yes, you can try to buy another CPU with more cores, but in 10 years they will still remain boutique items and you can try your luck on eBay but I don't think those things will ever come cheap.  Not to mention the diminishing returns starting at 4 cores, and onto 6 or even 8.  If we are talking potential CPU upgrades, then the HEDT platform of the Skylake-E/X may be better since you may get the Kaby version at a later time.  We will have to see if Coffee/Cannon-E (if it does come out) will still be on that socket.

Alun wrote:

I think what ever configuration I choose it will be a winner.

Sorry, I don't think you have a winner.  It may be just vanity rearing its ugly head that you feel you are getting a "high end" platform.
1. Are you working in AdobeRGB or sRGB?  If former, then your monitor choice would be a fail. Even if you work in sRGB exclusively, I would say 25" at 1440p may be a bit small.  I would not go lower than 27" myself at that resolution.  Monitors can indeed last 10 years (or more).  Depending on how large your workspace is, I would consider getting 2, or entertain those curved 34" ultrawides (1440p vertical, don't go for the 1080p ones).  Not sure about curved monitors and image/video editing though.  I have not researched the viewing angle impact with those.
2. My next system will have 32gigs RAM minimum.  A high-end rig like yours at 16gigs is bottlenecking the system, especially if you load up a bunch of large RAWs and processing them at the same time.
3. From above: The consumer K CPUs run at higher clocks, which could offset the core differences, depending on the operations that you will be applying to your images in your workflow.  You may actually lose out on performance because of the lower clocks (not to mention if you dabble in overclocking, the GHz difference just widens).
4. I don't see the upgrade potential for the X99 anyway, as pointed above.
5. You kept saying you are already over budget.  I don't consider that as a winner already.  May I ask by how much?  I am usually ok with a 10-15% variance of the set budget.  Given the uncertainty whether you will actually see (or even feel) the performance difference with the "lower clock, but more cores" approach, and the somewhat low starting RAM size, and the fact that you are already over budget?  I am sorry, but it does not sound like a "winner" to me.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of VANITY: a)Too much pride in your own appearance or achievements b)The quality of being pointless or futile. Thanks for that. I am just an average humble old man who is grieving after the sad loss of his 38 year old Son in September and attempting to configure a system that possibly could out live me.

1. I will be downloading various free trial photo editing software and decide which one will be well suited to my camera, horses for courses really. Regarding what size screen, it is more than likely I will go for the 27" not curved and not ultra-wide. 
2. 32GB Ram yes I agree but if you had read an earlier post you would have read that was my intention of adding another 16GB Ram at a later date.
3. I have taken in to consideration CPUs and yes you have valid points fair play.
4. For compatibility issues having selected the 6800k the X99 comes hand in hand really.
5. At present 10% over budget, but obviously for whatever reason individuals will set different budget tolerances. 

Maybe a loser for you but still a winner for me as far as I am concerned, but that is a matter of opinion of course.
Thank you for your comments (except about my vanity) and as per usual will take on board all help on my configuration.

Comments on monitors and vanity aside, Fox isn't looking at it as a ten-year investment. 

I understand your usage case because I've not long done the same for an old friend, and we went X99 too. John spends his time editing and converting videos from his camera onto DVDs, and while I've no hands-on experience with the encoding performance of a 6700/7700 (and I don't doubt it goes well), he's rapt in his build - albeit we didn't quite have the budget you do Alun, so John stuck with a 5930K I found locally at a good price bundled with a board, and just bumped the RAM to 32GB. He'd encode overnight on the old rig (Core 2 Duo), now done in under 40 minutes a video.

In your position, I'd buy into X99. The alternative is to buy into Z270, which will serve you well now, no doubt. The drop-in refresh for Z270 isn't likely to give a huge boost over a 7700, and thus you're maxing out the performance of the platform at purchase, with only I/O headroom to use up. You aren't doing that with your X99 build - and when you need the extra grunt for your videos and photo editing, you find more cores and RAM and drop them in. The 6800k is the baby of the family, and you've plenty of balls left in the platform by going up a rung or two. It won't balk at a game or two, either.

Granted availability may be a concern when you're ready to upgrade (and eBay will likely be the easiest route), but availability of the Skylake-E platform Fox mentioned is non-existent this year.

If your usage was different, I'd be pointing you in a whole different direction and probably echoing Fox's thoughts on platforms. Likewise if you were a regular updater, X99 makes little sense. For a long-term outlook though, you've only got to look at the longevity of X79 as an example. And if your usage changes, you dump/swap the X99 kit for a nice earn and go mainstream.

My condolences on your loss mate. 

juzz86 wrote:

Comments on monitors and vanity aside, Fox isn't looking at it as a ten-year investment. 

I understand your usage case because I've not long done the same for an old friend, and we went X99 too. John spends his time editing and converting videos from his camera onto DVDs, and while I've no hands-on experience with the encoding performance of a 6700/7700 (and I don't doubt it goes well), he's rapt in his build - albeit we didn't quite have the budget you do Alun, so John stuck with a 5930K I found locally at a good price bundled with a board, and just bumped the RAM to 32GB. He'd encode overnight on the old rig (Core 2 Duo), now done in under 40 minutes a video.

In your position, I'd buy into X99. The alternative is to buy into Z270, which will serve you well now, no doubt. The drop-in refresh for Z270 isn't likely to give a huge boost over a 7700, and thus you're maxing out the performance of the platform at purchase, with only I/O headroom to use up. You aren't doing that with your X99 build - and when you need the extra grunt for your videos and photo editing, you find more cores and RAM and drop them in. The 6800k is the baby of the family, and you've plenty of balls left in the platform by going up a rung or two. It won't balk at a game or two, either.

Granted availability may be a concern when you're ready to upgrade (and eBay will likely be the easiest route), but availability of the Skylake-E platform Fox mentioned is non-existent this year.

If your usage was different, I'd be pointing you in a whole different direction and probably echoing Fox's thoughts on platforms. Likewise if you were a regular updater, X99 makes little sense. For a long-term outlook though, you've only got to look at the longevity of X79 as an example. And if your usage changes, you dump/swap the X99 kit for a nice earn and go mainstream.

My condolences on your loss mate. 

Cheers much appreciated. The last few months have been difficult for my wife, daughter and myself and if I said I was not thinking straight it would be the understatement of the year. I take on board what you and the other forum members are advising. I think I'll take a few steps back and have a major rethink and put back the purchase to a later date. Make no mistake I have learned a lot from this forum and I only have you and the other members to thank. Cheers!!!

Outliving your kids has to be awful. Can only wish you the best in getting over your loss.

Investing in a PC to last as long as possible is a low-value strategy. There's nothing wrong with it but it's an expensive way of doing things. Assuming the money is not a big concern for you, then your initial build, perhaps with the bump to a 6850K and 2x16GB RAM is a sound high-end configuration that should last a good while. That'll raise the cost to somewhere around £2600 in total.

If you're after a better return on your investment, a more mainstream build with similar performance in today's applications is going to set you back ~£1500

I'm completely guessing at lifespans here, but by the time the £1500 PC starts to struggle and feel slow, the £2600 PC won't be much better off. If you'd saved that £1100 difference, you could spend that on refreshing the £1500 PC with future hardware that will likely run rings around the £2600 PC. Here's an example:

Ten years ago, the state-of-the-art, £500 graphics cards of 2007 had 0.5GB of RAM and 48 "cores".
If you'd refreshed that with a £200 graphics card after five years, The 2012 replacement card would have 1280 "cores", each core more powerful per MHz than it's predecessor and each core running almost at twice the clock speed too. 

Perhaps something like a 20x increase in real-world performance over just a 5-year span! So there's no easy way to future proof against that sort of progress, other than to spend less initially and keep the money aside so that when something big comes along and needs more performance than you currently have, you can replace older hardware as required.

juzz86 wrote:

The drop-in refresh for Z270 isn't likely to give a huge boost over a 7700

There will be no "drop-in" refresh for the I7-7700K.  The the 7700K (and all Kaby Lake CPUs) are already a drop-in refresh on the 100-series chipset.  Likewise, this is the end of the road for X99/LGA2011 CPUs as well.  LGA 2066 is the next generation which will require X299 mobos.  Those CPUs will not be socket-compatible with X99 mobos.

juzz86 wrote:

maxing out the performance of the [Z270] platform at purchase

Maxing out CPU performance, sure (not taking into consideration the overclocking potential of the 7700K to keep it on par with at least the next 2-3 generations of CPUs from an IPC standpoint).  Even if you only start at 2x16GB RAM you can double that at a later date, and the GPU is always upgrade-able if those type programs get much better at utilizing GPU acceleration at some future date.

juzz86 wrote:

You aren't doing that with your X99 build - and when you need the extra grunt for your videos and photo editing, you find more cores and RAM and drop them in.

 I'd disagree.  Similar to what Chrispy mentioned.  What is the likelihood that anyone will replace a 6C/12T 6800K with anything more? The i7-6900K is the only rung left, which is a $1,000 8C/16T CPU.  Even if by some miracle that you could get one at some future date (say 4-5 years down the road most likely) for the same $450 that you'd paid for the 6800K and you're able to re-sell the 6800K, you're stilll looking at a huge sunk cost just to get a couple more cores with lower IPC and higher power draw than new CPUs at that time.  Not to mention that with AMD Ryzen, I'd bet good money, that Intel's i7 consumer CPUs will be 6C/12T in the next couple years (say i7-8700K or i7-9700K)
 

juzz86 wrote:

He'd encode overnight on the old rig (Core 2 Duo), now done in under 40 minutes a video [with his 5930K].

And it'd take what?  42 minutes on an i7-7700K?

Alun wrote:

I will be downloading various free trial photo editing software and decide which one will be well suited to my camera

Not all photo and video editing software out there is well threaded.  I'm not up to date on all the options, but I believe Photoshop/Lightroom/Premiere are the standard of reference for receiving the most optimizations.  Even then, as others have mentioned, not every task/function is highly threaded.  Also, not every task is well optimized for GPU acceleration.  My graphic designer friend that I referred to earlier, his needs are met by the integrated graphics on his i5 laptop CPU (disclaimer: he doesn't do video editing, which I believe has decent GPU acceleration).

***Also, since you're new here, I'd recommend listening very closely to Chrispy's advice.  He builds and manages a MASSIVE number of computers for various tasks for professional users/businesses.  It's possible that he's slightly jaded from dealing with the deeper pockets of businesses rather than consumers, so if HE says something is overkill....well....

DPete27 wrote:

I'd recommend listening very closely to Chrispy's advice.  He builds and manages a MASSIVE number of computers for various tasks for professional users/businesses.

Not massive, barely a thousand and that's massaging the figures a little bit too. I'm solidly an SMB (small-to-medium business) guy but if I can remember to ask the visualisation lads on Monday I'll find out which of the renderfarm nodes they use for photo work. They have a big of pool of headless i7's to play with (their preference over Xeon blade servers).

Conveniently, there are racks of 4970K and 6700K nodes (similar to the 7700K) and racks of 6850K nodes and I'm willing to bet that Photoshop and Lightroom get used on the quad cores with the higher clockspeeds. What I'm not so sure about is whether that's because Photoshop and Lightroom are actually faster on those cheaper rigs, or whether it's because the 3D stuff gets given priority on the 6850K farm.

I'm definitely jaded though, no argument from me there....

I'm not here to rock the boat amongst the Old Guard gents, far from it. Nor am I here to completely disregard the advice of those more experienced and lead other users up the garden path. I know I'm new here, and I am far from unappreciative for the chance to both glean and share knowledge here.

Alun's initial question was answered, and then his decisions were all subsequently questioned. Has he done a bad job of piecing a rig together, just because you wouldn't roll that way yourself? It'll be a fantastic machine for his needs and then some, handling whatever Alun wants - with the added bonus of Alun receiving the validation that the parts HE selected, HE put together, filled his needs well. 

So many of these threads end in "you need these parts, because they cost less than what you've selected and will serve you almost as well" - money's not everything though, believe it or not. Sometimes, the satisfaction of knowing that what's sitting at the desk is what YOU put together yourself outweighs a physical cost penalty. And a bit of overkill later in life seems to work well for those with fifth-wheelers, F trucks, Winnebagos and yachts - why not a socket 2011 PC if that's your poison?

Jaded isn't the word I'd use to describe large-scale controllers and admins with a wealth of hands-on experience - desensitised is the better word. Commercially it's all TCO, reliability and power consumption, because that's how you earn your salary, meet your KPIs and get your bonus (if you're that lucky). Whether the computers are 'your spec' or not is irrelevant, because if you cost your company money, time and effort on that sort of scale from a 'poor choice' - you're out the door.

It's just worth keeping in mind that sometimes, at home, seeing your own validation at your desk means more than the bottom line on a spreadsheet. Completely different matter if the machine specs are rubbish of course - but in this instance, while neither platform is likely to be easy to upgrade come ten years - these are the parts Alun selected and, if we use X79 as an example, where 8 core 16 thread Xeons from old racks are now a hundred bucks, he hasn't done too badly

This is the last time I'll weigh in here because I'm obviously hitting a few nerves fellas, and I'm sorry. Not my intention in the slightest - my intention was merely to validate that Alun hadn't picked a poor machine. 

Good luck with it, mate

Justin

juzz86 wrote:

IThis is the last time I'll weigh in here because I'm obviously hitting a few nerves fellas, and I'm sorry.

No worries. There just seems to be a difference of opinion of what a "system that can last 10 years" should look like. Yours was an example, and I will quote mine, which is a system that has evolved over time. That system is coming up on 7+ year already. It started with a lowly Athlon X2 (sorry, the upgrade king in the past decade has to be on the AMD side) with 4 gigs of RAM. I picked a mobo that uses the 760G chipset, and stayed with the IGP for a while, until I put in a GTX460 in there. Then I upgraded to a Phenom II 965 quad. Then came an SSD. I did have plans to ride it out, but some sort of power issue killed the PSU+mobo+GPU last year. The only replacement mobo available only took DDR3, so I passed from another system 2x4gigs of DDR3 RAM, and eventually put in a GTX970. Of course, such a beast of GPU should be driving high resolution screens, and out went the Ultrasharp 2005FPW (the DVI signal stream seems to be flickering anyways), and a new 2717D is keeping the GTX970 to task. The keyboard went from some spare parts ones to a used Model M. I think it is on its 3rd mouse too. Now that to me is a system with longevity. To me, the peripherals like keyboard, mouse, monitor are also important. In a system that can last 10 years, I believe more emphasis should be put in those, since they definitely will last through other component upgrades.

Make no mistake, the build here is to stroke the e-peen. Nothing wrong with that. But to look "pro", especially when gaming is not in the picture, wouldn't a nicer mouse+keyboard, and a couple of 27" monitors be doing more than a couple of extra cores on the side of diminishing return on the curve? Heck, let's talk about $800+ chairs and a really nice computer desk while we are at it too... Lots of other ways to spend money.

Back to the build at hand. For a HEDT platform, IMO this is not a good time to try to catch the tail end of things. To really benefit from the "upgrade potential", you should get in early, and upgrade to a new generation (like your friend starting from Haswell-E with the possibility to Broadwell-E). And later on by going from 6 -> 8 cores, there will be a clock speed hit which may or may not be overcome by the additional cores. Based on the few benchmarks that I have seen so far (the reading was done in response to this thread), photo editing does not scale much after 4-6 cores. Video editing, and especially encoding, can scale more with cores. Only the OP can tell us whether he will do more photo or video editing. The fact that he's still trying to pick an app indicates that he is not that into those quite yet. Does it make a difference if he can finish processing in 40 minutes instead of 45? I am just expressing the doubt here.

With CPU's performance not increasing a lot over the past few years, you can easily have a CPU to last 10 years and not feel too disadvantaged. People are still talking about how their SB systems are adequate for them, and that one is into its 6th year already. So getting a mainstream build and have it last a few more years is not out of the realm of possibility. I do remember the old days where you want all workstation grade stuff in order for them to "last". Been there, done that - multiple spindle HDDs, and then full blown SCSI setup (just didn't get into dual-socket systems at the time). I just believe you don't have to anymore.

Only the OP can answer this: the money saved not going for the X99, can it be spent on something that give more utility? Like 2x27" monitor? Or 32 gigs of starting RAM (again, it depends on workload)? Or for better lenses with the camera (which in itself is another hobby that can get expensive real quick)?

Another food for thought is: if one does just get the Z270, you can completely get away with just using the IGP. That's going to free up a few pounds for all the things that we have mentioned can go into the starting build, and enjoy the benefits now, rather than to need to wait for some time. I really have trouble with not getting 32 gigs at start on such a high-end config, but that's just me.

BTW, the 1TB secondary storage is not going to be enough for long, especially if you deal with RAWs and will have quite a few videos to work with.

Edit - there is another way to approach this "system that can last 10 years" - which is to go all out and get the top, and then stay there until the end of life of the system (granted, GPU, storage may be upgraded).

Sorry juzz I didn't mean any offense in my comments. Clearly the OP was making initial sacrifices on RAM and monitor to pay for the x99 platform while I was offering z270 as an alternative to start with a more balanced system. The sheer number of hardware options, budget, usage, and upgrade/replacement frequency means there's no SINGLE correct answer to building a PC, and that anyone's recommendations can be argued against.

Fox makes a good point, one which I was alluding to also if the OP ends up going with the i7-7700k. That cpu has the ability to drive a monitor without the use of a discrete graphics card. So you could try without the GTX1070 to start and see what you think. I also took a step back when the OP mentioned trying out various programs. That tells me that the OP may not yet be a pro pro user at this time (not that someone couldn't learn in short order) .