Building an Intel CPU Gamer Box for my Son - Looking for Best cost effective Single S

[-Jim-]

Budget: $1000 CAN $
Main uses of intended build: Gaming - a little web surfing and that's it.
Parts required: MB - CPU? - compatible RAM
Previous build information (list details of parts): Reuse P-180 Case - Fans - PSU - Asus Optical Drive- Asus 24 inch Monitor - Wired Mouse & keyboard - CPU water cooler
Monitor resolution: 1920 X 1080
Storage requirements: Has a 1 TB Drive
Will you be overclocking: no
Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers):
Extra information about desired system:

Gents,

My son, who loves to Game, wants me to build him a new Rig so I'm trying to get some perspective on what's the best cost effective MB he can buy for use with only a single slot GPU. He's not into SLI, or Crossfire, and only uses a single Asus LCD monitor. He seems perfectly happy with his present on board Audio as well.

His present Rig has an i5 2500K installed on an Asus P8Z68-VLE MB, 16 Gigs of DDR3 Ram, and a Gigabyte GTX-770 Video Card. He says there are now a few games where he can't use the full graphics capability. It's almost 4 years old so (his Mom and I give him a new Graphics Card almost every Christmas though) but it's understandable the MB isn't able to utilise the full capability of the GPU anymore. (I put his old Rig together. Actually I built all his Rigs, but that's another story.)

We are planning to (probably) give him a Gigabyte GTX-960 Video Card for Christmas (the local NCIX has it on Sale) as we can plug it into his existing Rig right away, even though he'll be limited by the PCIe 2.0 x16 on the P8Z68-VLE, and possibly the CPU as well. But it will form the first piece of the new Rig.

A lot of the MBs I've used in recent years all seem to have multiple PCI 16 Slots even though we never use SLI or Crossfire; as we can't afford multiple monitor setups or 3 or 4 video cards. So it seems silly to pay for a lot of capability for no benefit if an alternate is available. I've been out of touch on the new generations of MBs since I built my latest Rig, and another for one of my brothers => both with an Asus Z87-A; and then a Rig for one of his sons with a Z87-Deluxe. All of them have single GPUs =>and you guessed it multiple PCIe x16 slots.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just build him a Rig based on the Z87 MB as they are getting heavy discounts locally (saving him $$) and I expect some blowouts on Boxing Day (which is like Black Friday here in Canada) as I expect these MBs to be discontinued soon. But then I think that's 2 generations old, and possibly Gaming now and in the foreseeable future, needs more horsepower than even an i7 could produce on that platform.

Your comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for the assist.

Regards,

Jim

[kkn]

mobo + cpu bundle -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/asrock-z97-anniversary-intel-42-109568.htm

cheep as i can find intel setup:
cpu -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/intel-core-i5-6500-processor-6m-5e-110592-1241.htm
mobo -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-z170m-e-d3-matx-lga1151-6a-111467.htm
ram -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/kingston-hyperx-fury-black-16gb-a9-111307-1241.htm
ssd -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/samsung-850-evo-series-mz-75e500b-am-f2-104176-1241.htm
CPU cooler ->
this -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/cooler-master-hyper-d92-cpu-f4-102405-1049.htm
or this -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/cooler-master-hyper-612-v2-f0-103988.htm
or this -> http://www.ncix.com/detail/noctua-nh-u12s-lga2011-115x-am2-am3-e0-82801.htm

remember those heat sinks are large and heavy, take a look on the specs of them ( mesurements ) and see if they may come in contact whit the ram modules. ( hight and ram slot )

if you want cheaper pc setup its AMD way and per now they have been on a standstill since 2011 and close to none updated mobo's have been released of them.
as per now from what i know of its only been a new CPU each year.

[Nate152]

Here are parts for a new Intel z170 build.

Motherboard (Semi ROG) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132567
CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117561&cm_re=i5_6600k-_-19-117-561-_-Produc...
Ram - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231926&cm_re=trident_z-_-20-231-926-_-Produ...
Asus Strix GTX 970 comes with a free game which is a 59.99 value - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121899&cm_re=gtx_970-_-14-121-899-_-Product

Total comes to $859.96 U.S. - shipping and tax may apply.

The rest of the parts you can reuse, case, psu, cpu water cooler, 1TB HDD, optical drive. You may need a new mounting bracket for the cpu cooler or it may not be compatible at all. A gtx 970 is a better choice for 1080p gaming, you could get the gtx 980 if you wanted.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=gtx+970+1080p+benchmarks+youtube&view=detail&&qpvt=gtx+970+1080p...

The i5-6500k is an unlocked cpu and is overclockable. If he ever wanted to venture into overclocking the option is there and we here at ROG give help on overclocking too, I look at it as free performance and a liquid cpu cooler should get it to 4.4GHz easily. For $75.00 more you could get him the maximus viii hero which is a better ROG motherboard.

What psu and cpu water cooler does he have now?

[Menthol]

His current system is still a strong system for gaming with just i Vid card upgrade, i would pick the 970 over the 960 also, if you do go for one of the Z-170 motherboards you need to do a little research as Win 7 is not a straight install and some older USB devices are not compatible, pcie 2.0x16 will not restrict your Vid card as as there is still plenty of bandwidth, you can also google this information. Either recommendations above are very good, a SSD is really one of the best upgrades you can do to make the system more responsive

[-Jim-]

Gents,

Thanks for the input. I'm quite Geeky and have built / rebuilt about 50 Boxes for Friends and Family as a hobby in the last decade or so. But I'm not a Gamer as I stopped playing games just about the time my Son got into them. So if the CPU Cooler doesn't fit, or there are PSU issues ( I doubt it as it's got an Antec HCG-750M => a 750 Watt unit), etc., I'll be able to handle it.

I've made the assumption that by now the shift to PCIe 3 is what's really holding his Rig back. Is that correct? He can't play "Just Cause 3" or "Witcher 3" at Max settings (I hope I've spelled those correctly) and his current favorite is Fallout 4. Of course if we go for the new MB, it will have to play what's coming down the road as it's his main hobby these days. And if so will one of the newer i5 CPUs be all that's required?

I was thinking of an SSD for the OS and a separate HDD for the Games. Is that the current configuration for good Gaming? (The existing MB has a small SSD to boost the performance of Win7 utilizing Intel Smart response technology) He's not keen on moving to Win10 and would prefer to stay with Win7.

I've made the assumption that by now the shift to PCIe 3 is what's really hold his Rig back. Is that correct? He can't play "Just Cause 3" or "Witcher 3" at Max settings (I hope I've spelled those correctly) and his current favorite is Fallout 4.

As he's paying for all but the GPU, I'd like not to over build so it's a balancing act between real performance gains - and $$. Any move to the GTX-970 (or equivalent) just won't fly with his Mom as she says spending that much on his Present isn't fair to his Brother => or our Bank account!

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.

[Nate152]

An ssd is a must these days as cheap as they've become. The z170 boards support M.2 pcie ssd's and the Samsung 950 pro is the fastest at the moment, here is the 256GB there is also a 512GB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4P03H20196&cm_re=950_pro-_-20-147-466-_-Product

For 1080p a gtx 970 is what you want, I wouldn't recommend anything lesser for solid 1080p gaming, getting a free game with it is like an extra Christmas present too. 🙂

Here is the 6600k vs the 2600k, he'll gain 10 to 20 frames per second just upgrading the mobo, cpu and ram depending on the game. Add in the gtx 970 over the gtx 770 and there is easily another 10 - 15 frames per second increase. So you're looking at roughly a 20 - 35 frames per second increase with all new stuff. Figure in overclocking the 6600k and the 970 and there is roughly another 10 frames per second.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=6600k+vs++3770k+vs+2500k+benchmarks+youtube&view=detail&&&mid=93...

I would also recommend doing the free upgrade to windows 10 for the directx 12 feature, Microsoft says it will be a significant performance increase over directx 11 so figure in roughly another 8 - 10 frames per second. Directx 12 games are coming soon.

The goal when gaming is to keep pegged at your monitors refresh rate which I imagine his is 60Hz which equals 60 frames per second max (with v-sync enabled) without screen tear unless you have a G-sync monitor.

Good gaming hardware isn't cheap, what I recommended is solid for 1080p gaming and is not overkill. Overkill would be a 980ti or titan x for 1080p as those gpu's are designed for 4k gaming and you'd still need at least two of them in sli for 60 frames per second with new games at 4k.

Or as Menthol says he still has a decent setup and he could add another 770 for sli and gain an 80% - 100% performance increase, again it depends on the game or more precisely the game engine how well it's optimized for sli and most games today are optimized for sli, some better than others. This would be the cheapest way with the biggest performance increase if mom is saying no to the gtx 970.

A 750w psu can handle two 770's in sli but wouldn't leave any room for overclocking, finding another 770 could prove difficult though other than looking on E-bay.

As menthol says the difference in performance from pcie 2.0 to pcie 3.0 is negligible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BopI-XSeMGI

[-Jim-]

Thanks for the opinion and those links. It seems the move from a 2500K to a 6600K can give about a 10% boost. I don't know anything if using an SSD for the OS in regards to any performance uptake. Do you have any reference data?

So as a Band-Aid putting in an SSD and O/C the 2500K would help, but going with the gtx 970 is a must. He can't go SLI as the existing MB is Crossfire only. 😞 It was an interesting approach though. I appreciate the out of the box thinking.

The longer term sounds like a complete rebuild based on the new CPUs & GPUs.

This could be a bit more $$ than he expects. :rolleyes:

[Nate152]

I don't have any data but an ssd will make a pc more snappy, load windows faster and load checkpoints and levels in games faster. He could overclock the 2500k and gtx 770 and gain around 10 frames per second. The 2500k should overclock pretty far seeing how Intel used solder between the IHS and die. Where as the later cpu's Intel used thermal compound which in turn they run hotter and it's the temperature that controls how far you can overclock a cpu. Just for fun I'll share my cpu overclock with you, it's the 3770k at 5.0GHz and it's been there everyday for the past 8-9 months.

click the picture a couple times so you can read it.




If you want to do a new z170 gaming build you won't regret it. The Maximus viii hero has better parts and has better power delivery, more overclocking features and would be a more stable overclocking motherboard than the pro gaming motherboard. At stock speeds performance with both will be pretty much identical with the same hardware. One nice thing is this time around he can add another gtx 970 when games need more gpu horsepower. A 750w psu can handle two 970's too but again leaves no room for overclocking.

Have you checked out Newegg.ca and compared prices with NCIX ? I've checked out the 6600k and 6700k at Newegg.ca and the prices are substantially higher than the u.s. Newegg so yeah you could easily spend $1,000.00 on upgrades. Sorry to see that for you good folks in Canada.

I'm still up in the air about the cpu cooler, I know it will need a new mounting bracket as you're going to a different cpu socket type and that is if it's compatible. The reason I say that is I have the antec kuhler 920 with the z77 v-pro but is not compatible with z170.

[Chino]

The i5 2500K is still a pretty capable CPU for gaming. And you can always add a AIO liquid cooler to your system and overclock it easily to match the performance of the newer i5's. If I had $1000 CAN to spend, this is probably how I would spend it.

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($198.21 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB STRIX Video Card ($656.08 @ Vuugo)
Total: $854.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-14 10:47 EST-0500

The SSD will breathe new life into the system. Coming from a GTX 770, he probably won't notice a huge increase in performance with a GTX 970. I would recommend getting a GTX 980 to make the upgrade worth it. The Strix GTX 980 will have no problems with gaming at 1080P and should be future proof in case he plans to go 1440P in the future.

[Korth]

For tight budget I would actually go with an older Intel Z97/DDR3/i7-47xx build (ye olde i7-4790K is still the fastest Intel CPU part on market anyhow) or an AMD 990FX/DDR3/FX-9xxx build (an AMD FX-9590 is the very fastest CPU part on market, while FX-85xx CPUs are plenty fast) or even an AMD A88X/DDR3/A10 build. And an AMD GPU card.

Yes, it's not the multicore multithreading madness you'll see on current Intel offerings. And it's not extreme DDR4 speeds. And it's not the latest-greatest NVidia dominance. But it's still capable of running all of today's (and tomorrow's) games with plenty of awesomeness. And it's far more bang for the buck because you're not paying premiums for Skylake and DDR4 and NVidia.

A gutsy Celeron or i3 or A6 CPU is already overkill for mere websurfing and youtube/facebook stuff. You don't really need a high-end SSD like a Samsung 850, any cheap little SSD will do well. You don't need superfast memory, any 16GB DDR3 or DDR4 kit at "slow" JEDEC speeds is perfectly fine. You don't even need a mighty CPU, anything capable of running 4 threads at 3GHz is adequate. You do need a capable GPU if you want good fps on games, and more is better and this is where you should emphasize your budgetary allocation, but you don't even need an extreme GPU for "low resolution" 1920x1080 gaming anymore. You need a decent PSU capable of running it all. You need any cheap HDD for bulk data storage, your son is likely to fill it up with downloads quick enough, but you can always add more later. He'll probably love the bling on a gaming mouse and keyboard, but high-end models can be ridiculously expensive.

http://www.logicalincrements.com/