Omni-Core Build, need help.

[SkarTerm]

Hello, I require some assistance with a build for a PC I will make this year, sooner or later. The purpose of this build is pure overkill for games of the next few years and have enough storage for said games that I don't need to make room for awhile. I have compiled a list of parts I have looked through and picked out for this build. I already have a 1080p monitor, so that's out of the picture. My budget is about $5,000-$6,500. Going to be Overclocking this thing to the very limits. Also, I am looking for suggestions to make this build last longer, so feel free to ost comments about the components.

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HARDWARE (Budget of $5,000-$6,500)

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H100i V2
MB: ASUS ROG Maximus IX Code
GPU #1: ASUS ROG 1080 ti STRIX 11GB
GPU #2: ASUS ROG 1080 ti STRIX 11GB
PSU: Corsair HXi 1200 Watt
RAM: 16 GB (2x8) G.Skill Ripjaw
HDD: x3 6TB Seagate Barracuda
SSD: WD Black 256 Gb m.2 NVSE
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Monitor: A Samsung Monitor I used to own, not sure what it is, but it served me pretty good and still works, surprised. Runs 1080p.

Current Price: $3,900

[Nate152]

Hi Skar Term

It all looks good and overkill is right, you won't need to overclock anything with two 1080 Ti's and a 1080p monitor.

But if you do want to overclock your cpu to the max I would recommend getting the Rockit 88 tool and delidding your 7700k.

With two 1080 Ti's I'd get two 120mm fans for the front, that would give you 6 total including the rad fans.

I delidded my 7700k and it reduced temps by an average of 15c.

If you want to see the delidding results, start half way down on page 9.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?92094-Maximus-IX-Code-A-little-insight-and-delidded-7700k/...

I'm using the maximus IX Code too and it is an awesome motherboard.

[Korth]

Extreme multi-core overkill right now would be an X99 platform with Broadwell-E i7-6950X (or Broadwell-EP Xeon E5-16xx-4 or E5-26xx-4) and two (or more) Titan Xp GPU cards. But it'd be smarter to wait until faster, better, mightier Skylake-X on X299 releases this June. The advantages of HEDT X99 (and presumably X299) - raw multithreading-madness from processing cores and caches, quad-channel DDR4 bandwidths, and more PCIe3 lanes - are "overkill" because they simply aren't features leveraged by any sort of gaming software.

The i7-7700K is 4.2GHz/4.5GHz, 4C/8T, 8MB. Overkill (or, more accurately: "maximum kill") when running the heaviest of games, and at significantly faster clocks (or overclocks) than any X99 CPU part (which directly and immediately benefits gameplay).

Twin 1080Ti cards are indeed overkill for 1080p gaming (in fact, one 1080Ti is "maximum kill" enough for running >60fps ultra-quality at that resolution, plus raw FPS doesn't scale up all that well on games which have sucky multi-GPU code) - you wouldn't regret upgrading your monitor to one with higher maximum resolution (with G-Sync, if you're willing to pay extra for "serious" FPS gaming quality). I'm assuming your old Samsung 1080p monitor has DisplayPort, but if it doesn't (and you're still using old HDMI or ancient DVI) then upgrading to DP will let your GPU card(s) run free and unhindered output while not upgrading to DP will be a tragic (and expensive) waste of resources.

The Maximus Code is an impressive beast. My understanding is that it's an "intermediate" Maximus series mobo, perhaps even a "lesser" Maximus Formula. If you want/need only the most elite best-of-the-best then compare (or ask the ROG Forums about) differences in all of the Maximus mobo variants, I've never done so but it looks like each one has a slightly different feature set (along with something "unique" and "special" which is lacking on the others). All that being said, the Maximus Code is a fine choice and I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Delidding isn't for the faint of heart. Many people do it successfully, most of them gain superior cooling efficiency (and higher overclocks) as a result. But many people kill their CPUs instead, sometimes also their mobos and/or PSUs. If the (definitely noticeable but somewhat underwhelming) gains from a successful delid are your thing then go for it ... an i7-7700K costs "only" $400 to replace.

Still undecided about system drive hardware?
If you want SATA SSD, the Samsung 850 PRO is the very best and second to none in every parameter (except price). And multiple SATA SSDs in striped RAID basically add their performances (up to whatever bandwidth limits the mobo/chipset can support) so a RAID made with multiple 850 PRO drives can have epic performance.
If you want non-SATA SSD (M.2, U.2, NVMe, PCIe), the Samsung 960 PRO NVMe is the very best and second to none in every parameter (except price). But the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X promises to be even better when coupled with Intel processors (like your i7-7700K) which are designed to optimize Intel Optane. I use an old enterprise-grade PCIe2 x8 card which still has performance metrics hovering slightly above top-end consumer products, and (from what I've heard) there's even faster enterprise PCIe drives available - but such stuff is very difficult (and very expensive) to obtain through consumer channels, it's basically unavailable and unknowable unless you happen to be connected with somebody in the server industry.

My only advice about keyboard and mouse is to ignore keyboard and mouse advice, lol. They (and your monitor) are your primary user interface, you'll spend a whole lot of time using (and looking at) and living with them. It's best to determine exactly "what you like" (as opposed to "what they sell"), try out the "look" and "feel" of different kinds wherever/whenever you can (store shelf displays, your buddy's place, LAN parties, etc), pick the ones best for you. Remember that no keyboard/mouse is "perfect" or "best" for everyone because if there were then there wouldn't be so many (hundreds or thousands of) different products to choose from.

The only "negative" criticism I offer is about your PSU choice. Powerful enough (perhaps even "overkill"). Decent specs. Decent quality. Popular brand.
But an EVGA Supernova would be better.

[Menthol]

My 2 cents
only one 1080ti, or TXp, and a 2560X1440 or 4K monitor, a SSD large enough for OS and your favorite games, games will load faster off an SSD and you spend all your time looking at the monitor so a good monitor is one of the best buys you can make
I would not use sli unless you have an HEDP (x-99) with 40 lane CPU

[SkarTerm]

Menthol wrote:
My 2 cents
only one 1080ti, or TXp, and a 2560X1440 or 4K monitor, a SSD large enough for OS and your favorite games, games will load faster off an SSD and you spend all your time looking at the monitor so a good monitor is one of the best buys you can make
I would not use sli unless you have an HEDP (x-99) with 40 lane CPU

My only concern when using an SSD is that I heard they wear out faster than HDD. Sure, their speed is without match, but cant really go that fast after a year when it's bricked. Are they still wearing out faster or has that been fixed?

[Korth]

The very best performance upgrade you could ever do on any PC is replace the system HDD with an SSD. SSDs aren't terribly expensive - and the flash NVRAM they're based on tends to double capacity and double speed and half price every couple years - they're almost "disposable" because they're so affordably replaceable, well worth the money for the advantages they offer over their HDD counterparts. So your SSD endurance is limited (it suffers tiny but cumulative losses in capacity and performance every time it's used) starting the first time you use it, but it'll still offer >95% of full-rated "new" capacity and performance for at least half a decade (by which time it can be replaced with something even bigger and faster and cheaper). A "dying" old SSD which has seen lots of (ab)use over years isn't as great as it was when new, but it'll still many times faster than the mightiest shiny new HDD. SSDs rarely "brick" these days (unless you muck around with the firmware), not with any greater frequency than HDD controller boards "brick" from burnt-out chips or corrupted firmware (ignoring the fact that HDD failure is typically attributed to motor failure, then media failure, then controller failure).

Korth wrote:
Stability and reliability just aren't the same sorts of issues they were in the early SSD days. NVRAM semiconductors are generally more robust these days (and always getting better), and their statistical failure-longevity cycles are now calculated with exacting accuracy. In fact, the expected write-erase cycles are now part of the binning parameters, consumer products are typically rated for 3K. Because costs are lower and densities and speeds are greater the manufacturers always install some (maybe ~7.5%) overprovisioning capacity. Advanced real-time wear-levelling algorithms are now embedded into the flash controller firmware runtimes, along with some onboard DRAM cache and even compression logic.

Bottom line is that every SSD starts eroding right from the first day onwards. But all but the very cheapest of today's SSDs actually have longevity/failure rates and statistical MTBF specs which generally exceed the best HDDs.

SSD longevity has indeed improved greatly since this was written. SSD makers now have a greater variety of NVRAM options (like MCL, TLC, 3D NAND, Optane, etc) which allow them a lot more flexibility when balancing tradeoffs between density, performance, longevity, and price. Flash controllers (and all the embedded algorithms/programs they run for encoding, error correction, encryption, compression, wear levelling, block optimization, flash recycling, buffer control, etc) have become faster, more robust, and more sophisticated. And they're paired with ever-larger (ever-cheaper) onboard (DRAM) cache sizes. And consumer models are starting to incorporate capacitor failsafes (already used in Enterprise SSDs for years) to avert data loss or flash media damage during sudden power loss events. Today's 1K-rated NVRAM has functional longevity nearly equivalent to 3K-rated NVRAM when I wrote this quoted text (less than 2 years ago), and all but the cheapest consumer SSDs today use NVRAM rated for 3K or 5K or even 10K.

Samsung 850 PRO SATA SSDs are rated for 150TBW to 600TBW (TeraBytes Written) and have a proven 10-year warranty. If you wanted to deliberately cause a 300TBW-rated 1TB SSD to fail 10 years from now, you'd have to write/overwrite >82GB per day (about 2.5 hours of uninterrupted maximum-speed write activity) every day for the full 10 years ... this is a **lot** of data (enough to hit monthly broadband download limits within days, enough to completely fill the 1TB drive in less than two weeks). If the drive fails early then you just get Samsung to replace it, reinstall your OS and softwares, restore your stuff from backup (you do backup, yes?) and you continue on exactly as before - albeit you lost some days to inconveniently dead SSD and you have a brand new fresh SSD to start killing off at 82GB per day over 10 years, lol.

Couple that with Samsung's RAPID Magician software - which caches Reads and/or Writes in main RAM - and you not only enjoy phenomenal performance gains but you'll extend your SSD longevity by a factor of 10 or more (or so Samsung says).

Some non-Samsung SSDs offer comparable endurance, longevity, and warranty. A few offer equivalents to Samsung RAPID caching software, although you can always use ASUS RAMCache software (same idea, similar performance gains, probably similar longevity gains, different implementation) on those which lack such software.

Intel's upcoming SSDs will offer even better longevity and warranty (or so Intel says). Most of the other SSD manufacturers keep upping their warranty game to remain competitive.

We are in an era when operational MTBF/MTTF for SSDs has outpaced MTBF/MTTF for HDDs. SSDs also tend to be impervious to magnetic fields and RF noise, resistant to wider extremes of humidity/temperature, consume less power (which in turn generates less waste heat to de-rate them), and are able to survive much greater shock/impact/drop forces (because flash media has no extreme-precision mechanical moving parts) - so SSDs generally fare far better than HDDs over passing years (along with whatever data is written on them), whether they see active use or just sit in storage.

The only advantage offered by HDDs - and the only reason they're still around - is superior cost per GigaByte. Good for cheap storage of vast data archives - any stuff which isn't performance-sensitive - like movies, songs, photos, ebooks, etc. SSDs have smaller capacities - more than enough to install operating systems, programs, and some or all of your favourite games - but they can access this data almost "instantly", no more pauses and delays, no more waiting, no more drive-access bottlenecks, no more loading screens (and no more cheap kills on you from faster hardware in multiplayer). And NVMe SSDs are much faster than SATA SSDs. And they just keep on getting better!