Graphics Card Advice for a friend ?

-dave-m- wrote in post #17698664
Intel has been holding steady at about a 10-20% performance boost with each new generation of CPU since the Core 2 days. AMD just isn't pushing them to release anything better, so why would they.

Unless AMD comes out with something to really push Intel in the mainstream market I just don't see Socket 1151 getting a six core CPU. Higher than four cores will remain on the Socket 2011 platform with a premium price.

Any CPU Intel releases on Socket 1151 should work fine in any Socket 1151 motherboard. For the most part it just requires updating the BIOS so it will recognize the new CPU. I'm just guessing that a motherboard could be limited in number of cores if it wasn't designed to handle more, so in order to handle six core CPU's the Z170/H170/B150 chipset would need to natively support it now.

Thanks Dave
I guess he should check - if that s possible - that the Z170 chipset was natively designed to support more than 4 cores i.e. 6 .
His stand point is if the 4ghz rises to 4.2ghz then if push came to shove, he could overclock it to 4.4 Ghz quite comfortably and has bought a fairly expensive Noctura cpu cooler in case.
Personally I would rather have a 5 liter engine cuising at 2,000 revs than a 3,500cc engine cuising at 3,000 rpm; but then thats me, and I have never even heard of Noctura, let alone an NH- D15 dual fan!
But then its his m/c not mine.

Noctua products (fans especially) are great, and that cooler is super nice and very well reviewed/benchmarked..​. definitely in the higher spectrum for running on air. It sounds like he's only wanting to do some mild OC'ing, and that cooler is more than enough (probably overkill) for his needs. Hopefully he double checked space compatibility... those coolers aren't small to say the least.

Just as an academic discussion a buddy has an Asus X99 Deluxe 2011-V3, Haswell I7 5820K, 64G Kingston DDR4 Fury 2066, GTX 970, Samsung 850 PRO 1TB and a 6T Deskstar NAS...attached to an Eizo 30" 4K monitor. The way it zips through images is

The 970 will be a nice card for maybe 2 generations, the gamers will tire quickly and want more. On my photo rigs the video cards have been minimal difference for photo edits. Between the boxes I have a GTX460 and 560Ti in use. That 750Ti spec is nice when sucking the wall receptacle. Currently the GTX950 $165 and GTX960 $200 are in mind from the standpoint of power efficiency. Now and then there is the urge to run the F@H projects but with the summer heat, the heat in the room doesn't need to be increased.

ra40 wrote in post #17700301
Just as an academic discussion a buddy has an Asus X99 Deluxe 2011-V3, Haswell I7 5820K, 64G Kingston DDR4 Fury 2066, GTX 970, Samsung 850 PRO 1TB and a 6T Deskstar NAS...attached to an Eizo 30" 4K monitor. The way it zips through images is

Nice selection, although the 64GB RAM is pretty overkill, not that I know what he does with it. I think you meant 2166 RAM, that's the base DDR4 speed. Also, that 4K Eizo monitor costs more than his whole computer does.

About the D15 - it's a good idea to use that cooler on X99 systems more than Z97/Z170, as the performance between it and the U14S are only a couple degrees, even at full tilt. Even the U12S would be enough for a mildly-clocked Z170 system as the max TDP just isn't very high.

Another alternative is the BeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3, which also runs a couple degrees hotter, but is even quieter in operation and looks nice if you're using a windowed case. The Cryorig R1 Ultimate is also in the same class of coolers and performs about the same.

As long as you don't raise the voltage past 1.2v on Haswell chips while attempting to get a stable overclock, there's no danger of reducing the life of the chip, although many people seem to go for 1.3~1.35v.
Skylake, despite being based on a smaller process, strangely runs on higher voltages than Haswell, with values of 1.4~1.45v being reported on the net as the safe maximum.

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #17700538
Nice selection, although the 64GB RAM is pretty overkill, not that I know what he does with it. I think you meant 2166 RAM, that's the base DDR4 speed. Also, that 4K Eizo monitor costs more than his whole computer does.

About the D15 - it's a good idea to use that cooler on X99 systems more than Z97/Z170, as the performance between it and the U14S are only a couple degrees, even at full tilt. Even the U12S would be enough for a mildly-clocked Z170 system as the max TDP just isn't very high.

Another alternative is the BeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3, which also runs a couple degrees hotter, but is even quieter in operation and looks nice if you're using a windowed case. The Cryorig R1 Ultimate is also in the same class of coolers and performs about the same.

As long as you don't raise the voltage past 1.2v on Haswell chips while attempting to get a stable overclock, there's no danger of reducing the life of the chip, although many people seem to go for 1.3~1.35v.
Skylake, despite being based on a smaller process, strangely runs on higher voltages than Haswell, with values of 1.4~1.45v being reported on the net as the safe maximum.

Thanks interesting stuff.

abruckse wrote in post #17699848
Noctua products (fans especially) are great, and that cooler is super nice and very well reviewed/benchmarked..​. definitely in the higher spectrum for running on air. It sounds like he's only wanting to do some mild OC'ing, and that cooler is more than enough (probably overkill) for his needs. Hopefully he double checked space compatibility... those coolers aren't small to say the least.

Thanks yes it there was room - just.

Go with the 980, nothing wrong with the 970, but the 980 seems to get top billing in most of the tech reviews. They could always go with a Titan X.