New gaming system build for rFactor2 - Z170 or X99

Hi all,

After spending about two days reading all the conflicting opinions on the Internet about what is best I thought I would post here and get a few more!

I'm really only planning on using this build for gaming and 95% of it will be done with rFactor2. The rest of the use will just be general desk top stuff.

It seemed to me the only real reason to go X99 was if I planned on doing multiple GPUs or doing some type of rendering work with my computer which I won't.

Below is a list to partpicker and the main questions that I have. I left space for people to write their answers underneath the questions. Thank you in advance to all who take the time to help me find my way.


http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YnMb3C


How big of a power supply do I really need if I only plan on doing one card the 980ti?




I really don't want to use Windows 10 actually I would prefer to use Windows 7 Pro, however I read that if you use one of the new blazing NVMe solid-state drives as your boot drive that the driver is not included in Windows 7 and needs to be be acquired. I don't know if this is the big deal... also there are some general indications that with the new Z170 architecture Windows 10 or 8.1 would be the way to go.
There are so many different opinions all over about what operating system is the best for gaming... Which operating system should I use?





Should I put my operating system and rFactor2 on the same drive?





Should I partition the drive and put the operating system on one part and the game on another or just put them together?





Would it make any sense to put my operating system on a small solid-state drive (like a SATA Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB) and then just put rFactor2 on the new NVMe drive or vice versa?





How much difference do you really think it makes picking the "perfect RAM" frequency and latency or with the new DDR4 does it really matter?





Is there any advantages to going with an X99 build and 5620k or 5630k? It's really just going to be my gaming system and I don't really plan on ever putting in another card, these are the main reasons I decided to go with the Sky Lake and the Z170 platform.






Is there anything I went overkill on?





Any comment on the motherboard... I went with it because it got a decent review and the only one with three new M2 slots as I plan on probably buying another one of these NVMe drives when the price comes down the more.




Totally off topic but how to make the thread header in bold?

 

I answered in PM mate.

The main thing Spin will jump on.

To pay for X99 and Processor just to run a 4xSSD ( PCIe 3.0 x4 interface) is a huge amount of money.

As I explained the i7-6700 has only 16 Lanes and you would need 20 minimum OR run your lovely GTX980TI @ 8x which rF2 does not like.

And ask Spin how quick a Big Evo Pro is in sims and whether he thinks any faster SSD would be bang for buck.

 

Where do you get this info from?

 

Maybe I am wrong but this was one of the main reasons for me to go with the Z170 platform.

The way I understand it is the motherboard has 26 lanes of PCIe along with the chips 16 lanes. So I can run my GPU 3.0x16 and the motherboard will be able to run the new NVMe solid-state drives through the M.2 connections.

The motherboard I selected has three M.2 connections which in the future I plan to put two of the NVMe solid-state drives on.

 

1. It only has 16 Lanes ........

2. You need a minimum of 20 lanes to run it the SSD........

3. My answer was to dissuade him from buying X99 ...........just to run a expensive SSD. What ? you think that is good value ?


I forgot about the Skylake lanes, I did know of course but for some reason I had 4770/4790 on the brain. lol


Besides who else would have tried to help him if I never, you only post to be sarcastic and critical.

I still say he is just as good getting a bigger Samsung 1TB

As I answered as well the gains of that expensive NVMe will NOT IMPROVE GAMING

He told me he was 95% gaming ..........then asked me if he goes " over the top"

NVME just for sims is over the top imho and without it the 16lanes is irrelevant.

 

ahh I think we got mixed in lines hehe. SSD, I have 6 of them in RAID, value depends if you system can take benefit of them.

 

absolutely, never suggested otherwise.

In thread he asked if he was going over the top for build.
I said if money is no object, fine.


How much faster does your Raid start rF2.

If the difference is anything like a Sata and a Samsung Evo it is barely nothing

Again that is not value for money when you use the PC 95% for playing games.

To you personally it is I understand 100%, but that is not value for money.


You must take my answers in context if you play games 95% of time, you boot games how many times a day ? saving how many minutes ?

 

Gentlemen...Start your engines!

I ended up going with the Z170 system!

CASEhanteks Enthoo Pro

CPU:Intel® Core™ i7-6700K 4.00GHZ

FAN:NZXT Kraken X61 280mm Liquid CPU Cooling

HD_M2SATA:512GB Samsung 950 PRO Series PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD - 2500MB/s Read & 1500MB/s Write

MEMORY:16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/2400MHz

MOTHERBOARD:ASRock Z170 Extreme 7+ ATX w/ USB 3.1

OS:Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition)

POWERSUPPLY:850 Watts - Corsair RMi Series RM850i

VIDEO:EVGA ACX 2.0 Superclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB


I definitely agree with you DD, getting an NVMe drive wasn't a good bang for the buck.

Racing in real life is a money pit anyways! The system I bought which will last for about five years is the equivalent of about one weekend of real racing on the track.

I appreciate the two of you who actually took some time to respond.

Building as Sim racing rig is probably also a lot like racing! People can go around the track at the same speed with totally different styles.

Just so you know that I did go overboard...the graphics card droped 100 bucks right before I ordered...so I decided to get an extra hard drive just incase I decide to put something else besides my OS and rFactor2 on my computer!

Sorry DD I couldn't go for the 1TB model...but here it is

HDD:250GB Samsung 850 EVO Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD


Everyone feel free to leave your comments, criticisms, or congratulations!

Thanks to ISI for continuing to improve and develop!!! Have a great holiday everyone...see you on track!

 

I usually end up agreeing with Durge in these threads and am so again.

You don't need 6 cores / 12 threads. 4 cores / 8 threads or 4 cores / 4 threads is absolutely fine.

You don't need quad-channel memory; dual-channel is just fine.

You don't need 40 PCI-E lanes unless you want to build a beast of an SLI system + having 8 lanes left for PCI-E (eg. M.2) SSDs, a soundcard, etc.


EDIT: Oops, I see you already decided. Good stuff!

 

And if you can afford all that great at the same time !

 

Yes, congrats SpeedLab! Nice system!
But:
When we talk of this amount of money, why on earth an Asrock board??? Gigabyte seems manufacturing-, and reliability-wise on top IMO.
And: 850W is over the top! PSU will not operate in optimal load condition, what means that the super 80+ silver-configuration (or whatever it is) is wasted.

 

Could he have saved some coin and went with an I5 skylake seeming he's only gaming?

 

If he decided to overclock and run multi GPU it will come into play. I'm pulling 800Watts out of 1200 Watt corsair under heavy gaming.

 

same processor and chipset as me. Runs rFactor 2 flatout even with nvidia 760 4gb.

 

With one AMD 7990 ?????
However he doesnt need to overclock with this system and when I understood correctly, he is on one GFX-card.

Yes, indeed. Maybe he want to mod some tyres....

 

Whil I agree the psu is over the top given the single 980ti, there's not much of a difference in efficiency between 25 and 50% load with the psu he went with. The rig will probably use around 350W on gaming load, that's just over 40% load on the 850W model and would still only be 53% on a 650W model. If you compare the efficiency readings of the psu the difference would be less than 6W under load, assuming the psu at 40% load were still 'only' at the 91.6% efficiency of 25% (which it won't).

Btw, very nice system, SpeedLab. Enjoy!

 

Ya,ok - better balanced here then. Such similarities in load seem not common though (seen many other graphs, including my bequiet)......

 

@ peterchen I went with the 850 W PSU just in case I decided at some point to put in a second video card. I didn't want to have to upgrade my PSU if I did that and it wasn't too much more money so I didn't sweat it. I didn't really know about the efficiency if you are not using a substantial portion of the PSU's capability.

As for the motherboard, to be totally honest I did probably too much research trying to get good choices for building the system with my limited knowledge. By the time I got to the motherboard and the many many many options that are possible I really didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out all the intricacies. It received pretty good reviews and it was the only one that had three M2 connectors.
It seems that storage options will be moving away from SATA towards M2 or PCIe. My thinking was that I could put in a second graphics card and still be able to have the possibility to put in more than one of the new NVMe solid-state drives without having to worry about motherboard slots.

Of course I'm not sure if my logic was sound which is why I posted for opinions originally.

@rogue22 you are definitely right I didn't need the I7 for gaming. It only cost me 75 bucks more so I just ended up doing it.


@Woodee that's really good to hear. I have been playing on a laptop with the lowest setting and getting 60 frames per second for the last year. I am looking forward to having some higher FPS and a little bit of eye candy to boot!

@DocJones Thanks for the technical bit. Some places say that my 850 PSU will not be enough even to run two cards in the future especially if I OC the CPU a bit.

 

I run it at 1150/1575 puts me around 550watts vs 1000/1500 512 watts stock. A pair of 7970s will eat over 650. So I'm actually doing good. My cpu is overclocked at 4.7 thats 160watts (I needed 1.3vcore). Now include all the rest of my stuff (water coolers, Mobo, drives, ram, fans).

You be surprised at how many dual GPU users kill there PSUs because they go by the TDP rating which is a heat wattage and not consumption wattage.

 

Don't sweat it, you have a nice rig coming to you. Unless you running a lot of displays or want 4k I wouldn't worry about a multi-GPU right now. It doesn't always work and you have to constantly play the driver dance game.