Hey duders,

I've been a PC gamer for a while primarily (also have consoles, but mainly only for exclusives), but never have actually built a PC myself - always got expensive prebuilds from fairly small companies in the past. I've very little experience with actual hardware beyond swapping out hard drives and graphics cards, but the savings seem significant if you build your own, so I'm looking to go that route.

Having said all that, I'm looking at this build from PC part picker. No drives included since I've got a 512 SSD and a few TB in regular drives already. Also covered on the mouse/keyboard/OS front.

PCPartPicker part list: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/F2ry2R
Price breakdown by merchant: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/F2ry2R/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel - Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($459.50 @ Vuugo)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($44.99 @ NCIX)
Motherboard: *ASRock - Z270 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($129.00 @ Vuugo)
Memory: *Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Video Card: *Zotac - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Blower Video Card ($916.99 @ PC Canada)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($134.00 @ Vuugo)
Power Supply: *SeaSonic - G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Total: $1909.46 CAD

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-11 15:31 EDT-0400

I'm also looking to eventually move to a dual monitor setup. I have an old (2011) 1080 Asus monitor, but I'm looking to get something a bit more modern... 1440P @144hz seems to be a sweet spot. I'll be using one monitor for gaming, and the other just for videos, browsing, etc., at the same time. I'll probably keep the old Asus one as the second monitor for the moment, and wait to grab a second new one for a good deal.

Any comments on the build or suggestions for a monitor would be much appreciated. FWIW I'm in Canada, so I'll be going through Canadian buyers.

Thanks friends!

Tyler

Keep in mind that if you get a Nvidia card and want adaptive sync (G-Sync or Freesync) then you'll be trapped into paying a hefty premium for monitor featuring Nvidia's proprietary G-Sync chip. At face value the Pascal cards are clear winners and I didn't think twice when I laid down cash for my 1070, but I've been in monitor limbo because I'm not super keen to cough up Nvidia's blood money. If I could go back on my original decision I'm not 100% sure I'd get an AMD card instead, but I have thought about selling.

ftr, if you're after a high-refresh 1440p monitor, the current darling seems to be the ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q, which goes for ~800USD at the moment. That said, just over the horizon is the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ, a 4K 144Hz G-Sync HDR monitor that will probably cost your soul, but seems to solve every going problem in the monitor space...except, y'know, the proprietary tech problem.

And that's the problem to me: the monitor is probably the more expensive end of the deal, but nothing out there currently solves every problem (monitors are notoriously late to the HDR party), monitors are the most likely component to be rendered redundant by new tech, and there's a standards war between proprietary Nvidia stuff and open stuff being spearheaded by AMD that threatens imminent redundancy even for that likely stupidly expensive PG27UQ. (Note that vendor support has been much stronger for the Freesync ecosystem, for various reasons, to the extent that the Freesync 2 HDR standards even seem to be getting Microsoft backing.) It just seems like a terrible time to be buying a monitor right now.

That said, plenty of people seem to be very happy with the PG279Q, and seem dismissive of 4K on a 27inch screen and not very bothered by lack of HDR. The other options I see are to either get an AMD card and a cheaper Freesync monitor to ride the situation out, or get a Nvidia card and a cheaper monitor and forget about adaptive sync.

---

Other thoughts:

• Motherboard seems a little cheap, but looks well-featured, so I guess it's probably fine. The only things my Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6 that I got last year seems to have over the one you've chosen are SLI and a few extra slots/ports for things. Nevertheless, I'd advise reading some motherboard reviews and getting something that's recommended. (And importantly, understanding why. I still to this day don't see a good reason why the boards in the $400-$500 range exist.)
• For the likely tiny amount extra I might go for G.Skill memory, apparently they have a ridiculously good quality track record.

Otherwise your build looks fine to me.

You might take a look at this Dell 27" G-Sync monitor. It's only $500 right now, which is a hell of a price for a 1440p G-Sync monitor. I have the 24", which is identical other than the size and price. It's pretty great. Of course I wish it was an IPS panel, but it looks pretty good if you do some picture adjustments. I also happen to appreciate that it isn't obnoxious-looking. Why stuff designed for gaming generally has to look like a 12-year-old's notebook doodles has always baffled me.

Edit: I overlooked the part where you noted you live in Canada. Unfortunately, it seems that Best Buy Canadian site does not have a comparable sale, and it also happens to be sold out there. Amazon seems to have it in stock, though, and at a relatively close price point to the US Best Buy sale.

@itstyler: Any reason you're going with a blower video card? They are often louder and hotter than open-air cards. They're great for small cases that don't get a lot of air-flow, but the case you listed doesn't look that small.

@fnrslvr:AMD doesn't offer anything close to a 1080TI. They don't even have anything close to the 1070. They have great low-end and mid-range cards, but until they finally release Vega, Nvidia is the only choice for a high-end card. I agree that Freesync the more appealing standard, especially when it comes to price, but I don't know how much benefit adaptive sync will provide for a 1080TI, especially at resolutions below 4K. That thing should be able to put out minimum 60fps in almost everything.

Quick thought, I would go with a 1080ti model that has a better cooler. The founders edition style blower fan tends to run louder and hotter than custom cooler versions. And a 1080ti specially, is really held back by the stock blower fan cooler.

@cameron@keirgo I honestly just kept most of the build from pcpartpicker's website. Is there a different 1080ti that either of you would suggest looking into instead? Thanks for your thoughts.

Thanks @fnrslvr for the detailed post, and @ralphmoustaccio for the comments on monitors. I'm definitely going to do a bit more research.

I really don't have much idea what I'm doing here, the build I posted above was really just something that looked "good" to me from pcpartpicker's staff suggested builds, so suggestions / criticism is definitely welcome.

@itstyler: I'd just recommend an open-air cooler like these:

http://www.ncix.com/detail/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-36-140446.htm?promoid=1599

http://www.ncix.com/detail/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-9a-140444.htm?promoid=1599

It doesn't have to be one of those cards, just something like that.

@cameron: Ya, you're right. I guess in my own situation I found myself reflecting on how necessary the 1070 was for me -- it does everything I want right now and the card itself was very affordable, but it feels like the real price was actually ~$1500 and the bulk of that investment is obsolete in 2 years, which feels like it's for someone with orders of magnitude more money me who could afford just as well to use that money to light cigars. Maybe if I bought a high-end AMD card and a Freesync monitor I could get my low-latency synchronization on fighting games, which are pretty much the only games where I'll ever mind the V-Sync delay, and which don't tend to have hugely demanding requirements.

@cameron: Thanks for the suggestions. I've changed to a card with a cooler more like that - after reading into it, that seemed like a better direction to go in.

Another question!

I've watched some videos of reviews and builds using this case just to get an idea of how it is to work with... in some, people tend to put two fans in the front, and others don't. The build I'm looking at above doesn't appear to have any additional fans besides the ones built into the case (rear and top) and the cooler for the cpu. Is this something I should be concerned with?

If so, any suggestions on two fans that would work well?

Thanks :)

@itstyler: You will probably be fine without the extra fans. But if you are looking for extra ventilation with a minimum of extra noise then the noctua fans are pretty good (although a bit ugly).

I know RAM prices are crazy right now but get the fastest kit you can afford.

The newer processors love that RAM speed.

Agreed. It's more important than ever, especially since Intel went with the odd choice on some of these newer processors/chipsets to only go dual instead of quad channel memory. So spend the extra on the faster reasonable memory you can... you'll thank yourself when you can O/C and not have to replace your mobo/CPU/Memory and more for another 8 years possibly! I am a huge performance whore, and my 8 year old Quad i7 @ 4.66GHz is still not nearly worth replacing (it still performs the same or better as the newest i7's in games, when clocked how I was able to - I think it'll be a while before games take decent advantage of more than 4 cores, as they still often underutilize quad cores still, and when a game is CPU bound, it usually is because it's really mainly using 1 core still - see all Japanese PC game ports from console, for example).

Also, when it fits your budget, make use of that M.2 slot (not the Wifi one on that mobo, the other one) for an M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 SSD - they are literally 10x faster than a SATA3 SSD. It's like jumping from a platter HDD to an SSD all over again, speed-wise (almost). But you don't need it yet, unless you have a spare ~$400+ CAD. They'll come down in price more pretty quickly though, so waiting wouldn't hurt. And you could still use your existing SSD and drives with it of course.

Finally, some advice - I build machines at work all the time, and for friends. AMD may seem tempting on paper, or value-wise.... it is NOT currently. Don't let anyone fool you into it. Their GPUs have been a nightmare for years now, mainly the drivers and small user base that is not catered to as well at all by the game developers. Plus AMD is in serious financial and management trouble, and their R&D spend is likely going to continue to be 1/10th that of NVIDIA, or less, going forward... unless something MAJOR changes. So, expect them to get worse, honestly. Not that they don't work at all, it's just their "value" pricing comes at a big, very annoying, cost in usability (especially if you play a lot of more obscure games or major games at release).

I have DDR4-3600 and I don't think so, in games it's like a 1-2 fps increase (if that) vs. DDR4-2133, if you plan on overclocking then that's a different story.

You can still easily get 60 FPS out of old i7s but they aren't going to be pushing high framerates for 144Hz monitors, which to me is not a big deal but I may as well get as much FPS as I can as I do have a 165Hz display. For non-gaming applications such as video rendering, the Lynnfield based i5s and i7s get completely spanked now. I moved from a similarly clocked Lynnfield and there is no comparison.

Oh the RAM bandwidth ONLY makes a difference if you're overclocking (if sufficient for the processor at default clocks in the first place). But it's nice to be future proof, and you really should OC Intel processors for years now, they're built for it and clocked lower by default specifically to allow headroom for the OC enthusiasts, who tend to spend more money with Intel than the average person of course. That's why almost all of the i7's coming off the manufacturing line go to ~4.66-5GHz for 7+ years now, but at default they "Turbo" to 3.4-4.0GHz at most, depending. With that cooler the OP is buying, and that Mobo, he'll be able to get a significant CPU performance boost with a click or two. It's really that easy now, and extremely hard to damage them too. They're now built for it, and have failsafes.

When you compare a 4000 series i7 @ 4.66GHz to the newest series at the max clock (which is generally about 4.5GHz with the big heatsink air coolers or liquid cooling), which is now 7-8 years later mind you, at MAX load the new ones can be 10% faster (when comparing a similar number of cores, and keep in mind almost no games use more than 4 cores). But games never take all the cores to full load.

So, CPUs have been stagnant, performance wise, specifically for gaming and many other non-multithreaded apps (or ones that don't multithread well, which is most), for a long time now. It's simply because Intel has had no competition in the high end for that long... now that AMD Ryzen is out and is starting to get close, Intel is going to start releasing all the CPU tech they've been saving for this occasion for many years now :)

Yes, rendering and maybe CAD are exceptions, somewhat. But not games. Believe me, I'd be buying a new CPU and Mobo if I were ever seeing a performance difference on the new machines I build. But I don't, except in synthetic benchmarks and video encoding and such.

That's not true though, it's a lot more than 10% in some games. You are only going to get similar performance in games that are almost entirely GPU bound, if you want to push a lot of frames for 144Hz displays or you're playing a game that is quite CPU intensive, the old i7s show their age. Mostly Lynnfield, as Lynnfield to Sandy Bridge was a pretty big jump.

This video shows exactly what I'm talking about, albeit for the Lynnfield i5 and not the i7:

15 FPS increases in Fallout 4, 30 FPS increases in GTA V, 20 FPS increases in Battlefield, it's just not true that there's no reason to upgrade from Lynnfield to Skylake or later, Sandy Bridge is basically the minimum people should be on right now and even that is a bit of a stretch.

I have a 1080 Ti and run 165Hz so running a Lynnfield CPU would be a huge waste of GPU performance for me.

Edit: You can also see here for quite large performance increases between a Sandy Bridge (no Lynnfields) i7 and Skylake.

When I take into account the much, much bigger performance differences when doing stuff like video encoding (Skylake beats Lynnfield by over 40%), superior motherboard features, UEFI BIOs, much faster SATA performance, then add on top the gaming performance improvements, I'm very glad I upgraded last year.

Also when I first read your post I assumed you were still talking about Lynnfield, I know the 4000 series hold up much better against Skylake, no contest there, Lynnfield has held up extremely well too for its age, but it's time people started to move away. I held onto LGA1156 for as long as I felt I could.

I see. Yeah, there are still CPU bound games (I didn't mean to imply they didn't exist), but it's usually when they're poorly ported or not coded well for multithreading (I'm looking at you especially, FromSoft!).

I haven't had anything less than 1080p @ 60 FPS in Bethesda games on my system with a Sandy Bridge quad-core i7 @ 4.66GHz, but because of that good ole' 20 year mess of an engine they keep hacking new features into, Bethesda games (Fallout, Skyrim) using that engine are one of the cases where a newer CPU can help - they are CPU bound in cases, usually maxing out mostly one core/thread, and it's because their code is a legacy-filled mess. I desperately hope they finally build a new engine from the ground up for the next open world RPG they do, or use a modern licensed engine.

But still, Lynfield is ~8+ years old now, and the i5s back then were a lot less than the i7s today (the i5's and i7's are more similar in feature set now - for example, now i5's have hyperthreading, and didn't back then - among some other things). So, I'd still argue that Intel have been about as stagnant as possible for that time period until now, due to no competition on the high-end CPUs.

I play a lot of PC Games, and I hunger to upgrade and maximize performance/experience almost as much as I like playing the games themselves... so I end up buying the new top end GPU every 1-2 years, because it makes a difference that I want. I haven't encountered a case yet where I wished my CPU was better, in 7+ years, and that is a first in my lifetime - by a LOT. I even have a Rift, and my CPU is actually below their minimum spec... yet I can run every VR game faster than many newer CPUs at default clocks can, even now. And I even often hack in high end supersampling to many games if possible, simply because I actually have performance to spare in every case. That is definitely weird, and I think it's a big indicator that almost all the innovation/R&D is going to mobile processors and performance-per-watt metrics now, instead of full out performance with less regard for heat and power (which is appropriate for Desktop gaming, but not where the market is going - mobile and laptop gaming, or datacenter performance/power efficiency).