Need Advice On PC Hardware

[Morgan Winters]

Hi there, I am looking at building a new system to replace my ~10 year old Core2 Quad Q6600 and GeForce 8800GT based computer which is now finally starting to die. Having been out of the computer world since I build my current system so I was hoping someone could give me some help in building a new system. I've have been looking around and added some parts to my shopping cart but I need to make sure all the components are good together and won't cause issues. Some components of my current PC can be used for the new system and thus do not need to be included with the upgrade (monitors, HDD's, Blu-ray drive, case, keyboard, mouse, headset and speakers).

Below are the requirement as to what I need the new PC to be able to do along with a budget (please bear in mind my current PC specs):
--- I have recently upgraded to 2x 27inch 1080p monitors (I don't much care for 1440/4K, to me 1080p is more than good enough), so GPU must have 2x VGA/DVI/HDMI ports (monitors do not have any display port connectors).
--- New PC must be able to run any game at a minimum of 30fps on lowest settings at 1080p for the next 5+ years (see note below).
-- Although a gaming PC, it must be able to render 1080p video in a reasonable timeframe, heavy multi-tasking, programming with Visual Studio/Notepad++ as well as play the past and current generation of games (from Half Life 2 and CS:S to KSP, GTA V, Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4, PlayerUnknown Battleground through to the games currently being written).
-- Must be able to be running for 16-18 hours a day, everyday, for the next 5+ years without any major replacement or upgrade (just as with my current PC).
-- Must be Intel and nVidia based as I've have issues before with AMD CPU's not lasting more than a 2 or 3 years.
-- Motherboard must have a least 4 SATA ports, 5.1 audio + microphone, 5 USB ports, gigabit ethernet and ideally a basic onboard firewall.
-- MUST cost less than £1100 GBP
-- MUST be cheap on electricity so no pointless stuff like RGB fairy lights on the motherboard or memory (I look at the screens not the inside of the case (motherboard listed below looks to have LED's but I need to be able to disable them).

The Note: Bear in mind that until recently, I have been playing Euro Truck Sim 2 at the lowest detail at between 15 and 25FPS making it just about playable and I was happy. I do NOT need the new PC to run ETS2 or Crysis at max detail and at a million FPS. If I can play a game with details set at a point that I see the important stuff without it randomly freezing for 10 seconds and then running 5 frames then freezing again (like ETS2's latest update have done with my current PC), then that is good enough for me.

Below are the items that need to be included with the upgrade:
CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, PSU, *CPU cooler, *4x 120mm case fans.
* = these will be paid for with a different bank account so should not be included with main budget, Just need suggestions on what is good/bad.

Below are the items that I have added to my shopping cart and need someone to check to make sure that they will do what I need and to make sure they are compatible with each other:
Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Socket LGA1151,
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard,
Palit GeForce GTX 1060 StormX 6144MB GGDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card,
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C16 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit,
Corsair TX750M 750W 80 Plus Gold Semi Modular Power Supply,
Cryorig h7 single tower heatsink with 120mm fan,
(case fans can be any 120mm without LED's but ideally with rifle or ball bearings)
(half decent thermal paste if none if supplied with CPU cooler)

I will be getting everything from Overclockers but if you know of another reputable company that offer some or all of these parts cheaper or better spec parts for about the same price, Ill don't mind buying from them. Just not from the scam artists that is Amazon or eBay.

Let me know if you need any more info to help you.

Thank you so much for your time and any advice you can offer.
Hope you have a great day/night
Morgan

 

[Shlouski]

If your hdd's are the same age as the rest of your system then I would not trust them with any important data, they will die at some point. You should also consider adding an SSD or NVME into your budget, these will really improve your experience and vastly lower loading times.

Nobody can predict the future, hardware and software technologies can advance and change at varying speeds, so no promises can be made concerning longevity.

Must be Intel and nVidia based as I've have issues before with AMD CPU's not lasting more than a 2 or 3 years.

There is nothing wrong with amd, if fact cpu wise they offer the best price to performance ratio right now, especially if you are doing heavy multi-tasking. Are you saying that their cpu's break or become too slow after 2-3 years ? After many years of working with computers I can tell you that it is rare for cpu's to fail compared to other components, personally I have never had one fail and I have some that are 20+ years old.

MUST be cheap on electricity so no pointless stuff like RGB fairy lights

I too am not into RGB lights, but as they use very little electricity and can often be turned off, its really a nonissue.

Just not from the scam artists that is Amazon or eBay.

I have been using these sites a lot over the past 10 years, just this month I've bought 20+ item off ebay and I have never been scammed, just a little common sense is needed and the buyer protection is good. I will just be using https://uk.pcpartpicker.com.

Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Socket LGA1151,
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard,

Why did you choose this cpu, it is already 3 generations old?

This AMD system would be much better:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/4s9jLJ

Intel system: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/D6YPYT
^^I use the same cpu, motherboard and cooler, right now I hold the title of fastest single core performance: https://www.computerforum.com/threads/sticky-official-cpu-z-benchmark-thread.240218/page-10

No reader this is not a challenge, Darren hasn't even updated and put me on the graph yet .

Ok, the differences between these two systems. If no upgrades are done then the AMD system will be faster in basically everything because of the 1070ti and because it has the best multi-core performance. The Intel system will only be faster in situations where a program won't use more than 12 cores and in games that are so cpu bottlenecked that even a 1060 can't be maxed out, there are surprising quite a lot of games like this, but they are the minority. If no upgrades are to be done then I would defiantly go for the AMD build.
If gaming is an important consideration and future graphics card upgrades were in the plan then the Intel system would be a good choice as the i7 8700k is a very good gaming cpu because of its high IPC. As it sounds like you don't want to do any upgrading then the AMD system would be your best bet.

 

[Morgan Winters]

Thanks alot for your reply. Just before I give some updates on my upgrade, I'd just need to reply to your point...

If your hdd's are the same age as the rest of your system then I would not trust them with any important data, they will die at some point. You should also consider adding an SSD or NVME into your budget, these will really improve your experience and vastly lower loading times.

I currently have 2 HDD's in my system. 1x 500Gb which is about 2-3 years old which is where the OS/apps are stored and I have a 1Tb drive where all my data is store which is about 18 months old. I have replaced the HDD's several times since building this system so this isn't really an issue. I will replace/retire my 500Gb drive, then use the 1TB for the OS and get a 4TB at some point over the next year to ensure my data is safe. Most of my important data is backed up on other drives anyway so it is all good.
As for loading times, correct me if I'm wrong but whether I use a SDD or HDD doesn't really effect gaming performance or video rendering times. The cost per Mb of SSD's is still far to high for me to consider worth the expense. The jump in performance I'm going to notice between my current system and the new system will be so huge anyway that the advantage in boot and loading times between a HDD and SSD isn't really an issue for me. For example, I am used to sitting here for 5 minutes waiting for KSP to start up, a reduction of a few seconds or a minute doesn't bother me. When the cost per Mb and the total storage space overtakes HDD's, than I will likely upgrade to SSD's but it will be some time before that happens.

There is nothing wrong with amd, if fact cpu wise they offer the best price to performance ratio right now, especially if you are doing heavy multi-tasking. Are you saying that their cpu's break or become too slow after 2-3 years ? After many years of working with computers I can tell you that it is rare for cpu's to fail compared to other components, personally I have never had one fail and I have some that are 20+ years old.

As I said in my first post, I have been out of the computer world since I build my current system and my comment about AMD chips where based on a AMD Athlon 64 4400+ that I had back in 2005/2006 which only lasted about 18 months compared to my Intel which is about 10 years old. After doing some research, AMD have really stepped up their game since the Athlon days and by the look of it, are now on par, if not above Intel in some situations. Therefore that statement in my first post I now know is completely wrong, so please ignore and excuse me for that, yourself and others have proved wrong so I apologise for this.

I too am not into RGB lights, but as they use very little electricity and can often be turned off, its really a nonissue.

While one single LED may not use much power, if a LED uses 50mA, 20 LED's will use 1A which then make the system more expensive to run. Considering that my computer is running 16-18 hours a day, over the course of a year, it soon adds up, this money is better my my pocket than some huge energy company like SSE. Plus if every computer in the world was light up like a Christmas tree, that is a hell of a lot of power being wasted and thus a lot of carbon being burned for no real purpose. Regardless, I am of the view that the more components on any electrical circuit, the more failure points and thus the greater chance of shorts, fires ect. I also don't have insurance so I have to minimize all such risks as much as possible.

I have been using these sites a lot over the past 10 years, just this month I've bought 20+ item off ebay and I have never been scammed, just a little common sense is needed and the buyer protection is good. I will just be using https://uk.pcpartpicker.com.

This is more of a personal preference, I never buy big ticket items from these sites. I too always buy stuff from Amazon/eBay and have done since around 2005 but only small things like DVD's, lamps, paint, case fans and random stuff like that. Things like computer CPU's, GPU's then no I'd rather pay a couple of quid more and buy them from overclockers/ebuyer ect. I also avoid using PayPal like the plague.

Why did you choose this cpu, it is already 3 generations old?

Frankly it doesn't bother my what generation is it. Be it the latest gen or 3 gens old, as long as it will do the tasks I need it to, that's good enough for me. I don't go out of my way to buy the latest and greatest things. This upgrade is only because my current computer is now having issues and it is not something I can fix. For example, my computerised hamster cage uses a Raspberry Pi 1 model B (512Mb) simply because it works and it does the job I need it to such as switching the cage lights, monitoring temps and running the cage camera, thus there is no point upgrading it to a RPi 3 since the RPi 1 is more than capable of doing these tasks. Indeed, I still have a few pieces of tech that are older than I am and they still work just fine and some are far better than the modern equivalent and a million times less annoying, ever if it is more than 30 years old.

This AMD system would be much better:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/4s9jLJ

Intel system: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/D6YPYT
^^I use the same cpu, motherboard and cooler, right now I hold the title of fastest single core performance: https://www.computerforum.com/threads/sticky-official-cpu-z-benchmark-thread.240218/page-10

No reader this is not a challenge, Darren hasn't even updated and put me on the graph yet .

Ok, the differences between these two systems. If no upgrades are done then the AMD system will be faster in basically everything because of the 1070ti and because it has the best multi-core performance. The Intel system will only be faster in situations where a program won't use more than 12 cores and in games that are so cpu bottlenecked that even a 1060 can't be maxed out, there are surprising quite a lot of games like this, but they are the minority. If no upgrades are to be done then I would defiantly go for the AMD build.
If gaming is an important consideration and future graphics card upgrades were in the plan then the Intel system would be a good choice as the i7 8700k is a very good gaming cpu because of its high IPC. As it sounds like you don't want to do any upgrading then the AMD system would be your best bet.

After viewing the list that you compiled (by the way, thank you so much for taking the time to do this for me) and having done some research into what AMD are like these days. I have decided to go with the AMD system you suggested (more-less). I have placed an order with ebuyer and have listed below which components I have ordered, I am now waiting for these to come:
--AMD Ryzen 7 2700 AM4 Processor with LED Wraith Spire Cooler
--MSI X470 GAMING PLUS AM4 DDR4 ATX Motherboard
--Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti WINDFORCE 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
--Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Memory Kit (see note A below)
--EVGA Supernova 750W Fully Modular 80+ Gold Power Supply
--Cooler Master Hyper 212 Led Turbo Red Edition CPU Cooler (see note B below)
--StarTech 120x25mm Dual Ball Bearing Case Fan (4 of)

Note A: The RAM sticks you suggested seem to have issues with running at the speed that they advertise, some people can't get then to run above 2133MHz while others can only get them to run at 2999MHz after BIOS updates instead of the stated 3200MHz. I have therefore decided to get the Corsair Vengeance LPX which run at 3000MHz which cost a little more but don't seem to have this same issue. I am happy to do BIOS updates but they still won't run at the speed that they state, I'm not going to support a company who falsely advertises just to get a sale.

Note B: The CPU cooler you suggested doesn't support the AM4 socket out of the box and only supports up to AM3+. You have to buy a separate kit to allow it to fit the AM4 socket, although the kit was only like £6.49. At the time of purchase, that cooler was out of stock and they didn't seem to have the AM4 kit at all. I would have had to go to overclockers to get that. I didn't really want to buy from a different place, pay £20 more for the same cooler compared to ebuyer, £6 for the AM4 adaptor and pay like £10 for shipping. It just seemed completely pointless. The Cooler Master cooler supported AM4 out of the box and from what I can tell has a TDP of 180 watt, for a 65W CPU this seemed to be more than good enough for my needs. My case has good airflow so with either turbo mode or a small overclock above stock clock speed, the Cooler Master should be fine.


I very much appreciate your time and advice you have given me helping me to build my new system. Once build, I will be sure to post updates and photos showing my new computer.
Sorry about my awkwardness and again thank you so much Shlouski for your help.
Hope you have a great day/night
Morgan

 

[OmniDyne]

The cost per Mb of SSD's is still far to high for me to consider worth the expense.

You can get a 120GB SSD for $30. It's totally worth it when you consider that a modern SSD is expected to last 10 years, something that an HDD can't do.

The jump in performance I'm going to notice between my current system and the new system will be so huge anyway

I'm not talking just 5 minute reductions, I'm saying hours. Almost instant boot times, 5 minute OS installation, and mere minutes of updates as opposed to upwards of an hour.

It doesn't matter how beefy your computer is, you will not realize the difference of your new build compared to your Q6600 without an SSD. It looks like you're dropping close to $1000 on your build, $30 is a drop in the bucket.

It's not just recommended that you get an SSD, it's crucial, especially if you're moving to Windows 10.

 

[_Kyle_]

it's crucial

Speaking of Crucial...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G3KRZBY/?tag=pcpapi-20

Here's one for about $30. Not the best SSD, but WAY faster than a traditional HDD.

 

[Darren]

Speaking of Crucial...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G3KRZBY/?tag=pcpapi-20

Here's one for about $30. Not the best SSD, but WAY faster than a traditional HDD.

$27.99

I remember paying $120 for a 120GB lol.

 

[Shlouski]

$27.99

I remember paying $120 for a 120GB lol.

I remember paying 200 pounds ($250) for a 120gb and that was a good deal at the time, think this was around 2009-2010.

Most of my important data is backed up on other drives anyway so it is all good.

Great, backups are very important and you can never have too many.

As for loading times, correct me if I'm wrong but whether I use a SDD or HDD doesn't really effect gaming performance or video rendering times.

Many games take an age to load and many need to load frequently and at inconvenient times, by drastically decreasing these times I feel like performance has substantially increased along with the overall experience, even if I'm getting the same fps. Its well worth getting an SSD for your OS and continuing to use HDD's to store large amounts of data.

I am used to sitting here for 5 minutes waiting for KSP to start up, a reduction of a few seconds or a minute doesn't bother me.

HDD's get slower the more data that's stored on them, as more data is stored closer to the spindle and they will end up getting fragmented to some degree, both of these will cause the drive to slow, SSD's do not have these problems and maintain there speeds, which are many times faster to begin with.

While one single LED may not use much power, if a LED uses 50mA, 20 LED's will use 1A which then make the system more expensive to run. Considering that my computer is running 16-18 hours a day, over the course of a year, it soon adds up, this money is better my my pocket than some huge energy company like SSE. Plus if every computer in the world was light up like a Christmas tree, that is a hell of a lot of power being wasted and thus a lot of carbon being burned for no real purpose. Regardless, I am of the view that the more components on any electrical circuit, the more failure points and thus the greater chance of shorts, fires ect. I also don't have insurance so I have to minimize all such risks as much as possible.

50ma at 12v would equal 600 milliwatts (0.6 watts), these would be very powerful and very bright leds and defiantly wont be found in a pc parts, even these large 12v led house lighting strips only use around 0.08w per led: http://www.ledlightsworld.com/page.html?id=38
There are 1000 milliwatts in a watt and most leds use between 30 to 60 milliwatts, (using the higher) this means an led is using 0.06w at 12v DC, which works out at 0.005amps. If you were to run this led 24/7 then it would use just over half a kwh in a year, I pay around 0.16 cent per kwh, so this led would cost me $0.08 a year to run.

Also take into consideration that manufacturers will use the least amount of materials to create the maximum effect, for example gpu manufacturers will use the least amount of leds possible and then use strategically placed plastic diffusers to create maximum effect, you can end up with a bright rainbow pc with very few leds.

Here is a scenario: Product A is faster than product B, Product A is also cheaper than product B, but product A has a few leds which product B doesn't and it will cost less an a dollar a year (24/7 usage) extra to run, which do you buy, taking into consideration that these leds can often be turned off anyway?

As far as worrying about fires etc, I would be more worried about the parts pulling hundreds of watts, than some little leds.

I very much appreciate your time and advice you have given me helping me to build my new system. Once build, I will be sure to post updates and photos showing my new computer.
Sorry about my awkwardness and again thank you so much Shlouski for your help.

You are welcome

 

[Morgan Winters]

Goodbye Intel Q6600. You have been my loyal servant for the last 10 years. Its time for you to enjoy your retirement in peace. Goodbye old friend xXx

Well after more than 2 weeks waiting for Ebuyer to send me the parts I ordered and having to wait for 3 seperate consignments to arrive with loads of corporate BS mixed in, I have finally got my new computer up and running and wow is this thing is powerful. Let me just give you these Cinebench numbers for reference:
Old PC (Q6600 @ 2400MHz): Single thread = 61 --- Multi thread = 231
New PC (Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3200MHz) Single thread = 146 --- Multi thread = 1551 (first boot test without any drivers)

Please ignore the yellow/white cable going from bottom the top, this is the power/reset/HDD wires. I need to replace this wire with a longer cable so I can route them behind the motherboard tray properly (moving the power/reset buttons and the power/HDD LED's were a mod I did back in 2007/2008 (original Coolermaster buttons/LED on the side are no longer inplace). I will also redo the wiring and some point to make it look a bit neater, I was more concerned in getting the system up and running than with neatness.
Please also ignore this dust left over, a brush and vacuum can only remove so much, I don't have an air compressor and I'm not pressure washing the case during the autumn/winter.

As you have said, loading speeds are limited by the speed of my SATA HDD's. The MSI X470 Gaming Plus does have 2 M.2 slots for SSD's built onto it, after looking at the price of the Western Digital Black NVMe 500GB SSD, this is something I am now considering getting when I have the funds (after my much needed holiday in April). Regardless loading times are noticeably shorter (e.g loading KSP) and this new PC has no issues running all my games at max or very high detail at well over 60FPS. Euro Truck Sim 2 multiplayer now runs at between 60 and 80FPS with light traffic and at very high detail. My old computer (before they gave us B-double trailers) would run at between 10 and 15FPS if I was lucky on the lowest setting, after the B-double update it was totally unplayable (like 5 frames every 5 or 10 seconds).

As part of my order I included 4 120mm case fans as well as a CPU cooler, temperatures are very nice indeed with CPU idleing at around 25°C and GPU at around 30°C in a room that is around 22°C (stock speeds). I have one case fan in the front and one in the side panel blowing air in, one at the back and one at the top blowing out. This case is the Coolermaster CM660 nVidia Edition case which was never designed for this hardware so routing all the cables was a little tricky but I did manage it...just. Still, the temperatures are in a range I am very happy with for such a powerful system. As you can see, the GPU only just fits with only about 1/2 inch between the GPU's cooler cover and the 5 1/4 inch drive bay and the CPU cooler is less than 1/4 inch from the side panel, I am glad that I didn't have to spend a ton buying a new case.

My only issue at the moment is the fact that MSI have moreless forced me to use Windows 10 as the USB doesn't work at all on Windows 7, something that I am not happy with since Win 10 is by far the worst operating system M$ have ever written in so many respects. But this is a whole different story and rant which I won't go into here.

OS aside this is a very nice system with some nice features on the motherboard. The CPU has base speed of 3.2GHz and a turbo speed of 4.1GHz so I have loads of headroom incase I ever need to overclock it above the stock 3.2GHz if I need to, normal daily use I've set it to stock speed to save power. GPU is able to handle any game I have thrown at it so far with ease and I have no doubt it will serve me will for the next few years. Power supply is bigger than I'd hoped making installing it into this case while being able to route the cables behind the motherboard tray a bit tricky but it seems to be built like a tank and with a 10 year warranty, I'm sure it will run this system well for at least the next 5 years. All in all a very nice and powerful system and a massive improvement on my ageing Q6600+8800GT system.

50ma at 12v would equal 600 milliwatts (0.6 watts), these would be very powerful and very bright leds and defiantly wont be found in a pc parts, even these large 12v led house lighting strips only use around 0.08w per led: http://www.ledlightsworld.com/page.html?id=38
There are 1000 milliwatts in a watt and most leds use between 30 to 60 milliwatts, (using the higher) this means an led is using 0.06w at 12v DC, which works out at 0.005amps. If you were to run this led 24/7 then it would use just over half a kwh in a year, I pay around 0.16 cent per kwh, so this led would cost me $0.08 a year to run.

The 50mA value was taken from a datasheet of the LED's I have for another project and not at 12V. 50mA @ 2.5V = 0.125W. At 12V one has to factor in losses due to the resistor.
Every LED still adds to the running cost though...which is more important when you live in one of the most, if not the most expensive countries in the planet. I assume your from the US with that price per kWh. We ain't as lucky as the US when it comes to prices, cost of living here is just ridiculous. Consider this: Newegg are quoting 269.99USD for the Ryzen 7 2700, once converted I paid 361.23USD for mine, for the exact same retail boxed processor, you can see my point.
Regardless, that price you stated is less than half the cost I pay for electric. I pay just over 0.37USD per kWh plus a daily charge of 0.39USD. I'm on a pre-paid key meter which is more expensive nor do I have any way to change it due to living in a rented flat (I can't even change the dangerous mercury lamp in my ketchen to an LED fixture, changing my electric meter is not an option). I am also on a limited budget so I very much notice every milliwatt of power I use. Indeed I have already noticed an increase in my power consumtion due to this upgrade, hence why I cant have millions of LED's lighting up a computer case that sits under my desk. I'm not trying to argu with you and the point your making is perfectly valid, I just prefer to spend that extra few quid I've save not lighting my case up like a football stadium on other things like food, games or my hamster ect. Plus I am planning on going on holiday in April for my first holiday since 2005 so the more money I save now, the longer I can stay in Kiev and the more things I can do while I'm there. The only reason I did this upgrade now was because my old computer was showing signs of it dieing and I didn't want it to take out my HDD's, keyboard/mouse ect. I would have done the upgrade late next year if I had the choice.


Thanks once again for you help in helping me choose these parts and thanks again to Shlouski for suggesting AMD now that they are now actually closer to Intel compared to the Athlon and FX days.

 

[jevery]

And that is what this forum is all about. It's nice to see people come here to seek advice before they buy - engage in discussion with several members and then benefit from collective knowledge resulting in a good outcome.

 

[Margrave Brandenburg]

I'm glad you ditched the originally chosen i7-6700K. It's not that it's old, but rather that you can get a new generation, higher performing CPU for LESS MONEY. (And you did.)

I agree that the lights and fireworks are a sham. Yes, they're power wasted, but that's not my main objection. Rather, they're totally useless.
If I had my way the entire box would be reduced to the size of an atom. That's not possible (obviously). But the box is just a box. The action is on the screen, not the box.
Put anything and everything in the box that make it "go". Leave out the fluff.