P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 3: Candidate Parts Lists
I have prepared three candidate builds for my new machine, with a fourth build that is a final build, it is a combination of the other three.
The first build is minimialist, and involved keeping as many of my current parts as I can. I am just upgrading the RAM, Graphics Card, and Hard Drive. This is not optimal, since my current machine is over five years old, and it is unlikely that my processor (AMD Phenom 2 X6) would be up to the standards required of today’s games, even if it met my own personal requirements. I would also be unlikely to get the full benefit of the very powerful GTX 980 ti graphics card with my current machine.
The second build is a full new system, but I had tried to keep the price down as much as possible, such as by using an i5 instead of an i7 CPU, and 16GB of RAM instead of 32 GB.
The third build is also a full new system, but I have used higher spec parts and I have not paid as much attention to price. I was surprised to note that the difference in price between the lower end build and the higher end build was relatively slight, and so I decided to create a fourth build that was a combination of the two.
This final build has an i7 processor, which does not provide a huge benefit for gaming compared to the i5, but the addition of multi-threading provides 8 logical processes, compared to the 4 oh the i5. This will greatly benefit multi-tasking, something that is very useful for development.
I am using 16 GB of RAM for several reasons.
Firstly, 16GB is going to be enough for the forseeable future. Most games and development utilities would not come close to utilising 32 GB of RAM. Even 16GB is probably excessive for most tasks.
Secondly, I was surprised to discover that the newer Skylake chips do not support quad-channel memory, only dual-channel. It is surprising that the Skylake chips, being newer, don’t support quad-channel memory, when the older Haswell-E chips do. I had thought of getting 4 sticks of RAM (Possibly 4×8, giving 32GBs), but with just dual channel support, there is not as much reason to fill all of my DIMM slots.
I have also eliminated the backup hard drive from this build, since I can reuse the one I have for the time being.
I have also selected a cheaper motherboard. I really like the ROG boards from Asus, I have a ROG Crosshair IV in my current system and it’s excellent, but I feel that the extra features that the ROG board has compared to the Asus Z170 are mainly designed for Overclocking, which is something I would never do on a development system. The ROG Maximus VIII probably has a slightly higher build quality, and it can support slightly faster memory, but other than that, it’s basically the same.
The power supply that I selected is on “Tier 1”, the highest Tier, of the power supply rating system, so it should be fine.
WD Caviar drives are also reputable, so I should be ok there too.
Build 1 | Build 2 | Build 3 | Build 4 | ||||||||
Component | Model | Price | Model | Price | Model | Price | Model | Price | |||
CPU | None | Intel Core i5-6600K SkyLake | €304.78 | Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake | €507.90 | Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake | €507.90 | ||||
Motherboard | None | MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Socket 1151 | €174.86 | ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero Z170 | €234.55 | Asus Z170 PRO GAMING | €179.25 | ||||
RAM | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB 4X4GB Quad Channel DDR3 1866MHz | €203.60 | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 2X8GB Dual Channel DDR4 3200 | €163.84 | PC G.Skill 32GB DDR4 3200 | €342.00 | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 2X8GB Dual Channel DDR4 3200 | €163.84 | |||
Graphics Card | MSI Gaming GTX980Ti 6GB DDR5 Nvidia | €789.00 | MSI Gaming GTX980Ti 6GB DDR5 Nvidia | €789.00 | MSI Gaming GTX980Ti 6GB DDR5 Nvidia | €789.00 | MSI Gaming GTX980Ti 6GB DDR5 Nvidia | €789.00 | |||
Hard Drive | GD6346 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB | €114.53 | GD6346 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB | €114.53 | GD6346 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB | €114.53 | GD6346 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB | €114.53 | |||
Backup Hard Drive | None | WESTERN DIGITAL 4TB, USB 3.0 | €173.25 | WESTERN DIGITAL 4TB, USB 3.0 | €173.25 | None | |||||
Power Supply | None | Corsair PSU 750W RMI Gold Modular | €162.31 | Corsair PSU 750W RMI Gold Modular | €162.31 | Corsair PSU 750W RMI Gold Modular | €162.31 | ||||
Case | None | Kolink Aviator Midi Tower | €62.99 | Kolink Aviator Midi Tower | €62.99 | Kolink Aviator Midi Tower | €62.99 | ||||
€1,107.13 | €1,945.56 | €2,386.53 | €1,979.82 |