Sorry about this newbie question, but I need to be sure about some things before I proceed with this special build. This desktop needs to be very cool and quiet, as I'll be doing lots of stereo music serving to my external DAC. But ~ 20% of the time I will be doing DVD and 1080p (BluRay) encoding in Sony Vegas Pro 13-so I need some pretty serious hardware. Along with the ASUS Z97-A board , ASUS R9 270 graphics card (AMD rather than Nvidia GPUs seem to excel under Sony Vegas), the Haswell 4790K CPU seems like the best choice.
However, its pointless to accept the 4790K's power draw and heat, as its 4.0 GHz stock speed is a good 1.0GHz faster than I need for any of my music software and for websurfing. Fortunately, the Z97-A's extensive BIOS feature set will easily and safely allow the 4790K to be accordingly undervolted to run at, say, 3.2 GHz-the stock speed of the low power 4790S. Correct?
Then, on the other hand, when doing video encoding in Sony Vegas, I could opt to run the 4790K at its stock 4.0GHz-or even a bit beyond to maybe 4.4GHz. Yes? Can I do all of this with no problems?
But here's the frustrating snag in my master plan: The reviews seem to concur that despite its impressively low fan noise levels, the ASUS R9 270 card's power consumption tends to ramp up pretty fast, even at idle. So here's, what I think, may be one or two solutions:
Option 1.) A very unlikely solution but here it is: Can the 4790K's CPU be undervolted (underclocked) independent of its "on-chip" GPU? If so, then to maintain a cool and quiet low power draw pc (when not doing video encoding), I can undervolt the CPU, while running the chip's GPU at whatever voltage it needs for all around decent rendering (web surfing), while keeping the ASUS graphics card disabled via Windows Device Manager (or some similar utility in the ASUS Z97-A board's BIOS feature set). Will that work?
Option 2.) Install an additional video card-a decent one but very low power (fanless). Then, again, to maintain a cool and quiet low power draw pc, when not video encoding, I can disable the ASUS card, enable the low power card and undervolt the 4790K down to ~ 3.2GHz. A good cool and quiet pc solution? If yes, any suggestions for the low power (fanless) card? Thanks.
However, its pointless to accept the 4790K's power draw and heat, as its 4.0 GHz stock speed is a good 1.0GHz faster than I need for any of my music software and for websurfing. Fortunately, the Z97-A's extensive BIOS feature set will easily and safely allow the 4790K to be accordingly undervolted to run at, say, 3.2 GHz-the stock speed of the low power 4790S. Correct?
Then, on the other hand, when doing video encoding in Sony Vegas, I could opt to run the 4790K at its stock 4.0GHz-or even a bit beyond to maybe 4.4GHz. Yes? Can I do all of this with no problems?
But here's the frustrating snag in my master plan: The reviews seem to concur that despite its impressively low fan noise levels, the ASUS R9 270 card's power consumption tends to ramp up pretty fast, even at idle. So here's, what I think, may be one or two solutions:
Option 1.) A very unlikely solution but here it is: Can the 4790K's CPU be undervolted (underclocked) independent of its "on-chip" GPU? If so, then to maintain a cool and quiet low power draw pc (when not doing video encoding), I can undervolt the CPU, while running the chip's GPU at whatever voltage it needs for all around decent rendering (web surfing), while keeping the ASUS graphics card disabled via Windows Device Manager (or some similar utility in the ASUS Z97-A board's BIOS feature set). Will that work?
Option 2.) Install an additional video card-a decent one but very low power (fanless). Then, again, to maintain a cool and quiet low power draw pc, when not video encoding, I can disable the ASUS card, enable the low power card and undervolt the 4790K down to ~ 3.2GHz. A good cool and quiet pc solution? If yes, any suggestions for the low power (fanless) card? Thanks.
