New Build Advice!

Maraio1

New member
Hi There!
I was just wondering for some new build advice.
I've got around £1,650 to spend. I would be looking to keep this build for a good 4 to 5 years, so I'm trying to get the maximum longevity out of my money. I've narrowed it down to two options, one with 2 Asus 970's and one with 2 Zotac 780Ti's (the ones on offer for £300 each). I can't really find any benchmarks out there where there's a real comparison between the two. But it's obvious that the 970 will use less power as it's Maxwell. They both cost £300, so there's no price difference. Do one SLI better than the other as there might be scaling problems? What's the Zotac like? I really can't find any reviews out there on it, so is that a good sign?
The rest of the planned rig is below:
CPU: Intel 4690K
Motherboard: Asus VII Hero
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB
PSU: Corsair HX 850i
SSD: Samsung 840 256GB
HDD: WD Black 2TB
Case: Corsair 760T
CPU Coller: H100i
Thermal Compound: Artic Silver 5

I already have a good 1080p monitor, but would like to upgrade to 1440p later.

Thanks in advance.
Maraio1
 
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No point spending all that money right now if you are just playing at 1080p at the moment. Probably better off getting a single 980 as MadShadow says until you are ready to get the 1440p monitor and then go SLI.
 
Given that, despite inferior power efficiency, a 780Ti is not far behind a 980, and that it can be had for way less money, I say go for the 780Ti. Zotac is a good brand. Their aftermarket coolers are quite decent. They tend not to do as much "pimping out" of the PCB though. Gigabyte and ASUS add way more robust than stock power delivery, Zotac does too, but to a lesser extent. In short, the maximum possible overclock on the Zotac card is likely to be less than, say, on an ASUS Strix. Not by much though, and that shouldn't deter you from buying Zotac. I'd buy one.

Your build looks good. Is that "8GB of RAM" a single stick? Don't do that. Run 2 sticks so it's dual channel. 2x4GB. I'd go with 2133Mhz Cas 9 given that it can offer 1FPS extra or so in games and it's not much more expensive.

Your powersupply is meh. There are better power supplies out there. Corsair PSUs tend to be overpriced for what they really offer you. Check out EVGA's Supernova G2 and P2.
 
Ram!

So with the RAM, would you Recommend This RAM then? I'm a bit confused with all these different types of RAM with all of the different Frequencies and Latenceys.
What about This or This? As I'm really confused.......
Thanks :)
 
So with the RAM, would you Recommend This RAM then? I'm a bit confused with all these different types of RAM with all of the different Frequencies and Latenceys.
What about This or This? As I'm really confused.......
Thanks :)

Assuming they are all similar in price you want the highest speed, lowest latency and lowest voltage possible. It's not worth spending more money on better kits beyond a certain point because the performance benefits quickly diminish. All of the kits you picked out are pretty good but with a Devils Canyon chip the higher speed of the 2400C11 kit will be more important than the lower latency of the others. As that's also the cheapest kit I would recommend you go for that ;) I put it in my 4690k build, it looks great with a Maximus VII and performs fine.

Seeing as you have enough room for it why not get a H105 instead of a H100i? It won't be a big difference in performance either way just wondered.

JR
 
They're all pretty much the same price, so I'll go for the 2400Hz kit then.
I'd like to go to for the H100i because of the Corsair Link. I've not looked at the 105 much , is there a good performance increase, or what about even the 110?
 
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They're all pretty much the same price, so I'll go for the 2400Hz kit then.
I'd like to go to for the H100i because of the Corsair Link. I've not looked at the 105 much , is there a good performance increase?

You aren't really losing out much by not having Corsair Link, it tells you what the coolant temperature is and lets you change the LED colour but other than that you don't get much out of it. Setting up fan profiles is far more robust using your motherboard and BIOS or included software especially with Asus fan expert. The H105 has a small performance gain but it does particularly well at lower fan speeds. There's not much between them I'd just go with the one you think looks best in your system.

Check out Tom's review for further info, with that motherboard and memory I personally think the H105 would look better. Alongside Dominator Platinums I prefer the look of a H100i but that's just me. Having owned both i'm sure you will like either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6W5WU-O1Is

JR
 
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