What is improvable with this Skylake build?

Katalysis

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 8, 2008
Messages
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My wife wants her own desktop, so I'm building a new one and giving her my 2500k machine. I haven't built a new machine since I built the 2500k when it launched, so I'm out of the loop. The only parts I am salvaging from my 2500k machine is a 980 Ti (the wife will get by with a 7970) so ignore the price, and a 4TB Seagate external for backup. I have an 850 Evo in my 2500k machine I could pull, but I'll probably just leave it since it already has Win 10 on it and not deal with the hassle of transferring licenses and reinstalling (I have to buy another copy either way).

Will be used mainly for 3440x1440p gaming, Steam Link streaming, heavy office multitasking use, occasional OCR processing. Will be OCing. Live in Central IL, no Microcenter nearby, Amazon tax. Budget is flexible.

She kind of wants it NOW. I was planning on waiting for Broadwell-E, but I don't really want to go x99 at this stage of its lifetime since I can get Thunderbolt and some other options on z170.

PC Hound Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 8M ($348.98 @ NCIX)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 (rev. 1.0) ($199.95 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.SKILL 32GB (2 x 16GB) Ripjaws V Series ($175.95 @ Amazon)
Video Card: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 Ti GV-N98TG1 GAMING-6GD ($619.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W SuperNOVA 220-P2-0850-X1 ($109.99 @ NCIX)
Storage: SAMSUNG 512GB 950 PRO MZ-V5P512BW ($317.46 @ Amazon)
Storage #2: SAMSUNG 500GB 850 EVO MZ-75E500B/AM ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Storage #3: WD 2TB BLACK SERIES WD2003FZEX ($122.66 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 (CC-9011030-WW) ($124.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H115i ($119.69 @ Newegg)
Total: $2,289.65
Price may include shipping, rebates, promotions, and tax
Generated by PC Hound


I've never owned a HT processor. I know the 6600k is probably a better value for my needs, but I'm going for the 6700k in the hopes it lasts me as long as the 2500k did.

I HATE HATE HATE the look of the Gigabyte motherboard, but apparently that's the go-to motherboard at the moment. Are there other good options for 4 x PCIE NVMe? I was an ASUS man for a long time. If the DX 12 Dream is legit, I wouldn't mind going SLI or even hybrid with the 980 Ti and the 7970 if that is actually going to work. Not sure I will ever have the lanes for it on z170?

Does that storage setup make sense? 950 boot Win 10 and primary programs, Evo for Steam overflow, Black for media and document storage (I suppose I could go down to a Blue here?). 2 TB might not be enough considering all my music.

I have the Corsair H110 in my current PC. The plastic backplate was a joke and the fittings snapped for one of the posts and I had to half ass rig it on there. Are any other AIO's comparable in performance with better hardware? I'm not too impressed with the Corsair Link either. Building a custom loop frightens me and I've never done it.

I like the look of the Air case, and have had good experience with Corsair cases, but I'm open to suggestions (that Thermaltake cube case looks neat but over complicated for me).

Thanks for any help.
 
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Going down the list:

The Z170 just barely has enough PCI-E lanes for a SLI setup and a single M.2 card if my math is right. A slightly cheaper option would be this MSI motherboard:
MSI MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

With that said, if you're fine with just a single M.2 card, this other MSI motherboard would be worth looking at:
MSI Z170A SLI Plus LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

It did very well in HardOCP's review:
Overclocking & Conclusions - MSI Z170A SLI Plus LGA 1151 Motherboard Review

The Storage setup doesn't make much sense mainly due to the WD 2TB Black drive. In general, Black drives are just for those who want to show off how much money they can spend. If you want greater hard drive reliability, get a HGST drive. If you want a bang for the buck drive, you're looking at Toshiba or WD Red drives.

As for the liquid cooling, the H110i GT that you have actually had one of the better mounting systems out there for CLCs. If you thought the H110i GT's was bad, then the original H110 would be absolutely shit to you. As for the H115, its mounting system is about the same as the H110i GT in terms of quality but slightly lesser chance of snapping off the post. But check out the Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer 240:
ARCTIC COOLING Liquid Freezer 240 ACFRE00013A 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler - Newegg.com

It did very well in HardOCP's review and offers similar performance to your current H110GTX while being significantly quieter.
Introduction - Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer 240 AIO CPU Cooler Review
 
Thanks for the input.

I checked out those MSI boards and they actually led me to the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon (it's not in the PC Hound database yet apparently). Looks like it has everything I need, minus some of the on-board reset and debug leds, and I love the styling.
 
Last edited:
Going down the list:

The Z170 just barely has enough PCI-E lanes for a SLI setup and a single M.2 card if my math is right. A slightly cheaper option would be this MSI motherboard:
MSI MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

Z170 is limited to 16 PCIe lanes for the GPU(s).

The chipset supports an extra 20 PCIe lanes, but those can't be used for GPUs.

At least that is my understanding after doing a bit of research the other day.
 
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