Couple of Build Questions?

shadow2201 said:

So I'm looking to build a PC for a gamer friend. I've built plenty of PC's before, but mostly smaller budget PC's for home use, not much in terms of pure gaming PC.

1. Would it be more beneficial to use an i7-6700K and 16 GB RAM or an i5-6600K and 32 GB RAM?

2. Am I going to have a noticeable jump in performance if I go with like DDR4-3200 RAM over DDR4-2133 RAM? I know "if you have the money make the jump", but is it worth the investment, in terms of "price to performance"?

3. If I have no intentions of overclocking the CPU, do I need liquid cooling? Is liquid cooling going to give me any kind of jump in performance or will a heatsink/fan do enough?

Thanks for any help, like I said this is my first true gaming build, so I just want to make sure I get things right.

1) Are you going to do any rendering at all? If no, than i5 but if yes than i7.

2) Not at all, but a little like ~5% when it come to rendering.

3) Liquid cooling is overrated these days, and I wouldn't stick with Intel/AMD box cooler for a long period of time because they are using cheap quality materials and therefore the heats dissipation is a big failure. Get this Hyper 212 EVO {Amazon.com: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2): Electronics } which is cost $40 USD because its have large heatsinks and a big fan to keeps everything quiet and cool all the time. Just make sure that your case have enough space and RAM heatsink doesn't interfere with this cooler.

If this is your first time overclocking, don't do it! Because there is possible chances that you will suicide your PC. The first step of overclocking your PC is don't overclocking your PC unless you know what you're doing. By messing with the BIOS and changing CPU voltage can make the PC un-bootable.

1. I would go for the 6700k myself, it is an awesome 4 core chip and great for gaming.

2. I would take the lower speed ram and put the savings toward the 6700k

3. I don't think liquid cooling is overrated at all but probably not necessary in this case just the same. As for overclocking , with the 6700k it is most likely you can go from stock 4.0 to 4.2 to 4.3 merely by changing the multi to 42 or 43 and leave everything on auto.

doorules said:

1. I would go for the 6700k myself, it is an awesome 4 core chip and great for gaming.

2. I would take the lower speed ram and put the savings toward the 6700k

3. I don't think liquid cooling is overrated at all but probably not necessary in this case just the same. As for overclocking , with the 6700k it is most likely you can go from stock 4.0 to 4.2 to 4.3 merely by changing the multi to 42 or 43 and leave everything on auto.

+1 on this. But even if there are no plans to OC the CPU, one of the benefits of liquid cooling is it will bring the CPU temperature down from gaming levels to idle temperatures in less than 10 seconds, where with most air cooling it takes 10 minutes.

"So a water-cooler will keep my processor cooler than an active air-cooler?
Sometimes, but not always. The purpose of liquid-cooling your processor is not always about getting it running colder, although that can happen. An expensive, high-end air-cooler may be just as capable as a closed-loop water-cooler at maintaining a cool operational temperature for your CPU. What a liquid-chiller can do, though, is bring the CPU back down from its peak temperature far more quickly than an air cooler can.
That means you can get an overclocked chip down from a peak of 70°C back to its 36°C idle temperature in less than ten seconds rather than ten minutes. When you’re talking about overclocked CPUs especially, that can seriously extend the working life of your expensive components."
Closed-loop liquid cooler roundup: 8 coolers reviewed | PC Gamer

Additionally, I would pay a lot of attention to good case fans and air flow, making sure those fans can be controlled, gaming versus web browsing. Get a motherboard that allows you to control all the fans in one place. I can control CPU pump, CPU fan and chasis fans all with one click with this Asus Maximus VIII formula.



It makes a huge difference. When my two intake and one exhaust fans are at standard levels, my 1080 GPU gets to about 75C with a boost clock of 1898 max. With my chasis fans ramped up, the GPU temp stays below 70C and the boost clock goes to 1964 and never below 1911. So in the end I have a GPU below 70C and an I7 6700K that rarely goes above 50C, maybe up to about 55C max.

Cool components are happy and long living.

I totally agree with essenbe and swarfega on the memory. I consider 16GB the worry free zone for gaming, and as essenbe mentions, more than that is IMHO a waste of money.

As far as memory speeds and gaming are concerned, gaming performance charts don't get much flatter than when comparing memory speeds.



DDR4 Memory Scaling on Intel Z170 - Finding The Best DDR4 Memory Kit Speed - Page 5 of 6 - Legit ReviewsMetro Last LightÂ*and GTA V

With this motherboard I could have gone with 64GB and speeds up to 4,000 MHZ. LOL. Thanks for the capability but for real world, no thanks.