2017 Hardware Thread

solarstarshines · 29 Apr 2017

sygnus21 said:

As I reported earlier, I had to replace my Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming GT board because of boot / stability issues. I stated the replacement would be another Gigabyte board in the GA-Z270X-Gaming 8. I also decided to replace the i7-6700K with an i7-7700K.

After days of setting up everything to include a clean install of 10, reinstalling programs, and replacing a couple of case fans, I’m happy to announce all is good :)

Board, case, and fan lights...
Attachment 132620

Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 8 board...
Attachment 132621

Couple of quick notes… the 8 fan headers on this board are what’s known as Hybrid headers and can take both PWM and voltage fans with ease. All headers are 4-pin and can be individually tuned in the BIOS or through Gigabyte’s SIV software to each fan. I used this to tune in Corsair’s ML140 fan, as well as my other case fans and it seems to work well. The fans are tuned by speed per temperature.

I also like the placement of the NVMe slots. On the Z170, the first NVMe slot is placed above the first PCIE slot, while the second sits above the second PCIE slot.

Two problems with this on the Z170 Gaming GT board… In the top NVMe slot you lose two Intel SATA ports (this is also true of the Z270 board). With the bottom slot, you just lose the bottom PCEI (x4) slot. So, if SATA ports are your need, you’ll want to use the bottom. However, the bottom slot of the Gaming GT nearly sits underneath a very hot 2 slot GPU. I’ve had my Samsung 950 Pro hit mid 60’s when gaming… and my games are on a secondary SSD drive.

The Gaming 8 board solves this issue by placing both NVMe slots away from a single GPU. Here, the first slot sits above the first PCIE slot, the second slot, which I use, sits above the third PCIE slot. This leaves plenty of breathing room for NVMe drives if you’re running a single dual slot GPU like me. Placing the 950 in the second slot dropped my temps an average of 6 degrees Celsius.

Speaking of heat, I notice the 7700K seems to run about 8 degrees hotter than the 6700K. The average temps on my 6700K were 25ish (5 percent load) Celsius. The 7700K sits around 33ish, same load. I double checked my TIM paste, even re-applying it. Still reads the same…

Anyway, I’m happy with the new board this far. For those curious about the board a review here. A YouTube here. Warning - video opens with a quick sound file - a hawk scream (Aorus). That's it.

Aorus is the way to go

Gigabyte all day for me and Asrock most Stable Vendors i ever used Asus is up there too

essenbe · 29 Apr 2017

Drew, nice job and great pictures, as usual. Exactly what we've come to expect from you.

pparks1 · 29 Apr 2017

Any quantifiable differences you have noticed between the 6700 and 7700? Seems like most reviews said they were practically identical.
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU dead? | Ars Technica

sygnus21 · 29 Apr 2017

essenbe said:

Drew, nice job and great pictures, as usual. Exactly what we've come to expect from you.

Thanks Steve. Had to setup for this image since hand holding the camera required a faster shutter, and froze those fans which I didn't want. A slow shutter while hand holding the camera would blur the fans but also result in a very unsharp image. The best solution was a tripod for a slow shutter speed while giving the fans the movement I wanted. This also gave me the lighting effect I also wanted, as well as a very sharp image.

Took about 30 shots to get what I wanted because I was being lazy in not trying to use the tripod. In the end the tripod was exactly what I needed. Not a hand held flash shot like the second image :)

pparks1 said:

Any quantifiable differences you have noticed between the 6700 and 7700? Seems like most reviews said they were practically identical.
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU dead? | Ars Technica

I doubt it.

Performance wise I won’t tell you this system blows away the previous setup because I don't believe it does. Yeah you might gain a couple of frames here and there between the board and the 7700K, but I wouldn’t advertise dumping a Z170 board with a 6700K for a few frames. It's mainly for the features and tech.

Anyway I did it because of a faulty previous board, opportunity, and better board tech. A big performance gain would be nice, but I doubt that'd be the case. That said, I’ve yet to run any benchmarks as my crappy GPU is holding me back, but I’ll see what I get and post appropriately.

Cliff S · 30 Apr 2017

Looks great!
Really nice cable management too

Thanks for the mini review, specially about the NVMe placement.

You do have the the most current NVMe driver version(2.2) from Samsung, don't you?: Tool & Software | Download | Samsung V-NAND SSD

Information

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...uide_Rev22.pdf

Revision History

Revision Description Revision Date
1.0 . Initial release version November, 2015
1.1 . Driver version update for USB compatibility January, 2016
2.0 . Support for 960PRO and EVO November, 2016
2.1 . Improve idle power saving on Windows 10 . Unsafe shutdown bug fix on Windows 8.1 & 10 December, 2016
2.2 . Improve interoperability with Virtual Machine Software (e.g. Microsoft Hyper-V) March, 2017

sygnus21 · 30 Apr 2017

Cliff S said:

You do have the the most current NVMe driver version(2.2) from Samsung, don't you?

I thought I did. Thought I looked for it seeing I just put this rig together. Anyway I had 2.1, just DL'd 2.2 and getting ready to install after this post.

Thanks. And Thanks :)

Just installed and got this but installed anyway....

2017 Hardware Thread-nvme-driver-notification.png

No issues :)

Thanks.

Cliff S · 30 Apr 2017

sygnus21 said:

I thought I did. Thought I looked for it seeing I just put this rig together. Anyway I had 2.1, just DL'd 2.2 and getting ready to install after this post.

Thanks. And Thanks :)

Just installed and got this but installed anyway....

No issues :)

Thanks.

You're welcome.
It always ask for permission to overwrite.

sygnus21 · 30 Apr 2017

Never noticed that one but cool :)

Cliff S · 30 Apr 2017

I also believe it's for ALL Samsung's NVMe drives, and not just for the 950's & 960's, as mine is an NVMe MZVLV512HCJH (PM951) client or OEM drive, and is the "Grandfather" of those two, and the driver works for it also.

Cliff S · 30 Apr 2017

pparks1 said:

Any quantifiable differences you have noticed between the 6700 and 7700? Seems like most reviews said they were practically identical.
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU dead? | Ars Technica

sygnus21 said:

Performance wise I won’t tell you this system blows away the previous setup because I don't believe it does. Yeah you might gain a couple of frames here and there between the board and the 7700K, but I wouldn’t advertise dumping a Z170 board with a 6700K for a few frames. It's mainly for the features and tech.

Anyway I did it because of a faulty previous board, opportunity, and better board tech. A big performance gain would be nice, but I doubt that'd be the case. That said, I’ve yet to run any benchmarks as my crappy GPU is holding me back, but I’ll see what I get and post appropriately.

The newer CPU's are not necessarily faster or better.

They have better power management like digital thermometer for Skylake & Kaby Lake(they save more power or throttle when the CPU gets too warm, not good to desktop users that OC, but keep the CPU cooler for most other users),
more instruction sets(i.e. codecs>hello 4K Netflix (only with the 7th gen)),
tighter/better security features(hello SGX, MPEX, DEP, and SME),
better virtualization features(SVE & SVM),
and better general CPUID features.

Here is a video from Linus on New Years Eve 2016 ya'll might find interesting: