Build critique? Please, and thanks : ) (WoW)

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03-02-2017, 05:45 PM
Deadpete

Build critique? Please, and thanks : ) (WoW)

Hello all : )
I've always wanted to multibox and I got the itch real hard because my current hand-me-down comp is dying.
So, with the addition of token--> BNet balance, my comp dying and needing a new one, why not get into boxing : )

I don't know much about computer hardware, so I've been doing a lot of research and talking with friends/randoms to get this build list.
If you'd like to give a word of advice please do!

Things I need:
To be able to at the very least 5 box WoW, but, I'd like to possibly go to 8 or 10 in the future.
I have never played WoW on ultra, so that's not needed. I just need to be able to see stuff good enough to not 'stand in fire.'
Windows/Discord/Browser/Spotify maybe
To have it last a decent amount of time.
2x 1080 monitor at the most.

Things I don't do:
Stream
Video Record
Use crazy good monitors.

Build.. (prices listed are my local Microcenter, after rebate when applicable. I don't really need price critiqued, just rig ability to multibox.)

Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake 4.2 GHz LGA 1151 Boxed Processor- 300
Corsair Hydro Series H100i V2 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - 100
ASUS GeForce Strix GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 PCIe Video Card w/ Aura- RGB Lighting - 390
Mobo: AS Rock z170 pro4s - 64
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit - 1pk DSP OEM DVD - 110
Samsung 850 EVO Series 250GB SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal SSD Single Unit Version MZ-75E250B/AM - 100
Crucial 32GB 16GB x 2 DDR4-2400 PC4-19200 Desktop Memory Kit - 210
Corsair CX Series CX750M 750 Watt ATX Modular Power Supply - 65
Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-02 Redshift ATX Special Edition Gaming Case w/ Red LED Fans - 45

The only problem I see right now, that I know of, is the case might not be big enough for the cooler so I'm looking at case upgrades.

Any issues for boxing here?
I very much appreciate any help!

Thanks
Kevin

*Edits for formatting issues.
03-02-2017, 09:48 PM
Ughmahedhurtz

If you're not planning to OC the i7 to 5GHz, I would think that massive radiator is overkill. I run mine on the H80i and it never gets over about 57C at 4GHz unless I'm running the Prime95 "max heat" torture test.

[edit] Well, I stand by that, except to say that I had to bump up my fan speeds from "silent" to "not quite silent" on the radiator to overcome the heat load that Empyrion puts on the CPU. Apparently hours of building bases is quite the processor suck. ;) Caveat with that statement is that i only run one 120mm Noctua fan on my H80i instead of the two that came with it.
03-03-2017, 02:39 AM
Deadpete

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

If you're not planning to OC the i7 to 5GHz, I would think that massive radiator is overkill. I run mine on the H80i and it never gets over about 57C at 4GHz unless I'm running the Prime95 "max heat" torture test.

Thank you for the response : )

Besides electricity usage, is there a downside to using too big of a cooler?
03-03-2017, 10:28 AM
Ellay

I would get a NVMe M.2 solid state drive instead of the SATA. The motherboard you picked out supports it and the gains are huge.
Check out the Samgsun 960 Evo or the Pro series, it's 3200 mb/s read and 2100 mb/s write speeds. This is a massive difference compared to the 550 mb/s and 520 mb/s respectively.

Additionally looking on amazon, the M.2 type seems to be cheaper.
03-03-2017, 03:14 PM
Ughmahedhurtz

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ellay

I would get a NVMe M.2 solid state drive instead of the SATA. The motherboard you picked out supports it and the gains are huge.
Check out the Samgsun 960 Evo or the Pro series, it's 3200 mb/s read and 2100 mb/s write speeds. This is a massive difference compared to the 550 mb/s and 520 mb/s respectively.

Additionally looking on amazon, the M.2 type seems to be cheaper.

I have run two 950 Pro NVMe units in my system, and I note two things of interest.

First, the OS (and install drivers and recovery tools) support is still maturing for the M.2 PCI-E devices, so that's something to keep in mind with regards to backups and/or reinstalls.

Second, at the time I put my first 950 Pro in, I could get two 850 Evo drives for less money, get the same space, and better random write performance. The read performance of the single NVMe device was roughly on par with a 3-drive RAID-0 SATA SSD setup, with the write performance being +/- ~30% depending on whether I was testing sequential or random (small queue depth) writes. I ended up going with dual NVMe devices, which is what it took to get the actual listed performance out of them, even in synthetic benchmarks. It's faster loading up 5 WoW clients than dual-850s but it's not enough that I'd ever subject myself to the...I suppose "unpolished" feel of getting them configured and running Win 7. I realize most folks are doing Win10 and it would have been easier to do that, but again the tools I use for recovery in the event of system failures were not happy with the early M.2 NVMe device support. That could also have been a BIOS or chipset thing. /shrug YMMV

[edit] FYI, I'm using an MSI Gaming 7 z170a, which looks like the same base chipset as the OP listed, so....
03-03-2017, 05:28 PM
Deadpete

Thanks for the responses guys.

My buddies that were assisting me with the build seem to have pretty negative opinions on M.2. Overpriced, undersupported, would create barely a difference for me.

They might possibly be running on outdated info? I'm not sure.
03-03-2017, 06:33 PM
MiRai

The build looks fine, but here is feedback:

1) Kaby Lake runs off of Z270, not Z170. Z170 will supposedly support Kaby Lake with a BIOS update, but if you don't want the headache of wondering if the Z170 motherboard you've selected will run the CPU right out of the box, then pick up a Z270 board.

2) If you can fit it nicely in your case, then I'd keep the H100i because more radiator space means lower RPMs on the fans, which ensures things stay nice and quiet. Ever since I moved into the water-cooling sector last year I've been putting together custom loops that were more than the bare minimum so that I can keep my fan speeds lower while.

3) SATA SSD vs NVMe M.2 SSD

4) If you're going to stick to a SATA SSD, are you going to be throwing both your OS and games onto the same drive? I probably wouldn't do that unless it was a Samsung 850 Pro, since the EVO uses a cheaper type of NAND which is going to wear out sooner than the Pro. Or... pick up a second SSD and separate the games from the OS because that's probably a lot of reading and writing to just one SSD with TLC NAND.

5) Do you need W10 Pro? The Pro version doesn't do what it used to, and the Home version has almost everything the Pro version has, especially for someone who just simply uses a computer on a daily basis and doesn't have any special needs. So, if you need Pro, then get Pro, but if you don't and you can find Home cheaper, then I'd say get Home.

I think that's it.
03-03-2017, 07:10 PM
Deadpete

Quote:

1) Kaby Lake runs off of Z270, not Z170. Z170 will supposedly support Kaby Lake with a BIOS update, but if you don't want the headache of wondering if the Z170 motherboard you've selected will run the CPU right out of the box, then pick up a Z270 board.

They did end up pointing that out, and I've switched to Z270.

Quote:

2) If you can fit it nicely in your case, then I'd keep the H100i because more radiator space means lower RPMs on the fans, which ensures things stay nice and quiet. Ever since I moved into the water-cooling sector last year I've been putting together custom loops that were more than the bare minimum so that I can keep my fan speeds lower while.

Cool deal. The case I picked fits it.
I haven't learned much about fan speeds and temperatures yet, do you know any good sources of info you'd suggest I check out?

Quote:

3) SATA SSD vs NVMe M.2 SSD

Will read, thanks : )

Quote:

4) If you're going to stick to a SATA SSD, are you going to be throwing both your OS and games onto the same drive? I probably wouldn't do that unless it was a Samsung 850 Pro, since the EVO uses a cheaper type of NAND which is going to wear out sooner than the Pro. Or... pick up a second SSD and separate the games from the OS because that's probably a lot of reading and writing to just one SSD with TLC NAND.

One of my friends originally suggested going with separate drives for this reason, and the other one talked him into saying 1 is just fine because that's all he ever does and doesn't have probblems.
Lol, love these style debates.
If only one EVO is being used how long of a life expectancy could/should be expected?

Quote:

5) Do you need W10 Pro? The Pro version doesn't do what it used to, and the Home version has almost everything the Pro version has, especially for someone who just simply uses a computer on a daily basis and doesn't have any special needs. So, if you need Pro, then get Pro, but if you don't and you can find Home cheaper, then I'd say get Home.

That was old info not getting edited out, my bad. Never had intention to get Pro, just home. And on USB not DVD since I probably won't get an optical until I have a good reason and I guess USB is transferable once if needed. Also my buddy that's going to physically put it together told me to get USB so, he's the boss lol.

Thanks for the response.

Assuming I don't mind using video settings that are just good enough to not die to fire.. how many accounts do you think this build could run?
03-04-2017, 10:34 AM
Ellay

If your using Windows 10 the NVMe SSD's should be fine, if your using Windows 7 don't touch it.

You'll be able to run 10+ instances with this build. I'm using a 4 year old system and I play fine at 60 fps with regular settings.
03-04-2017, 06:06 PM
Deadpete

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ellay

If your using Windows 10 the NVMe SSD's should be fine, if your using Windows 7 don't touch it.

You'll be able to run 10+ instances with this build. I'm using a 4 year old system and I play fine at 60 fps with regular settings.

Thank you for the response, that's good to hear : )
Now to build my liquid back up for BNet balance, went kind of wild spending last week lol.
03-05-2017, 09:13 PM
MiRai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadpete

I haven't learned much about fan speeds and temperatures yet, do you know any good sources of info you'd suggest I check out?

I don't know of any sources for that, but what I mention is mostly common sense. There's no need to run the fans at their maximum speed when they can dissipate the exact same amount of heat at 20%? Normally, you would set a PWM fan curve, either in the BIOS or supplied software, which would speed the fans up at a certain temperature, or find a fan speed that's tolerable and can be used 100% of the time (rather than creating a curve). I'm guessing that either the motherboard manufacturer or Corsair provides software to configure this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadpete

If only one EVO is being used how long of a life expectancy could/should be expected?

The endurance of the drive is listed at 75TBW (Terabytes Written).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadpete

Assuming I don't mind using video settings that are just good enough to not die to fire.. how many accounts do you think this build could run?

I would guess at least 5.
03-08-2017, 02:44 PM
Xixillia

So... I pretty much just finished building this exact computer - last night's raid was the first time I ran anything with it and I was mostly pleased. I'll work on a write up, maybe with some video stuff/comparisons.