New build, new concerns (can't test for 2 weeks) -

[Kayley]

I've not really multiboxed or played any games in about 7ish months, so I'm pretty lost (tech). Hit up my bff google and mostly just found people raging about their favourite brand of 'XyZ' like always

I should have asked before purchasing, but if I need to buy different components-- no dramas.

Motherboard: Asus X99-A LGA2011-3 ATX Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core i7-5930K Haswell-E 3.5GHz 15MB
System Storage: Intel 730 Series 2.5" 7mm 240GB SSD
Mass Storage: WD Black WD1003FZEX 3.5" 1TB 64MB 7200RPM
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB Kit (4x8GB) DDR4 CL16 2400MHz
Graphics: MSI Radeon R9 Fury X 4GB HBM 3x DisplayPort HDMI x2
Power Supply: Dont have one yet.
Monitor: BenQ XL2730Z 27" WQHD WS 1MS 144Hz FreeSync LED Monitor

I need some advice on decent PSU brands and what would be required to power this machine, I overclock.
Don't have a case yet, since the GPU has that AIO cooling setup, I am still looking for something with enough fan slots to swap around (any ideas?).

The real concern, that I didn't pay much attention to in my haste was the VRAM. I'm going to only play 10 accounts, will the Fury X be ok? I've tried searching but i'm not getting the best results (or my google skills are weak).

I should buy another monitor too right? I have my old S27A950D which is only 1080p, mixing resolutions doesn't work so well with mouse repeater... oor does it? :P
Finally loading times! Should I buy another SSD and RAID 0?

I'm at work, the stuff listed above is what I have already. I'm not home for another two weeks so i'm just twiddling my thumbs and only NOW wondering if I bought the correct PC to play 10 WoW accounts. I'm pretty greedy too, I like the main on Ultra etc

Thanks


NEW SETUP HERE


I'm not too savvy when it comes to forum links. =[

[MiRai]

I need some advice on decent PSU brands and what would be required to power this machine, I overclock.

Anything with something like 850W. Corsair, Seasonic, and EVGA seem to all make/sell some pretty decent PSUs.

Don't have a case yet, since the GPU has that AIO cooling setup, I am still looking for something with enough fan slots to swap around (any ideas?).

I didn't want to ignore the question, but I don't have an answer. This is generally something you're going to need to look for yourself since cases are pretty much personal preference.

The real concern, that I didn't pay much attention to in my haste was the VRAM. I'm going to only play 10 accounts, will the Fury X be ok? I've tried searching but i'm not getting the best results (or my google skills are weak).

This album shows some single player VRAM usage numbers at the Alliance garrison in Shadowmoon Valley. You can subtract ~430MB off of those numbers since my idle desktop eats up that much before loading up the game client.

They're all 2560x1440 (based off of the monitor you've purchased) and they're without any anti-aliasing. From the looks of it, and assuming you want to run a resolution somewhere in the ballpark of 2560x1440, you may have to mix and match your APIs since DX11 on 10 clients is likely going to use over 4GB of VRAM.

And yes, in that album, DX9 on Ultra was running terrible. I do suggest using DX11 these days whenever possible since you're bound to get better framerates, and you may have to end up disabling SSAO altogether since it tends to eat a lot of VRAM and GPU.

I should buy another monitor too right? I have my old S27A950D which is only 1080p, mixing resolutions doesn't work so well with mouse repeater... oor does it? :P

Mixing resolutions doesn't always work out depending on the layout you want to use, but you can generally make it work.

Finally loading times! Should I buy another SSD and RAID 0?

Probably not worth it since SSDs are fast enough on their own, but if you were going to buy another SSD then it'd be useful as a drive just for the OS or just for games (however you want to look at it).

[mbox_bob]

This album shows some single player VRAM usage numbers at the Alliance garrison in Shadowmoon Valley. You can subtract ~430MB off of those numbers since my idle desktop eats up that much before loading up the game client.

They're all 2560x1440 (based off of the monitor you've purchased) and they're without any anti-aliasing. From the looks of it, and assuming you want to run a resolution somewhere in the ballpark of 2560x1440, you may have to mix and match your APIs since DX11 on 10 clients is likely going to use over 4GB of VRAM.

And yes, in that album, DX9 on Ultra was running terrible. I do suggest using DX11 these days whenever possible since you're bound to get better framerates, and you may have to end up disabling SSAO altogether since it tends to eat a lot of VRAM and GPU.

Probably worth noting that as you load more clients they can reuse the loaded textures, so you don't necessarily need 10x the vram indicated. Not to say that you'll be sweet running Ultra settings on 10 clients, but you may be able to play comfortably with the backgrounders on lower details. This is definitely one of those, try it out, and see what gives. I haven't seen any reports back on the Fury/HBM and multiboxing settings (not that I've been looking hard though). Think of yourself as the guinea pig, and we will await your report .

Also the AMD Fury does gain some advantage in the HBM, purely because it can shift data faster, so when it offloads to the system ram buffer, it moves more data, so can still perform even with less. Of course moving data from vram to system ram then means the bus is moving data in the wrong direction, but it at least means the perf drop isn't quite as hard hitting while it does it.

Probably not worth it since SSDs are fast enough on their own, but if you were going to buy another SSD then it'd be useful as a drive just for the OS or just for games (however you want to look at it).

Too true. If you really want "faster daddy, faster" SSD, then you are better off getting an M.2, like the Samsung SM951 (or the SM951nvm, if it happens to be out). M.2's are generally in the region of 2 - 3x faster than a SATA SSD, although you need to make sure they are the new gen (those Gen2 on PLE) and not the crossovers to get the big perf increase.

[Bollwerk]

One suggestion for your large storage needs - http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard...-hybrid-drive/
I have a couple and I love them.
Great mix of space and speed, for good prices.

[MiRai]

Probably worth noting that as you load more clients they can reuse the loaded textures, so you don't necessarily need 10x the vram indicated.

As much as I wanted to believe that back over a year ago, it just doesn't seem to be true with World of Warcraft. I ran another quick test just now because Blizzard did update their rendering engine with the last expansion and I wanted to see if something had changed, so here are my results.

1.4 GB Idle Desktop (Lots of things running in the background)
2.2 GB 1 Client
3.0 GB 2 Clients
3.8 GB 3 Clients
4.7 GB 4 Clients
5.5 GB 5 Clients

So, each client at the location I was at, which differs from my location in my prior post, eats up about 825MB, and the math works out almost perfectly.

5 Clients x ~825MB = 4.125 GB + 1.4 GB (Idle Desktop) = ~5.5 GB Total VRAM

Other games may handle the textures they store in VRAM a bit differently, but WoW definitely seems to end up being a simple addition problem (or multiplication if you want to get fancy) when trying to figure out total VRAM usage.

Also the AMD Fury does gain some advantage in the HBM, purely because it can shift data faster, so when it offloads to the system ram buffer, it moves more data, so can still perform even with less. Of course moving data from vram to system ram then means the bus is moving data in the wrong direction, but it at least means the perf drop isn't quite as hard hitting while it does it.

I agree. The Fury X was able to keep up with both the 980 Ti and Titan X in games where it should have been losing due to having its VRAM overloaded (e.g. Shadows of Mordor, GTA V), but I certainly don't know how it's going to handle multiple game clients pushing it beyond its limit, if it comes to that (but I'm also looking forward to feedback from people).

Too true. If you really want "faster daddy, faster" SSD, then you are better off getting an M.2, like the Samsung SM951 (or the SM951nvm, if it happens to be out). M.2's are generally in the region of 2 - 3x faster than a SATA SSD, although you need to make sure they are the new gen (those Gen2 on PLE) and not the crossovers to get the big perf increase.

I definitely want to try out an M.2 for my next build, but it's difficult to justify the price. Yeah, it's faster than a standard SSD, but I have SSDs hooked up to both SATAIII and SATAII ports (as well as the RAMDrive I had used before), and the only difference I notice between them is on CrystalDiskMark.

[Kayley]

Thank you all for the advice. I really did go over it a few times!

I ordered;
Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 240GB Gen2 x4 (M.2 with HHHL adapter)
eVGA GeForce TitanX 12GB GDDR5 DVI 3xDisplayPort HDMI
eVGA SuperNOVA G2 1000W 80PLUS Gold Power Supply

The nVidia card is just an alternate. Hopefully in a few weeks (closer to the 24th) I'll be home and can give some info on the Fury X in regards to multiboxing in WoW. Assuming nobody else does it before hand, which I hope they do.. since I wanna know now xD

If there is anything else, please let me know. If not, thanks again for the advice.
(and the album!)

~~ Kayley.

[Bollwerk]

As for a power supply, I have a Corsair 1000w modular power supply and I think it's amazing.

Edit - nm, I just noticed you bought a PS already. =)

[Bollwerk]

FYI - regarding the Fury X
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/t...-fury-x-review

Bottom line - good card, but not quite as good as the 980 ti.

Since you just bought a Titan X (which is better than the 980 ti), it seems that the Fury X would be a downgrade. Not just raw speed, but dropping from 12GB VRAM to 4GB VRAM might be an issue, depending on what resolution and DX version you use.

[Kayley]

Good news is I am home! My sister signed for all my stuff, placed it in my games room --(bad news!) turns out the neighbours had some kids over and a cricket ball went through my window. little stinkers didn't tell the adults, we've had some pretty heavy rain- games room was flooded, all my goods busted, carpets yadda yadda. Insurance takes a while, i'm giving it 3 months zzz.

I'm going to play 15 characters again. Revised specs below (advice from you guys has been taken on-board!)

Motherboard: Need help ** see below.
Processor: Intel Core i7-5930K Haswell-E 3.5GHz 15MB Retail Box - NO FAN (or should I get the 8 core CPU?)
System Storage: Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 240GB Gen2 x4 (M.2)
Mass Storage: Samsung 850 EVO Series 2.5" 7mm 1TB SSD
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB Kit (4x8GB) DDR4 CL16 2400MHz
Graphics: Palit GeForce GTX980Ti Super JetStream 6GB GDDR5 x2 (I'm leaning towards 3, can't decide)
Power Supply: eVGA SuperNOVA G2 1000W 80PLUS Gold Power Supply
Monitor: https://www.ple.com.au/ViewItem.aspx?InventoryItemId=619889 x3 (Gsync since i'm using nvidia now)

Nothing has been ordered yet, I will be doing it in a few days.
Since I have resubbed 15 accounts, I'm wondering if it would be better to go ahead and replace the 6-core with the 8 core intel cpu - thoughts?
I'm leaning towards 3 GPUs, only because it sounds fun and maybe later on with windows 10 it might scale better then it does now.
Motherboard.. yikes.. I have no damn clue now. Do they need to be watercooled for higher overclocks still? D;
Any recommendations on a MB that can take 3 gpus, 8 core cpu, m.2 SSD and a soundcard..while being decent with overclocking?
Do I need a dedicated NIC for when I max out my cpu (15 box, streaming etc) to offload some of the work? e.g Killer NIC

I'm asking here because those that replied seemed pretty knowledgeable on the subject haha

Thank you!

[MiRai]

I'm wondering if it would be better to go ahead and replace the 6-core with the 8 core intel cpu - thoughts?

If you can afford the 5960X, then get the 5960X.

I'm leaning towards 3 GPUs, only because it sounds fun and maybe later on with windows 10 it might scale better then it does now.

Using three of those GPUs in SLI is going to run terribly hot since they don't pull the hot air out of your system, and they just dump it out onto the next GPU over.

Motherboard.. yikes.. I have no damn clue now. Do they need to be watercooled for higher overclocks still? D;

I don't know of any motherboard that has ever required water cooling to overclock the CPU. Water cooling is also unnecessary in order to overclock a CPU unless you're pumping a bunch of voltage into the chip, which then causes a lot of heat that needs to be dispersed.

Any recommendations on a MB that can take 3 gpus, 8 core cpu, m.2 SSD and a soundcard..while being decent with overclocking?

Most X99 motherboards are going to support everything you want, so pick one that has pretty colors and matches your build.

Do I need a dedicated NIC for when I max out my cpu (15 box, streaming etc) to offload some of the work? e.g Killer NIC

No, but a shitty modem/router can cause issues with lag and disconnects. However, I only know of people having issues with D3 and not WoW, but anything is possible.