In the Market for New Motherboard

Hi, everyone!

I received so many great suggestions and feedback on here while putting together the specs for my gaming laptop in 2013, I figured I'd try my luck again this year. This time I'm looking to upgrade to a desktop gaming rig, and I'm a bit stuck on filling in a few components. I'm sort of going all out with this build because I'm looking to be able to max out my games' settings (Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.) on a 2K (2560x1440) monitor for at least a couple of years, if not more. I'm having trouble choosing the right motherboard for this build; I've been looking at ASUS and Gigabyte brands, but there so many choices I can't look at all of them for too long before my brain starts to hurt. @-@ Also, less of a priority but I'd also appreciate any recommendations in terms of silent yet effective fans for cooling the walls/floor of the chassis:

Chassis: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Series Full Tower
CPU: i7-5960X or 5930K
GPUs: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 in SLI or EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N in SLI (Was contemplating sticking with the stock air cooling, but I might switch them out for waterblocks. I'm not a crazy overclocker but as games get more demanding I'd like the option to really push these cards to the limit.
Motherboard: ??
Fans: ??
OS Drive: SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 256GB
Drive 2: SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 1TB
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (32GB)
Power Supply: EVGA 220-P2-1000-XR 80 PLUS Platinum 1000 W
OS: Windows 10 Professional

Of course any other input/suggestions/feedback regarding anything else regarding this potential build is more than welcome. I'm going for a rig that may be overkill today but won't be in the future, especially considering how demanding games are becoming and in such a short time.

Thanks so much in advance, I really appreciate it!

 

Can't go wrong with ASUS. I have an Asus X99-S which is basically and X99 Deluxe without the wifi (I didn't need it).

Works great, never had an issues either.

Fans, I have corsair SP120 performance fans as I was not bothered about the noise, and they were a little easier for me to get hold of then the noctua fans. Though the Noctua ones get the best reviews online.

 

Oh awesome!! Thank you so much for your feedback! Definitely a big help

 

Asus Mobos are the best IMO and if I were to build a desktop, I would get an Asus one... I would personally also have a look at the Gigabyte G1 Gaming Mobos... They're top notch too..

 

Over the last 10 years, Asus has been my go to brand.. except for 1. It was a Gigabyte (on sale at the time), that I had no issues with, until I bought a SSD. There was no AHCI option in the BIOS, nor were there any update fixes ever made available. When I bought the Gigabyte, SSD's had already been out for a couple of years, and I fail to see how they didn't cover that in the original BIOS, or an update. I fixed that by buying ..yup, another Asus. I don't have any TOL gaming motherboards, so I would suggest going with a combination of hardware reviews, and user reviews to narrow it down.

I've been partial to Cooler Master 80mm and 120mm fans. I've never had a failure within 3 years, and they are very quiet. For those, I'd go pretty much with hardware reviews only.. as most people (happy customers) rarely will post a review on fans. Pay particular attention to the DB results.

To me, the most overlooked part to buy for gaming is the power supply, and you have that covered. You didn't mention (outright) whether you were upgrading your CPU cooler, but that's fairly important too. I haven't upgraded much lately, but I do know the last 3 CPU fans I've bought are (2) Zalmans, and (1) Scythe low profile.

Outside of that, I use (and love) the SteelSeries 4HD mouse pad. It's hard, not soft.. and very durable. I use it with my Logitech G700 wired/wireless mouse, and have no complaints. Good Luck!

 

How much are you expecting to expand for SSD or Water cooling will determine which Tower you will decide on?

Get the 5690X the higher the better..

I would get 2 MSI 980Ti cards instead and SLI them.

DDR4 board is what you should look for and find one that gives you more Sata ports along with Fan headers-You want to have expansion options when it comes due.

Are you doing to do Water cooling or not? This determine how many fans you get or use

I avoid M.2 drives and go SSD all the way.

Incease that to 2tb SSD if you can afford it.

Are these DDR4? Also 32GB will be more then plenty for even Gamers...

This might be over kill but I would go having a buffer when running games especially if you SLI and water cool.

This will depend alot of what you plan to do - do you want DX12 or not? I am still using W7x64 Ult Sp1 and it has worked fine for me so far.

This is my input so far.

 

Thanks guys, really great advice! I've definitely had my eye on Asus mobos, the Asus X99-Pro to be exact. Also, spelingchampeon thanks for letting me know about the fans! I was planning to go with the NZXT Kraken CPU cooler and now I've got Zalman to consider, it looks beautiful and has a ton of great reviews! I'm also happy to hear that the Cooler Master fans are very quiet! I'll definitely look into those, as well as Phanteks. I also completely forgot I would be needing a mousepad, so I really appreciate that recommendation! Looks nice, sleek and sturdy.

Ah gotcha, thanks! I had read that the extra cores/threads were not necessary for gaming at the time the 5960X came out which was the only reason I was leaning toward the 5930K but it's definitely worth a second look!

Great suggestion! It has a ton of great reviews, it will definitely be tough to choose between these and the Gigabyte G1 in SLI!

I'm leaning heavily toward the Asus X99-Pro, which I see is a DDR4 board!

I'll be going with a aircooled build this tme, I'd love to try out watercooling but that's just a disaster waiting to happen, haha - I'll save that for a future build when I'm a bit more experienced.

Ah thank you! Any reason why you avoid M.2 drives?

Sounds good!

Yep! DDR4, maybe 16 gigs will be more than enough, I'd heard from a friend that Star Wars: Battlefront was taking up all 32 gigs of memory on his computer and I was pretty shocked and confused, haha!

Thanks, I will look into this!

I've been using Windows 7 Professional since 2013 and I have no complaints! Ideally I would like to stay with Windows 7 but I'll upgrade to Windows 10 if I have to; is DX12 more efficient with Windows 10 than Windows 7?

Thank you, I really appreciate all of this!

 

You might need it but if you can afford to get more I would go for it. But factor cost/future expansions for POWER.

I went from MSI GTX770OC to 970GTX OC 4G - I don't push mine but I play Pillars of Eternity on it.

Just makes sure it has what you and need not what they want to give you. Make sure your GPU slots are 16x,16x when you go SLI at least that.

I am using CoolerMaster 212 and so far it works very good.

Cost and Expansion options. SSD will get bigger drives and cost less then M.2 drives. I know they tell you to use M.2 as your Main install but I think in the end SSD vs M.2 the difference will show in test numbers but everyday users won't see the gains. Also you will spend more money on M.2 drives as opposed to SSD of same capacity. I hear the SSD will become 16tb now that should make one think SSD will not concede to M.2 that easily.

RAM Memory is more important if your using Photoshop, AutoCad, MS Office, Video Authoring software, Fractale math beyond this more RAM unless the software uses it your wasting money. This is where the GPU Memory makes or breaks your game. MSI GTX 980ti with alot of RAM and in SLI will do more to improve Gaming Experience like for Crysis 3 as this use the GPU RAM more then your System RAM. Add more Displays and the RAM of your GPU will determine your resolution and how many you can hookup and use. Going 4K well remember your Display is going to cost you to go that route as well.

I haven't yet seen real world usage of DX12 til I see people doing that we can only wait. As for DX12 more efficient I see the Demos but haven't used it myself to know the benefits of it. For those wanting cutting edge then they will go for it as for the masses if your system is stable and working keep it as is. Then build a new system with Windows 10 where the Motherboard and drivers support Windows 10 that will do more to keep the system stable. As anything in the end make a Plan as what your spending and what do you want as a END result of the system build to do for you down the road. My last system went for 8 years before it couldn't handle what I wanted from it. I got a Asrock Z97 Extreme6, i5-4690K @4.2Ghz, 16Gig RAM DDR3-1866OC, MSI GTX 970OC 4G and so far it is handling what I throw at it-it's Pillars of Eternity but this is the type of games I play RPG as this is what I grew up with and like. Crysis 3 on the other hand will push your system CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD to the max if want extreme gaming. Then you might consider water cooling as this will push every limits your system has. But such upgrades cost $$$ to do this so check your Plans on such Extreme gaming.

As anything this is what I think. I would've gone this way not water cooling but it was HDD/SSD that I wanted first so I didn't go higher GPU, CPU and they still are doing well for the choice I made.

 

if your heart's settled on a case then this may be too late, but three of my custom-builds were done with different NZXT cases (all Phantoms); I think the link has 4 pages to choose from, & they offer refurbs at a discount, free shipping if order's over $200 from their Armory - give 'em a last minute browse, they make nice stuff

 

While I take it cost is not a primary concern,

They aren't necessary. Among the high-end CPUs, the 5930K is the sweet spot, with its 40 PCI Express lanes enabling SLI/CrossFire with both cards at x16 speeds. The 5960X's eight cores are great if you need heavy computational power, such as for scientific computing or video encoding, but is not worth it for games. For some games the 5960X will actually be slightly worse, since with two more cores, the average overclock (and its standard frequency, if you don't overclock) is lower, making it worse for games that don't take advantage of more than one thread.

While I don't disagree, look at how much space your games are taking up now (I use JDiskReport for a nice pie chart of this on my Steam folder, but the key point is a ballpark figure). If you're using less than 500 GB or so, you might as well stick with 1 TB, still be able to put everything on that, and pick up another SSD in a few years at half the cost per gigabyte or less if you need more then. Also consider that if a lot of your space is taken up by movies/music/etc., it's pointless to buy a bigger SSD for that, since it will see no benefit - spinning disks are still the best storage for that type of file.

Sticking with 1 TB also gives you more choice of SSDs. While the 850 Pro does have a 2 TB version, at $880, the other performance king, the Extreme Pro, caps out at 960 GB, and only costs $380 for that (or $350 at Micro Center). In a year both will surely come down; I'd personally go with the 1 TB Extreme Pro if I were buying today and didn't need the hardware encryption the 850 Pro offers.

All in all I don't think you'll run into any issues with this rig with 2560x1440. Really, I think you're building it strong enough that you'd be fine with either 4K, or with a 144 Hz 2560x1440 panel (perhaps with GSync, or if it had Radeons, FreeSync). I'd recommend going with the slightly-less-expensive 5930K and the 1 TB Extreme Pro, and using the savings to upgrade the monitor to 4K/144 Hz somewhat sooner.

There's also ultrawide 1440p that your cards could surely handle, and having seen Dell's curved version of that in person at a friend's place, I can say it is beautiful. Alas, not many games support it well yet, so if games is the primary focus, 4K/144 Hz likely makes more sense (though ultrawide is a lovely replacement for two side-by-side panels for productivity).

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Edit: It also might not be the best time to invest in Maxwell SLI. Jen-Hsun is touting 10x performance gains in Pascal, and while I'm sure there's more than a little hyperbole there, NVIDIA can't really release a card without a major performance increase after that kind of proclamation. And there is some good reason to believe there will be a major increase in performance - GPUs will go from 28nm to 14nm next year, and HBM 2.0 will be available (although AMD will get priority on that since they helped develop it).

Coupled with AMD's GCN architecture being more suited to the multiple dispatch threads that DX12 specializes in - something nVIDIA will equal them in with Pascal, but can't address in Maxwell since it's a hardware difference - and it seems like a poor time to invest in two high-end SLI cards, particularly if DX12 is a focus. There's reason to believe the Radeon Fury cards, and perhaps even the R9 390 series, may do better in DX12 than the 980 series if you plan to keep them long term, and both NVIDIA and AMD can expect major performance gains with the move to 14nm and HBM 2.0 next year.

So I'd say, either buy one card now and upgrade to two once 14nm comes out (and perhaps also HBM 2.0, since particularly for nVIDIA HBM 2.0 may come slightly later), or if you want two cards now, decide if you care more about DX11 or DX12 games. NVIDIA makes sense if you plan to focus on DX11, but I'd consider going Radeon Fury if DX12 is the focus and you plan to keep them long-term.

 

True enough sometimes to many cores can hurt performance and game play. But I will leave this up to the user to choose based on their needs and future needs can change over time as well. I like to upgrade my i5-4690K but the process of putting in the CoolerMaster 212 wasn't a exciting job to redo as I almost messed up the pin and that would've PI(&*& me off.

My setup is 256Gb SSD main and installed programs but keep a Secondary HDD 3tb to store all my data so if the main every goes out the date is protected. But if they can't get a 1tb SSD then get a 500tb SSD it plenty big but if you plan to store videos/movies consider a 3tb WD green.

I avoid AMD like a plague now after hearing with their latest drivers did to the GPU. AMD has been plagued with driver stability issues after 12.10 and I know I tried 13.10 and it cause so many dead video restart crashes...that just drove me nuts. Nvidia so far from GTX460 to now GTX970 MSI I have no problems.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm browsing these NZXT cases and they are absolutely beautiful! I'm currently going for a black and white look (giving pink a break for a little while, haha) and I'm definitely liking what I see, this is going to be a tough choice! Thank you

Oh wow, this is so helpful thank you!! I'm going to start with a 256 GB SSD for my OS and then a 1TB SSD for my games, that might be the best for at least a couple of years because I'm not very big on storing music and movies on my computer (still rocking old school DVDs and most of my music/digital movies are online) so I would only have games on it and maybe Microsoft Office; then down the road I'll add another SSD. Since my 1TB 840 Pro still has quite a bit of space left since I got it for my laptop in 2013 I should be fine with 1TB for this build as well for another couple of years.

Thank you and StormJumper about the detailed CPU info! That's definitely helpful to know that the extra cores from the 5960X might hurt performance although it's a still a beast of a high-end CPU, I'll definitely take that into consideration while choosing. I still find myself leaning toward the 5930K but I'm sure I'll be very happy with either!

Yes! I've been reading up on ultrawide monitors, I didn't really know much about them at the time I had posted this topic, but those 3440x1440p monitors do look amazing! The number one issue I encountered as you mentioned above is the lack of support with many games, as well as not being able to overclock the refresh rate up to/past 100hz; I'll definitely check out 4k/144hz monitors as well, thank you!

That is absolutely insane about the potential 10x performance gain from the Pascal GPUs! That would be amazing. I'll definitely keep an eye out for Pascal updates since 2016 is right around the corner; that'll give me enough time to consolidate all of these amazing suggestions you guys have given me so I can finalize the build. Also, thanks for the info on the Radeon Fury! I've always had a soft spot for Nvidia since I'm so used to them at this point, so I'll more than likely be on the lookout for more news on the Pascal GPUs or cave and get this beauty, but I definitely love having more options to look research!

Thanks again, can't thank you guys enough! I'll definitely keep you updated.

 

black n' white huh? I was watching this vid the other day; 1st impressions mean everything, so if u like what u see starting at the 11min 55 sec mark, put it on your radar (other nice stuff starts at about the 20min mark). FYI: if you get a case with a looking-glass window, NZXT sells white led strings for a nice bright look inside, other colors too (their HUE led controller is nice for those cases that can fit it). I'm staying tuned til your build's done, can't wait for the public debut (=

 

Ah yes, I forgot to mention that regardless, a second HDD or another backup solution is always a good idea. I currently have a second drive that I back up both my main HDD and my SSD onto (the backup is compressed so it can fit both), but the important thing is to have a backup option, preferably automated since it's easy to not do it for several months otherwise. While I'd dare say SSDs have reached the point where they're more reliable than hard drives now, they still aren't perfect, so it's good to have a backup just in case.

I tend to just stick with a driver that works well for me nowadays, although back around 2008 I was one of the people downloading custom Dox drivers and trying to get every last inch of performance out of my 8600M GT. Generally that's worked out since I don't get the highest performance, but also don't get the latest bugs. I can understand being hesitant about AMD after the Radeon Crimson fan fiasco though.

I suppose part of the reason I'm partial to them is that they're generally respectable with their business practices. I was very into performance when I had an nVIDIA and Soldergate happened, and rather than acknowledging it and issuing a fix as soon as possible like AMD did with Crimson, nVIDIA tried to sweep it under the rug for over a year, and only caved when multiple OEMs including Dell and Apple pressured them to do so due to unusually high failure rates (and thus repair costs for the OEMs). While I was very lucky with my particular 8600M GT and it never failed, many of that generation did and for a long time I figured it was only a matter of time until mine would. Granted, that was a hardware issue so nVIDIA couldn't have patched it, but they certainly could have acknowledged it sooner, announced extended warranties sooner, and changed their manufacturing process quicker when the problem became evident. So I've never quite forgotten about that, and have only bought AMD GPUs since then.

Not that I wouldn't ever buy an nVIDIA GPU again, but I decided after Soldergate that my next build (which was my desktop in 2011) would have an AMD GPU, and it worked out well to get an AMD GPU in my laptop last year as well.

No problem! I'm sure you'd be happy with either CPU as well, just didn't want you to spend hundreds extra for the top-end expecting better performance in games to find it's either moderately better, or somewhat worse... it's beyond the peak value even for most hardcore gamers.

I should caution that there's no reason to actually believe the 10x claim; Jen-Hsun (nVIDIA's CEO and co-founder) is known for making bombastic claims and being anything but modest, and while nVIDIA manages to meet his claims an admirable amount of the time, he does tend to get a little ahead of the engineers when it comes to announcing how amazing nVIDIA's next GPU will be. I do expect Pascal will have a major increase in performance, just not 10 times. Even in Y2K when CPUs and GPUs were going gangbusters year after year, you couldn't expect anywhere near that much of an increase in a single generation. So we'll see. Double might actually happen, with the 28nm -> 14nm move. But I'm taking the 10 times proclamation with a grain of salt until hard numbers from an independent review site show up.

The Fury's an interesting product in that it's kind of a preview of next-gen technology, namely high-bandwidth memory (HBM). It's not outright better than a 980 TI - it depends on the resolution and the particular game as to which is preferable - so it's really situational and up to personal preferences as to which is better. Generally, the Fury is optimized to 4K resolutions, and to DirectX 12/Mantle/Vulkan, whereas the 980 TI fares better with lower resolutions (usually requiring higher refresh rates since both would be above 60 Hz in many lower-res cases anyway), super-high resolutions due to being able to have more than 4 GB of VRAM (Dell's 5K monitor, dual-4K, etc.), and DX11. For a lot of cases today, that means the 980 TI will be a slightly better fit, but it's hard to go wrong with either. And while not applicable to your build, the Fury Nano is also a very interesting product by being a top-tier performance GPU in an unusually small form factor for its power.

It'll be interesting to see what both sides come out with next year. Both will be going to 14nm, and both will have HBM 2.0 (although AMD first; nVIDIA may go with a next-gen GDDR5 in the interim as a midpoint between GDDR5 and HBM 2.0). It's characteristic that nVIDIA would be the one to proclaim its massive gains in advance, but in the end both sides should expect major gains from the 28nm to 14nm jump alone, and the lack of any grandiose proclamations from AMD likely reflects differences in corporate culture (or perhaps just CEO personalities) more than a lack of an expected performance jump. I'm personally hoping that AMD winds up with the upper hand next year, since their books could certainly use it and competition is a good thing for all in the end, but regardless 2016 should be a very good year for GPU upgrades.

 

Not that stupid 10x claim again. The 10x was in reference to specific GPU compute scenarios (neural networks? deep learning?), and is also cheating because NVLink allows an array of 8 GPUs, whereas SLI is limited to 4. So it's really only 5x AT BEST in idealized GPU compute scenarios. For gaming purposes, I'd be surprised if they managed even 2.5x, if past history is any indication.

And yeah agreed about shady business practices. Which is why I buy nVidia only if they offer better value than AMD.