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**profJim** · 11-24-2015, 12:20 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

MSI MSI Gaming Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM EDITION LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com
MSI MSI Gaming Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM EDITION LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard -- $299.99

This is a lower priced motherboard that might meet your needs:
MSI MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M7 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com
MSI MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M7 LGA 1151Intel Core i5-4690K Haswell Refresh Quad-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor BX80646I54690K - Newegg.com - Newegg.com
Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I54690K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 -- $209.99
CPU Socket Type: LGA 1150 This is not compatible with an LGA 1151 motherboard!!

Intel Core i5-6500 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 1151 65W BX80662I56500 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530 - Newegg.com
Intel Core i5-6500 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 1151 65W BX80662I56500 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530 -- $204.99
CPU Socket Type: LGA 1151

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform / Intel X99 Platform Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C16D-16GTZB - Newegg.com
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform / Intel X99 Platform Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C16D-16GTZB -- $129.99

Check the MSI memory compatibility list for to see if this memory kit is compatible with each motherboard model.
Check the G.Skill configurator to see they have tested this memory kit with the motherboard models that you are considering.
If G.Skill or MSI says that the kit is compatible with your new motherboard you are good to go.

If the memory kit is not listed as compatible in either of the lists, find another kit that is compatible in at least one of the lists.

psu:
Are you planning on using your old Ultra 650 psu?
No offense but most Ultra brand power supplies are not very good.

For example: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...w_power_supply review

The power supply is the most important hardware in your system, check out http://forums.tweaktown.com/what-sho...ly-primer.html for detailed suggestions.

With the upcoming holiday sales, you can frequently find a high quality power supply with excellent sale prices, but some of the sale prices are only good for one or two days. Snuz and you lose.

A 650 watt psu might be OK, but you won't have room to grow.
You will be better off with a 750 - 850 watt power supply.
The following link is for highly rated EVGA and Seasonic power supplies in the 650 - 850 watt range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...00%20600014101
Other companies such as Antec and Corsair offer some very high quality power supplies. You won't know which are good and which are bad until you've read psu reviews from the best psu review sites.

Are you thinking of upgrading your monitor?
I recently bought the following monitor and using a 27" WQHD (2550x1440) IPS or similar monitor is a no brainer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236294

ASUS PB Series PB278Q 27" 5ms (GTG) WQHD HDMI Widescreen LED Monitor 300 cd/m2 80,000,000:1 Built-in Speakers, Height & Pivot Adjustable -- $419.99 (sale prices might drop to the $380 - $400 range) If you don't need a monitor that pivots to portrait mode, you can probably save $50 or more with an equally good monitor.

Many users have been very happy with the Korean made, 2nd tier monitors, but warranty support is virtually non-existent, unless you don't mind spending $125 or more to ship the defective monitor back to Korea. There are threads in some enthusiast web forums dedicated to the good, the bad and the ugly with the Korean monitors.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=90
Filtered list of monitors with:

Filter: Search Within : pivot
Recommended Resolution : 2560 x 1440 (2K)X2560 x 1600 (2K)
Panel : IPS or AHVA or AH-IPS or PLS or S-IPS

Hover Hound from www.hardocp.com is a useful brower add-on that often provides useful recent sales prices for individual hardware items from Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect, and NCIX.

Storage recommendations to follow in another post.

**profJim** · 11-24-2015, 06:40 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

The devil is in the details with Skylake, but this is nothing new.
My P35 motherboard had some either/or selections when choosing which pci-e slots I wanted to use.

But now, when it comes down to setting up your drives.....

After reading the MSI Gaming Z170A XPOWER user manual's storage specifications on page 16, I revisited Intel Skylake / Z170 Rapid Storage Technology Tested - PCIe and SATA RAID *updated* | PC Perspective where it all started to make sense, but now I've got a headache.

There is also some good information in the user comments at the end of the PCPER article.

Living on the bleeding edge has its drawbacks.

**dizzolve** · 11-24-2015, 10:05 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Living on the bleeding edge has its drawbacks.

lol yep it does doesn't it.

Maybe I should take a step back and re-engineer this whole project. I'll need a little time to digest what you've provided. I'm not against starting from scratch again, except that I did already buy the GPU so that's gonna be the heart of it.

Is it still too early to consider 4k rig? I've read that it might be. Maybe allowing for that kind of expansion later could be desirable ... then again, maybe this video card isn't the best for that plan. It's kind of an afterthought for me. But to answer your questions 'yes' I have considered newer power supplies and a new monitor. Shopping for a monitor looks like it too could be quite an effort. On the other hand, the prices sure have come down since I last bought one - more than 7 years ago.

I researched the Haswell processor I listed was well respected for my needs and thought I read it was backwards or forwards compatible regardless of the lack of sense it makes LGA 1150 LGA 1151..... I don't have to go Skylake, but thought the DDR4 might be cool to have. Then again, it looks like it wont do me a WHOLE great deal of good. And could even cause me some headaches (being newer and less tested etc)

I'd like to be able to play around with OCing so I really want an unlocked processor. And a mobo that is OC friendly.

Just wanted to drop in to say thank you, so far and I'm about to dig into your replies. Thanks Jim!

**profJim** · 11-26-2015, 07:13 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Food for thought:

SuperCombo Black Friday Upgrade Special: Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more - Newegg.com

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon 3.5GHz Quad-Core CPU + EVGA Z97 Classified 152-HR Extended Motherboard + HyperX Fury 8GB DDR3 Memory + RaindbowSix Seige

48 HOURS ONLY **Promotion expires at 11:59PM PT on 11/27/15. Limit 2 per customer.
Combo Discount: -$290.97
Combo Price: $299.99

This setup might be an excellent and inexpensive option.
If the EVGA motherboard is half as good as I think it might be, you could have an excellent setup, but you will need to decide if you want to go with a Haswell or a Skylake setup.

You might have trouble finding reviews of this motherboard, but there are a fair number of Amazon and Newegg user reviews.

The EVGA motherboard has an EATX (extended ATX) format so it will only fit in computer cases that handle the larger EATX format.

The included Kingston memory module (there is only one 8GB module) might not be compatible with the EVGA motherboard.

As I recall the Haswell processors run hotter than the newer Skylake processors and you will probably need to spend $80 - $120 for a highly rated AIO cpu cooling setup.

Basically with this setup you're paying full price for the motherboard and the cpu and memory is free.

Keep in mind that with Newegg you usually have only 30 days to RMA defective components and that they need to receive the RMA'd items within 30 days of the date of your invoice. If you can't build and test your new setup within this time frame you will need to RMA with the manufacturers.

On an unrelated note, I think that your reference GTX 980 won't be able run some or most games with a 4K monitor, unless you lower some of the in-game quality settings. I'll post links to a couple of reviews from HardOCP shortly that will compare the GTX 980 and GTX 980 TI cards when gaming with 4K monitors and 2560 x 1440 monitors.

**profJim** · 11-26-2015, 02:09 PM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Video Card GPU Review

Now that we have had some solid gaming time with the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti,
we will be putting it up against the GTX 980 and TITAN X video cards, in the full HardOCP
GPU review format. We are including new games, The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V.
We also look at VRAM utilization and power and temperature levels.

note: The first review does not include overclocked gpu gaming results, but the comparison between the reference GTX 980 and the more expensive, higher end GTX 980 TI sets a baseline for the next review which includes overclocked GPU gaming results.

MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK Video Card Review

Today we have the liquid cooled MSI GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK video card, with features that
have it screaming to be overclocked. We compare it to the overclocked MSI GTX 980 Ti
LIGHTNING with air cooling in a battle of premium GTX 980 Ti video cards. We also compare
it to a reference GTX 980 Ti to determine the full range of GPU performance.

Other excellent review sites include PCPER and TechPowerUp.

PCPER has a recent review worth checking out: EVGA SuperNOVA 650W and 750W Platinum Power Supply Review

If I needed a new psu, the EVGA power supplies that are made by Super Flower and based on the Leadex platform would be first or second on my short list.

**dizzolve** · 12-06-2015, 02:23 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Just like you said, 4k isn't even close to being in the sweet spot for compatibility nor is it anywhere close to being standard. I find myself able to afford to spend at the moment (which normally is NOT the case) so here I am flirting with some of the upper offerings that could be within reach....... This window of opportunity wont last too long. This is one reason I want to lean a bit more toward future proof vs X generally.

On the other hand, I don't want to get in a situation where its going to be frustrating trying to get it all how I like it (4k scaling issues across apps etc) and all the unkowns that come with 'bleeding edge'

My heart wont be broken if I can't go 4k display. The monitor I'm looking at(literally) right now is a 1680x1050 native and I've had it for ..... 7-9 years without issues. No matter which way I go, it'll be a significant upgrade.

There's so much stuff to look into (research)..... when you don't keep up with it. I might just 'settle' on a Core i5-4690K which should do everything I need and still have the headroom to tweak OC. Any thoughts on that choice? Do you think it could be outdated sooner?

**profJim** · 12-07-2015, 07:12 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Skylake versus Haswell?

For me it boils down to possible advantages of some of the newer features and/or capabilities, such as the availability of lanes for video cards and higher end ssd's. If we are not running demanding applications such as encoding or intensive image editing with large RAW files, does DDR4 memory provide a noticeable benefit?

Check out Intel?s Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle | Ars Technica for a not too involved point of view.

A web search using: skylake vs haswell provides additional useful links.

Suggestion: It might be best to buy a decent 24" 1920 x 1080 monitor for about $125 for now.
I suggest getting an "IPS-like" monitor for better picture quality than the TN panels have.
There are several types of newer monitors that offer picture quality that is similar to or slightly better than IPS monitors.

**profJim** · 12-08-2015, 04:38 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

HardOCP has a followup review that shows how well the best performing, overclocked, single gpu GTX 980 Ti video card performs with a 4K monitor when running demanding games. Keep in mind that this card sells for $750 and a GTX 980 (non-Ti) card sells for $500.

HARDOCP - Introduction - MSI GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK Overclocked 4K Review

A recent interesting Skylake article: Investigating Reports Of Intel Skylake CPUs Damaged By CPU Coolers (Update 3)

**dizzolve** · 12-08-2015, 05:13 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

I'm working for the phone company right now and they've opened up OT this week and last. So it's keeping me from getting some of this research done. We went in at 9:30PM Sunday nite and worked through to 5PM Monday evening

I'm gonna check out this article you posted while I can here.

**profJim** · 12-08-2015, 06:40 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Sounds like they're keeping you off the streets and out of trouble.

**dizzolve** · 12-11-2015, 05:06 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Actually, my job keeps me near road-side most of the time LOL - but what I'm trying to do is find a way to get back inside so I can find a way to get in trouble.

After some more research, I'm not overly impressed with the skylake vs Haswell. And the Haswell being an older Tier seems to have many more options for motherboards.

Hey Jim, if I get a mobo with SLI 2x16 pci lane capability, the Haswell can take advantage -correct? It's not that I plan on buying 2 gpu's right now, but having the option later feels somewhat of a comfort. I think I'm going to invest a little more into the mobo this time so I can have fun tweaking OCing more. Plus I find myself being picky about looks (which is a departure from my usual criteria). Having a couple extra bucks though has be comparing 'looks' as well.

As of Friday morning I have this weekend off, so hopefully I can get an order placed on some stuff.

**profJim** · 12-11-2015, 05:51 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

If you read the specs in the mobo user manual for Haswell and Skylake you'll see that in both systems an SLI setup will run with x8 gen 3.0 bandwidth for both video cards. This isn't a big deal because the difference between running a single video card at x16 is at best 1% - 3% faster than running a single card at x8. It gets a bit more complicated with high end boards that use PLX switches where the board manipulates pci-e lanes for better video performance, but the down side is that this type of setup has higher video latency so it appears that this offsets some of the gains from the PLX setup. It's a much different story with a Haswell-E (X99) setup where the cpu's have 28 or 40 pci-e lanes, compared to the 16 pci-e lanes that the regular cpu's have.

from The Intel Haswell-E CPU Review: Core i7-5960X, i7-5930K and i7-5820K Tested (August 29, 2014)

I think that Skylake is about 5% faster than a comparable Haswell cpu and motherboard, but you will probably have fewer cpu cooling issues with Skylake.

An important consideration is the motherboard's pci-e slot layout so that two video cards are not too close to each other. You also need to consider how many additional pci-e boards that you want to install and will they interfere with video card cooling by restricting airflow above and below each video card.

Regularly check out the best video card review sites to see what features the newest high end cards will probably have next year. You might be better off going with a single high end card setup in a year or two instead of doing a GTX 980 SLI setup now.

There's only so much or so little future proofing that we can do now or in the future.

**dizzolve** · 12-11-2015, 03:59 PM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

Originally posted by profJim View Post

If you read the specs in the mobo user manual for Haswell and Skylake you'll see that in both systems an SLI setup will run with x8 gen 3.0 bandwidth for both video cards. This isn't a big deal because the difference between running a single video card at x16 is at best 1% - 3% faster than running a single card at x8. It gets a bit more complicated with high end boards that use PLX switches where the board manipulates pci-e lanes for better video performance, but the down side is that this type of setup has higher video latency so it appears that this offsets some of the gains from the PLX setup. It's a much different story with a Haswell-E (X99) setup where the cpu's have 28 or 40 pci-e lanes, compared to the 16 pci-e lanes that the regular cpu's have.

from The Intel Haswell-E CPU Review: Core i7-5960X, i7-5930K and i7-5820K Tested (August 29, 2014)

I think that Skylake is about 5% faster than a comparable Haswell cpu and motherboard, but you will probably have fewer cpu cooling issues with Skylake.

An important consideration is the motherboard's pci-e slot layout so that two video cards are not too close to each other. You also need to consider how many additional pci-e boards that you want to install and will they interfere with video card cooling by restricting airflow above and below each video card.

Regularly check out the best video card review sites to see what features the newest high end cards will probably have next year. You might be better off going with a single high end card setup in a year or two instead of doing a GTX 980 SLI setup now.

There's only so much or so little future proofing that we can do now or in the future.

Well so much for having the weekend off, but at least I'll earn another good 700 bucks to throw at this upgrade.

Those 2011's look kinda nice. Probably don't necc "need" 6 cores, but I'll bet it'd be nice to have..... and all those pci lanes - wow. I'd draw the line at the 5820k I think. I think 400 is about the most I'd want to spend on the cpu. Saw a nice EVGA 2011 Mobo a couple days ago - I wonder if I can find that again. Are you still a Gigabyte guy or .... well what do you think of EVGA's stuff? I actually bought a mid level graphics card a few years back that died on me. And I just stayed away. But I know they're respected -in general.

**dizzolve** · 12-12-2015, 05:33 AM

Re: This all look compatible to you guys?

There is a guy selling an EVGA z97 Classified mobo for 200 here locally. He claims it's still in factory plastic. I'm tempted.

It's the 1150

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This all look compatible to you guys?

This all look compatible to you guys?

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