Third DS PC in 10 years: build advice sought

Hi gents. I'm a long-time DS customer and it's that time; my trusty four year-old Slade must soon be put out to pasture. The GPU is struggling with the load placed on it and I'm experiencing too much hanging/crashing in resource-intensive games; I think my old GeForce 770 is failing and do not see the point of upgrading the GPU on this machine. I am not VR-ready and I'm running out of disk space. It’s time.

I guess this will be a long post but I hope you will indulge me, as DS has been my only destination for PCs for ten years now and these forums have always been invaluable to me in the past.

I think I might go with the penultimate Velox build here as the base.

I tend not to keep up with all developments in tech until I need to educate myself prior to buying a new PC so here are my questions:

Display: VR and Monitor

-      What might justify spending > $900 for two GPU cards vs. one? I note that even single-card builds are described by DS as “VR-ready”. And why is SLI an even more expensive upgrade (at ~ $1700+)? Is SLI only applicable to a setup with triple monitors?

-     What is the biggest single monitor (i.e. no triples) I could hope to run with (i) the default video card or (ii) a two-card upgrade that will provide uncompromised gaming performance?

-     What should I learn about recent monitor developments? I note that all the monitors listed under “Display” for this build are 144Hz Refresh and 1ms Response but I see no reference to 4K (I am not sure what 4K is, I’m afraid). Please bear in mind that while I want to be VR-capable for flight simming I am far from committed to VR and may well go with the best traditional single-monitor setup I can get (not really committed to the idea of triples either).

Optical drives

-     Did I misread the build details or does DS no longer offer built-in CD/DVD drives??

To overclock or not to overvlock?

-     I certainly trust DS to safely overclock my GPU and CPU but what is the current state of thought about these options?

Motherboard/Processor/System Memory/Power Supply & other upgrades

-     Are there any compelling reasons to upgrade any of these already high-end components? I will probably upgrade the PS, as I always have, to give myself lots of headroom. The default RAM will already be a jump from 16GB to 32GB for me. As for MB and processor upgrades, I just don’t know enough to be able to evaluate the pros and cons in anything but the most general terms (i.e. it will do the same thing but faster/better) or to make a value for money judgement so I would really appreciate some guidance. I’m not looking to throw a lot more money at an already expensive build but will certainly do so for cooling and fan enhancements as I am in southern CA.

Case

-     Does anyone know if the “window” in the case can be placed on either side and is there an option for this?

I guess that’s it. When I do my first run at this build after you guys advise me on some of the above general questions, I will post it in this forum for the kind of excellent pre-purchase advice on individual choices I have received for my last two DS rigs. Many thanks.




Edited by Bahger - 19 Aug 2018 at 7:00pm

Just to add to hoserator advice, I would normally recommend the 8700k cpu over the 7900x family. But, if this is for heavy flight sims with high population, clouds and busy civilian traffic, etc, the quad channel memory on the x299 chipset might be worth the extra money.    You could save a chunk of change and just get the 7800x, the added cores in the 7900 more for other applications.     

I would overclock the 7800x cpu to get the clock speeds up to 4.5 if possible.    We normally don’t recommend overclocking the 8700k but the 7800x might be worth it.

The 32 gab ram is also normally too much, but not for certain flight sim apps.

Change your primary drive to the 970 Pro.   It’s a NVME, pcie interface and many times faster than the SATA interface with DS drive.

I would also get the Corsair H110i to handle the heat from cpu overclock. It also has the Corsair 5 year warranty vs DS system warranty....1 year parts .

Unless you 4K monitor, a single graphics card is fine, especially if you wait for the new 2080.

Size of the monitor doesn’t matter, just the resolution.

A single gtx 1080 should handle flight sims at 1440p even at a higher 144hz.   Can’t say all, but ones I’ve played are no issue with my 1440p 144hz.    Commercial sims like MS Flight Simulator can be demanding when all the traffic is turned on. Still think gtx 1080 will do it. If you can wait a few weeks, the new 2080 will be, supposedly, a 40% bump over the 1080.

I just hooked up my new TM Warthog HOTAS, with Trackir and will jump back into DCS A10 and F/A18 at some point.    Flight sims are usually a winter thing for me.   Don’t know why.

It’s on their Velox and the other builds as a Preorder, 9/20 availability.   

Yeah, the 2080 is $400 over the 1080.      

Edited by bprat22 - 20 Aug 2018 at 1:35pm

The Velox window is on the right, that’s why I went with Lumos with left window.   Right window also means inverted motherboard, with graphics card fan pointing up.

Comparing the new cards, I should’ve compared price of 2080 to 1080Ti.    $ 140 more for a 10% bump in performance.      Not bad.     

You’re paying a lot of extra money for added cores you might never need for gaming by going 7900x.    Games use dual core , maybe a little more in certain cases.    10 core is more for productivity and other non gaming applications.

If you want HDD , I’ve always like the Western Digital Black for its known reliability and warranty coverage.

I personally went all solid state, the m.2 as primary and standard SSD, Samsung 860, for secondary.    I don’t need mega storage so going with a 500 GB SSD instead of a 2TB hdd wasn’t an issue.     HDD is still plenty fast for data, pics, less used games, etc.   

This is really valuable intel for me, Cretae, many thanks.

Edited by Bahger - 21 Aug 2018 at 11:36am

Overclocking a monster card won't yield anything you'd be able to see, but it would result in more heat from your card.

I think you may wish to compare monitors available from Amazon or Newegg. Look at the difference between a TN panel and an IPS panel, and I would recommend you look into Nvidia G-SYNC tech. There's really no point in investing that much in a video card for 1080p. It's a waste of power. A GTX 1070 would be fine for that. You can easily go 2560x1440,(1440p aka 2k) as large as you want.

Google the difference between TN and IPS and also look up G-SYNC and see what you think. Don't get confused with Free-Sync, that's AMD's tech. Not for Nvidia cards.

I definitely wouldn’t restrict myself to what DS offers for monitors.    Take Cretae’s advice and go to Amazon.   Better prices and a great selection. DS offerings are a nice convenience and good picks.

I picked up the Asus ROG Swift PG279Q, a 27” 1440p IPS at 165hz and GSync.     It is pricey but has it all.       

If that’s too pricey then you can save a lot with others picks.    Picking a monitor can be daunting.

IPS has the best color and saturation.

The 2080 won’t be overkill if you go 1440p, high refresh, etc.     one advantage of the new 2080 is its ray tracing in games.   It’s light reflections looks awesome.    You don’t need it for great gaming, but the demos look great.



Edited by bprat22 - 23 Aug 2018 at 1:39pm

Hey hose.... nope, still have it at 144hz. Haven’t really played with the settings much. Been too busy playing my games.      Plus, the older I get the more mellow I become. Or is it lazy?    

Hoserator....by the way, you’re the one I blame for spending so much on a monitor.   

Thank you.   Good pick.

Edited by bprat22 - 23 Aug 2018 at 2:20pm

Thanks for sharing that research, and thanks for the kudos!

The monitor you picked is very nice, but as hoserator pointed out is the TN version. Also, as bprat mentioned, G-Sync does add a premium, and you could do without. You would need a GTX 1080 to perform well at 1440p, but that would be enough. bprat is very happy with that pairing as he said.

I also agree the best monitor you can go for is a great investment.