Okay.Amontadillo said:Yes.
ThegnAnsgar said:http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/QZC8xr
This is the current build I'm planning to do, but I'm wondering if anyone can offer some suggestions to maybe lower the price a little? There's obviously not much I could do given that I want to stick with the 970. Should I consider going to a 4690K instead? Also how does Windows 8.1 (I've never used it) compare to 7? I've read it has some trouble with certain games.
Jhessail said:Out of curiosity, is the Intel® Core™ i7-5960X now the most powerful CPU on the commercial market?
The Core i7-5960X gives up some clock frequency to cram eight cores into its 140W power envelope. Those base and boost clocks of 3.0 and 3.5GHz are down quite a bit from the 3.6/4.0GHz speeds of the Core i7-4960X. Even with Haswell's per-clock performance improvements, those lower frequencies will have consequences in workloads that don't scale up to 16 threads perfectly.
In Vain said:@Rejenorst and ThegnAnsgar
Both of you have picked motherboards that don't perfectly fit with your CPU. If you want to overclock, get a 'k' CPU and a fitting 'Z' chipset (The newer i5-4690k and i7-4790k are better suited for overclocking and need the Z97 chipset.) If you don't want to overclock get an i7 or i5 without the 'k'-suffix or a Xeon with a 'B' or 'H' chipset.
@ThegnAnsgar
I'm not so sure about Canadian prices, but your RAM seems pretty expensive to me. Are you sure you need that? Also, you seem to have forgotten a CPU cooler. The stock one won't get you far if you want to overclock.
@Amon
If you lack performance, it's quite easy to test which component is producing a 'bottleneck'. Play your most demanding game with low grade of detail and low resolution. If you still don't get playable FPS, it's your CPU. If it's only the additional graphic details and higher resolutions that's causing the trouble, it's your GPU's fault.
I'm guessing your CPU should still last a few years. It can also be overclocked if needed. If you lack performance, it's probably your GPU. Try OC'ing it. A suitable replacement could be a R9 280 which are incredibly cheap at the moment (~170€). But they'll be out of stock, soon.
EDIT:
@Jhessail
Depends. There are server CPUs with even more cores. If you mean games, however, a i7-4970k might still be stronger, since most games can't utilise more than 4 cores and are more dependent on frequency (is that the right word?).
Splintert said:Yes, you'll be in excellent condition to run games once you get a video card. Your processor is one of the fastest for games, and as long as you stay away from the budget GPUs you'll have a beast of a machine.
In Vain said:@Rejenorst and ThegnAnsgar
Both of you have picked motherboards that don't perfectly fit with your CPU. If you want to overclock, get a 'k' CPU and a fitting 'Z' chipset (The newer i5-4690k and i7-4790k are better suited for overclocking and need the Z97 chipset.) If you don't want to overclock get an i7 or i5 without the 'k'-suffix or a Xeon with a 'B' or 'H' chipset.
This sounds like you're using some kind of a pre-selected part picker. Aren't those usually horribly overprized?The motherboard I listed was an upgrade option while the original MB that came with that package was the All-in-one Intel H87 Chipset Socket 1150 Motherboard but I decided to up that for 25 dollars to the Z87.