I will just ring in here with a little more advanced system that has moved to the i7 Extreme capable processors. The latest and usually not completely stable motherboard that are being released are the X99 socket 2011-v3 boards. I went out on a limb 8 years ago and jumped to the Socket 1366 Gigabyte Motherboard running an iCore 7 930 2.93 Ghz processor, first thing was the 930 never consistently ran at 2.93, it would default to 2.8 Ghz. I no longer overclock processors so to have them last longer.
Most every recent build reported here is working off of the socket 1150 or 1155 boards with the dual channel or in some cases the triple channel DDR3 Ram.
Now after 8-0 years on this machine running 24/7/365 it recently started having Blue Screen of Death syndrome from processor timeout errors. So the time had come to replace the machine I was running, but only the needed components. As I was already running an i7, the idea of downgrading to an i3 or i5 system had no chance with me, I was staying at an i7 processor and since teh 1366 socket boards were no longer available the choice as i saw it was to go backward on front-side bus 1150 or 1155 boards or take a look at the latest socket 2011-v3. Granted the cost differential for the newest boards was a bit substantial but the idea to have this last as long as the previous build or just settle for something that will run what I have now was a major consideration.
Now once i started looking at the features offered on the new boards (4 PCI-e slots to run 4 graphics cards on most every board still seems like over kill to me, I do not see myself ever going over a max of 2 cards running SLI, some boards offer the SATA3/SATA6 and SATA Express (10) connections, while others include those and provide the new M2 SSD SATA 32 connection if you are willing to give up one of the PCI-e graphics card slots to run the M2 through a PCI-e connection for the SATA32 speed. And while researching this discovered that the average price for the new M2 SSD Drives was actually cheaper, cost wise, than the SSD Express capable drives when you look at a 500Gig Drive, averaging a price of 210-220 for the drive.
So after having used many motherboards over the years I decided to ignore the negative reviews I was seeing on the Gigabyte Gaming 5 X99 Board because it was the first motherboard I had ever come across that offered Creative Labs Sound Blaster Sound as the built-in Sound Device. I tried it and it was a nightmare from failing to share and setup IRQ settings it was delivering its own Blue Screen of Death thanks to IRQ conflicts and the inability to read the sata 6 drives I had connected that were not set in a raid format. After a week of struggle to get it to do what I expected I gave up and returned it. The second choice was returning to a brand I have not used in years because the ASUS Boards in the configuration I wanted were generally on back order or way to high of a cost factor, just could not consider paying 500 simply for a motherboard because the lower cost ones were all sold out and on back order. So I settled on the MSI Gaming 7 X99 Motherboard and then found it on sale from New Egg where I got everything for this rebuild.
Another thing about going to a 2011-v3 board was the fact they do not support DDR2 or DDR3 Ram they only support the new DDR4 Quad Channel Ram and some mother boards only run the lowest level speed of the RAM sets. On the gigabyte Board I did not pay attention to the Ram speed it would support and purchased the Overclocked 2666 DDR4 Ram, luckily they had updated the Bios to support this speed of RAM, but then I ran into a first in over 35 years of working on computers, a Graphical BIOS that crashed and locked up. This was another reason the Gigabyte Board was returned.
Now one thing to remember is the multi-channel memory is great IF you match the number of Chips to the ability the motherboard supports, so for a dual channel ram set you must have 2 sticks before you will get the benefit, 3 sticks for the Triple channel and as seems logical 4 sticks for a Quad Channel. The MSI Gaming 7 board has 8 RAM slots that can take 16 Gig sticks in each slot for a total of 128 Gig of ram, be aware the the system will only report it as 127 because of technology issues not allowing the full 128 to display. You can populate the slots with 4 Gig sticks and still have 32 Gig installed. I am running 16 currently because that is the sweet spot for Win 7, but I will have the option to increase that to 32 if that turns out to be the sweet spot for Windows 10 when it is released late this summer.
So after much rambling here this is the system I am now running with the intention of in the future adding an M2 SSD Drive to this system.
Antec 900 Full Tower Case
Thermolake 1000W PS
MSI Gaming 7 X99 Motherboard
Intel iCore 7 5820 3.3 Ghz Processor
16 Gig Corsair 2666 DDR4 RAM
Nvidia 970 4Gig DDR5 Graphics Card
Corsair 80iGT Sealed CPU Liquid Cooling unit with 2 120mm fans
Onboard Realtec High Def Audio
Sound Blaster Recon 3D Sound Card (I am an avid Creative Labs Sound card person, only brand of sound card I run for the last 20 years)
Logitech 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard
24" HP 1920x1200 Monitor(DVI connection), 24" AOC 1920x1080 Monitor(HDMI connection), 23" HP 1920x1080 Monitor (Displayport connection), and a 47" Sony HD 1920x1080 HDTV (Displayport connection), still one more displayport available on the 970 card. (Only 4 monitors may be connected and run at one time though)
Logitech 570 Wireless Trackball
Logitech 910 HD Webcam
Logitech 610 Wireless headset/Mic
2TB Seagate SATA HD, 1TB WD HD, 500 Gig WD HD, 1TB WD HD(Backup), 1TB Seagate External USB HD, 1TB WD External USB HD
Kodak 5200 Printer
I don't know if any of this information is of any real use to anyone else, but if it is great I do hope is does help.
Now Trainz:ANE runs great here very little stutter that usually only occurs near a tunnel and that is on the Drexel Route. But I can start the game get a train moving and then stretch the window it is running in across all 4 monitors and it does not even stutter or pause for a second either when moving the borders larger or smaller. Screenshots do NOT work when you increase the window size beyond a single monitor, but you can screen capture it, switch to paint and paste the image into it and it does produce a screenshot of your desktop at 7860x1200 here.
