putting together a new rig

[AntonyVW]

Hi guys. My current rig is about to fall over after several years of good service. So I'm replacing it with another home built rig. I was wondering what folk think of the specs which will be as follows:-

i7 7700K CPU with Corsair H80i V2 liquid cooler
Asus Maximus IX hero m/b
Gigabyte Nvidai GTX 1060 WF2 6GB GDDR5 GPU
Corsair vengeance 32GB DDR4 ram
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD (for os)
Corsair RM750i 750w PSU

Anyone suggest what I might expect in terms of gameplay both with Tane and other games?

 

[PC_Ace]

Looks like a very competent rig to me, AntonyVW.
The 960 EVO PCIe SSD is a proven, stellar performer!
The only real weakness here is the mid-range GPU, since T:ANE is VERY GPU-centric.
If your budget can stretch to the next higher NVidia cards, then do it.

A GTX-1070 (8Gb GDDR5) or a recently discounted GTX-1080 (8Gb GDDR5x) would better support the high-end spec of your other components.
If need be, sacrifice a wee bit of DDR4 and go for 16Gb instead of 32Gb initially, so that you can step-up to a more powerful Pascal video card as suggested above.
Few, if any games, at present require more RAM than 16Gb.
From my own experience, I can assert that T:ANE performs better with 16Gb than with 8Gb (or less), but beyond 16Gb the performance improvement would be practically imperceptible.
Guess it depends on what monitor resolution you'll be driving (4K vs 1080p, for example) and what other Random Access Memory demanding applications you'll be running apart from games.

 

[AntonyVW]

Thanks PC_Ace. I would love to go higher on the GPU but mu budget is stretched so I thought go for the best CPU first. As for what else I do I tend to play around with the likes of blender - and gimp (I'm learning to paint in Gimp). Other games would be the likes of skyrim - ESO etc

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks PC_Ace. I would love to go higher on the GPU but mu budget is stretched so I thought go for the best CPU first. As for what else I do I tend to play around with the likes of blender - and gimp (I'm learning to paint in Gimp). Other games would be the likes of skyrim - ESO etc

I might go with a slower CPU still i7 for the caches dump the fancy cooling.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html note they don't bother separating the top end CPUS. The latest intel cpus are more about saving power and graphics than anything else. Integrated graphics you don't need so why pay for it, saving power great but even in the UK electricity isn't that expensive. These are more of interest to the mobile marketplace.

John Citron ran some test with TS12 and TANE. The CPU ran cooler with TANE ie it isn't so important. The GPU ran hotter. So a balanced system for TANE might be a slowish i5 and a GTX 1080. Having said that I'd still go i7 but see if I could squeeze in a GTX1070.

I might squeeze the power supply down. A GTX 1080 can run on a 500 watt supply so a 600 watt power supply should be plenty. Check the efficiency and do your sums the more efficient ones are more expensive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/t/power-supplies/ but prices in the UK maybe different and with 240 volts the efficiencies are better.

Memory 32 gigs? I don't think you'll see much difference to 16 gigs and you can always add a bit more later on. Anything to squeeze the budget and get a faster GPU. Having said that I'm running a GTX980 or roughly a GTX1060 and TANE seems happy. I don't think I have all the sliders maxed though.

Cheerio John

 

[whitepass]

I would kill the liquid cooler and only 16GB of RAM. When a liquid cooler stops working you can not here it and it cost more.

 

[clam1952]

I'm using a Cooler Master Hyper212EVO on an i7-6700K and it hardly gets warm, not convinced that liquid and electronics are a particularly good idea.

 

[nicky9499]

AIOs from reputable brands will last you a long time - the pump will give out long before the loop springs any leaks. I bought a dirt cheap Corsair (top company, btw) H70 for my living room PC to replace the stock Intel one. Ran quiet but the point is even on an old crappy unit with the tube ends cracked and frayed there was still plenty of grip in the pipe and I dumped the brief idea to give it another layer of caulk. Been running 24/7 for almost a year now and will replace it with my D14 when the custom loop is done on this one.

 

[johnwhelan]

Liquid coolers are a potential problem the coolant and electronics don't mix well. So adding one yes if you need the extra cooling but for TANE the CPU isn't pushed so I see little advantage and a potential very expensive disadvantage.

Cheerio John

 

[pdkoester]

Everything seems really good, but...

why did you skimp on the GPU? It beckons 1070 or higher!

 

[Vostrail]

My recommendation would be to swap the Samsung 960 pro for an 850 evo and use the savings to upgrade the video card. Forget about benchmarks; you will barely notice the difference in terms of boot times / program loads with the evo. I'd also agree with whitepass that 16gb RAM would be more than enough unless you are heavily into content creation. You can always add more in the future. The GPU will have a much bigger impact on your Trainz / gaming experience. As others have intimated, your otherwise top-spec'd system looks unbalanced with a GTX 1060.

John

 

[AntonyVW]

Thanks guys for all the input. In the end I kept the 1060 as it is all I could afford. As for the cpu - memory etc - my son boosted them up to what they are as a gift so I was not going to argue. My own finances would have seen a lower spec system altogether but he knows that I wont be able to upgrade again for a while. He has hinted that the gpu will be changed at some point next year so I will see what happens. But thanks for the help

 

[PC_Ace]

AntonyVW - your new high-end rig sounds wonderful and I sincerely hope that it brings you all the delight and pleasure that it should.
The 6GB GTX 1060 should handle T:ANE really well as long as you don't set it to the highest performance settings levels and draw distances and expect really high frame rates as well.
(It will still outperform most of the previous generations of top-line GPUs that prevailed at the time T:ANE was originally launched).
Let us know how it all pans out once it is up and running!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-graphics-card-roundup,4724.html

 

[AntonyVW]

Thanks PC_Ace.
Mind you when Tane was first announced the expected top GPU was a lot lower. Then on launch we were told we would need a 9XX series chip - now the goal posts have changed again. If there is to be a question asked it would be - just what is needed to use max settings in it? It certainly does not match what was originally indicated.

 

[clam1952]

Everything on max with reasonable frame rates for all routes on a decent size monitor would probably be a GTX1080TI or a Pascal TitanX.
I can just about do it with a GTX980TI which slots in between a 1070 and 1080 performance wise but don't expect good frame rates on 15000m! Having said that not all setting are beneficial on max, Post processing for example makes things fuzzy close up, if up too high, can't see any real difference between Trees at Ultra and high may make a difference on a larger monitor perhaps. I don't normally bother normally running on maximum settings, visually there doesn't seem much difference.
Worth remembering that we only got maximum settings that worked, due to the complaints that TS12 auto reduced draw distance etc.
TANE leaves it up to the individual.

Off topic, just seen your post over at Ten Forums, small world.

 

[AntonyVW]

Off topic, just seen your post over at Ten Forums, small world.

Hi Malc. Yea it has been a while since I built a rig. When I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10 originally we were told that it was not transferable if major changes were made. I'm glad to see that that changed as I can use my existing win 10 without having to buy a new copy and waste the one I have. So it was worth asking the question to save some pennies.