New PC (1 Viewer)

[Topsie]

Hey guys,

As I usually am, I'm struggling to take the plunge and get myself a new PC. My worry is its performance lifespan.

The machine I'm looking at would be as follows:

i7 7700 Kaby Lake
16GB DDR4
GTX1080 STRIX

Would I get good performance for 3+ years? As in able to play new releases on Ultra, then dialing down to high if necessary? Also, I'd assume this is a good rig for VR for coming year or so?

I have done google reading, but just valued your thoughts.

Cheers,


Chris.

 

[Puffpirat]

First things first, what would be your budget? And is it only for gaming or do you do stuff like video editing etc?

 

[Topsie]

£1500ish budget. I'm looking at a pre-built one from Scan that comes with a 3 year warranty (yes, I realise I'll be paying a bit extra.
Mainly for gaming, but I do like to record some gameplay but with minimal editing and also a spot of DJ-ing.

 

[Puffpirat]

Ah that gives some room to play with

Then that fast quadcore seems like a great choice. Intels new HEDT Skylake-X platform doesn't look like an instant hit and Ryzen is slower for gaming.

I went for an 6700k last year and think, like my 2500k before, it will last a few years. Looking at benchmarks today it's still going strong and that 7700k has even more punch. The more you go to GPU limit, the less important more cores or CPU performance in general becomes anyway, hint hint VR

If you can wait a little longer though, Coffee Lake will arrive this fall and will bring a 6 core to intels mainstream for (I guess) the price of a 7700k, AMD is forcing prices down.

16GB ram is enough, and ram is very expensive currently.

If you can shelf out a little extra, I'd go for a 1080Ti, definitely an upgrade over the 1080 and VR is ridiculously demanding!

 

[Topsie]

Thanks m8. Appreciate it.

I was debating the Ti, but it does pump the cost up, in my eyes, quite a bit. But its still tempting as I feel its the graphics card that will take the beating in a few years time over the CPU.

I'll continual to investigate over weekend. Maybe see if I can stretch the purse strings


Cheers.

 

[falcon2081]

If you can spring for the 7700K as that will let you overclock the system in the future. I would also suggest the 1080ti unless you want to wait until Volta. You could get say a 1070 as a interim card until Volta hits then get the new GPU. Stay away from the new X299 platform. Not worth it at the moment. 6 cores will become the defacto i7 chips with Coffee Lake.

 

[Puffpirat]

The man knows what's up with kabylake you'll have a system that can serve you many years and you just have to change the GPU every now and then

 

[falcon2081]

Except if you lose in the Silicon Lottery be prepared to delid your CPU to get decent temps.

 

[Ashnoom]

I am still running a 8yo i7 860. I wouldn't worry about CPU performance degradation as much as I would worry about that 16gb of ram. For new machines I would be looking at least at 24-32

 

[Topsie]

I am still running a 8yo i7 860. I wouldn't worry about CPU performance degradation as much as I would worry about that 16gb of ram. For new machines I would be looking at least at 24-32

Thanks Ash. It would be upgradeable to 64gb, so there is room for improvement over the years.

 

[Topsie]

A quick question on processors...which would be the better choice? The PC's I'm looking at are very similar except for processors/RAM & SSD

Intel Core i7 7700K, S 1151, Kaby Lake, Quad Core, 8 Thread, 4.2GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo, 8MB Cache, 1150MHz GPU
16GB Corsair Vengeance 2400MHz DDR4
11GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC2
250GB Samsung 960 EVO PCI-E NVME M.2 SSD
2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD


Intel Core i7 8700, S 1151, Coffee Lake, 6 Core, 12 Thread, 3.2GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo, 12MB Cache, 1200MHz GPU
16GB Corsair Vengeance 3000MHz DDR4
11GB EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2
500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD
2TB HDD

I realise the new one is 6 cores, but only runs at 3.2GHz but has more threads, cores and cache. I'm I being dumb and its a no brainer to get the Coffee Lake system?

 

[Puffpirat]

If it's the 8700 without K, you can't overclock it, and it runs slightly slower than the K version.

If you don't care about overclocking the coffee lake system is the better choice, has faster RAM and a bigger SSD, even though the kaby lake system has an M.2 SSD but I don't think that matters

 

[Topsie]

If it's the 8700 without K, you can't overclock it, and it runs slightly slower than the K version.

If you don't care about overclocking the coffee lake system is the better choice, has faster RAM and a bigger SSD, even though the kaby lake system has an M.2 SSD but I don't think that matters

Cheers Puffy. It is without the K. I'm not an overclocker so that isn't an issue for me. Thanks for your time

 

[Hujkis]

As a AMD guy, I too agree with choice of i7 8700. Also wouldn't bother with "K".
Though I would like to stress out the importance of M2 PCIe slot for nvm-e drives. It's a huge difference and a MUST for the future.
Also, go for WD, instead of Seagate.