Building a PC: Chasing The Performance Dragon (Premium)

https://youtu.be/1hNMry8Fu1U

Back in October, I got my first taste of high-end computing with an AMD Threadripper rig that I thought was going to be my daily driver for a few weeks but the PC gods had other ideas.

After the initial rig died on me and it was necessary to send it back for repairs, add in a trip to the Qualcomm summit, and sprinkle in two holidays, I never got time to fully review the hardware. After sending the machine back, as it was a review unit, I convinced the higher powers to let me build a high-end rig that will help power a couple of our upcoming projects.

For this machine, I did far more research than is logical or required to build a PC from scratch but I wanted to make sure I was ordering exactly what I needed for the usage scenarios I had outlined for the hardware. And this was a true build as I ordered all the parts and assembled them in my basement like an artisan bread maker; nothing came pre-assembled.

The last machine that I built from scratch was an AMD-K6 II and let me tell you, things have changed. And by changed, I mean they are a lot easier now.

I didn't have to change any jumper settings, cables can only be plugged in one way, and there is very little confusion about how to assemble the rig as there is only one logical spot each component can be installed. The hardest part is figuring out how you want to route cables and managing airflow; even the motherboard standoffs come pre-installed these days.

Airflow being key here as this is a workstation setup and while I do game quite a bit, the focus of this build is on single-core performance with the ability to also run multiple VMs as well (simultaneously). With this in mind, and knowing I wanted 8 cores or more based on the apps I needed to be running, there were only two options for the CPU, an i9 from Intel or a ThreadRipper from AMD.

Here is the part list breakdown:

CPU: Intel - Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz 10-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: NZXT - Kraken X62 Rev 2
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X299-DELUXE ATX LGA2066
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z RGB 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Video Card: NVIDIA - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition
Case: be quiet! - Dark Base 700 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 850W 80+ Gold

Why Intel? After doing a bunch of research, I know that the 8700k has the best 'per core' performance but it tops out at 6 cores and I'd prefer 8 or more and AMD certainly has a better value proposition here with the 1950x but after my bad luck with the rig from October and the available motherboards all having bad reviews, I went the Intel route.

Not included in the parts list are three additional Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 fans and I do want to point out the GPUs were part of another project rig which helped reduce the cost of the build since miners have caused serious inflation in GPU pricing. Finally, RAM prices are absurd, I'd ...

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