What's your version of overkill??

[Dinnercore]

@phill Wow, that is impressive stuff by all means. Triple GPU setup and actually making use of it, not bad. But since you pushed that hardware with a real use case, I wouldn´t even say it´s overkill.

For me overkill was my GTX1080ti, as I never used it on my 4K TV and instead only played dwarf fortress and diablo 2 on it... Lucky me the mining craze broke out and I could sell it used for a higher price then I paid new.

 

[Vayra86]

Right, time to reply properly now..

Firstly, thank you all who have replied.. Some rather good opinions and options as well..

Now the reason I asked was because I bought a very nice 5960X over 2 years ago. With life happening (court battles, house repairs and such like) I've never had the chance to finish off the build I started out to put together.. So I had the cherry picked 5960X, the cherry picked G Skill DDR4 ram and so on, I hoped to make a build, a little mad and mental but also something that I know would last a really long time. I did have this setup a few years ago..

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My 920 D0, TRI SLI GTX 580 3Gb setup.. I think I ended up using 2 GTX 580's as they seemed to be enough running Dirt 2 @ 8064 x 1600....

I'm still not really in a better position today to do that, simply because having changed jobs and so on, I'm earning a lotless than before and things have got very financially challenging to say the least.. But being an enthusiast I would like to see it through and at least enjoy it a little bit until I buy another lol

So, being that I would like to eventually have the following -

Triple 120Hz 4k panels
Multiple GPUs
Custom water cooling for GPU and CPU in separate loops..
Make use of the case and hardware I currently have (for now)

There's probably more but I'm unable to remember them lol What would anyone suggest?? I'll grab a picture for the case ... Have a look below -

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Hopefully this helps with what I like to call, a little bit of overkill

Holy cables batman! I get why you've had that case open Dayum

 

[phill]

@phill Wow, that is impressive stuff by all means. Triple GPU setup and actually making use of it, not bad. But since you pushed that hardware with a real use case, I wouldn´t even say it´s overkill.

For me overkill was my GTX1080ti, as I never used it on my 4K TV and instead only played dwarf fortress and diablo 2 on it... Lucky me the mining craze broke out and I could sell it used for a higher price then I paid new.

I think it's quite impressive considering the 580's when they came out when I bought them they where the best around and with the 3Gb ram on them, I was very pleased to finally get around to running Dirt 2 with all the settings up full!! I went from dual 5970's to the dual or triple 580's. I found out that the 5970's just didn't have the ram on board, so anything past medium settings went from 55fps to 5fps when I went to high details.. Sometimes you learn the hard way!!

Holy cables batman! I get why you've had that case open Dayum

Well it was a bit of a beasty setup and I was kinda daft as I never got the cards water cooled... Later on I had a pair of 7970 BE edition cards, very powerful in comparison as the two of them were faster than the three 580's! I think a 580 was about half the performance of a 7970 card.. Later on they got water cooled with blocks and the difference was night and day.. 40C idle and 80C+ load on air went to 22c idle and maybe 40C loaded and overclocked.. I was blown away!! I went from the 7970's to the GTX 1070 I have at the moment with my 5960X.. It's quick but I'd like to get it quicker!!

So, can anyone suggest a little bit of overkill to me?? I forget if I mentioned SSDs under a raid card or not, but I think I did. I'd like to see if I could move away from HD's in this build and just have SSD's instead, just because
I'm toying with the idea of some cheaper 1080's/1080 Ti's and I can go from there... I was also thinking of 64Gb or 128Gb (I'm not sure what the 5960X supports if I'm honest...) of ram so I can use these two cherry picked kits on a Ryzen build for my daughter and possibly the girl friend.. I've a few spare Asus RX480's here I can utilise

 

[StrayKAT]

I thought my cable setup was a mess. Guess not

 

[Bill_Bright]

So one that operates at 50% of itc rated capacity.

a) Will produce less heat than a smaller one
b) Will use less electrticty than a smaller one

Sorry, but that's not necessarily true.

Computers pull from the supplies only what they need, not what the supply can deliver. And supplies pull from the wall only what they need to meet the computer's demands, plus a little more due to PSU inefficiencies.

The basic 80 PLUS "White" standard, for example, requires all supplies to be 80% efficient at 30%, 50% and 100% loads.

If the computer (motherboard, CPU, graphics, RAM, drives) need 250W, they will pull 250W from the supply regardless if it is a 500W supply (at 50% load) or 750W supply (at 33%) load.

And those supplies (both being 80% efficient) will pull the exact same amount of power from the wall, ~312w (312 x .8 = 249.6).

And heat generated is based solely on the efficiency of the supply. If both supplies are wasting the same 62.4 watts (312 - 249.6 = 62.4) then it is that same 62.4 watts of heat being generated.

c) Will run quieter than a smaller one.
d) Will help on borderline stability issues on CPUs / GPUs as electrical noise and voltage instability increase the closer you get to rated loads.

I do agree, for the most part, with these two statements. There are exceptions, of course, but typically, larger capacity supplies tend to have larger heat sinks and often larger fans. Using the same 500 and 750watt examples, and that same 62.4W of heat, the larger PSU will be able to distribute that heat across a bigger heatsink, then expel that heat out the back quicker and with a slower rotating fan - thus more quietly.

As for stability issues, this is also true - BUT depends entirely on the quality of the supply. A top quality PSU should be able to output clean, stable power with a 100% load in a 50°C environment 24/7 with no stability problems. Of course "should" and real world don't always jive. But then that is what professional review sites are for.

 

[silkstone]

My current build is pretty overkill for what I use it for (movies and MS office mostly). I still want to get 2 more dell screens, a better AIO and case and possibly another 1080ti though,

 

[agent_x007]

Definition of overkill...
1) Six Microsoft operating systems used natively on one PC (DOS/Win98/Win2k/XP/Win7/Windows Server 2016, no virtualisation or DOSBox).
2) Using PGA 478 with GTX 780 Ti and having a NVMe drive as OS boot.
3) Using GTX 1080 with Celeron 2.0A.
Why those ?
Because simply buying overkill parts is too easy

PS. OC'ed i7 4960X and GTX 780 Ti used natively under XP (?)

 

[Arctucas]

To quote the inimitable Billy Idol 'Too much is never enough'.

So.... a quad socket server board running hyperthreaded 32 core Xeons with 128GB RAM, an 8TB nmve RAID0 array, quad SLI with whatever the current highest end GPU is, all in a cryogenic enclosure at -200°, 2000W PSU, 50+ inch 8K display.

 

[phill]

To quote the inimitable Billy Idol 'Too much is never enough'.

So.... a quad socket server board running hyperthreaded 32 core Xeons with 128GB RAM, an 8TB nmve RAID0 array, quad SLI with whatever the current highest end GPU is, all in a cryogenic enclosure at -200°, 2000W PSU, 50+ inch 8K display.

Well that all sounds amazing but I'd go for AMD to begin with (more cores lol) and I suppose I could understand the cryogenic cooling, trying to overclock 32 cores is going to be one hard feat, but never the less, I'd love to have a go

But with the 5960X I have.. What would anyone put with it, to go with the case, to go with the 4k screens and more so, what to go with the overkill bit??