Hi all, Im having a re-jig of my rigs and thought I would get some opinion. I need 2 PCs, one purely photo editing, and one purely gaming. Ive got the following 2x CPUs and want to know which you would use for which. 3960x - Currently in use in Photo editing rig 4930k - Earmarked for gaming rig in a x79 Asus black edition Would you keep these the same way around? Ive havnt clocked either yet so dont know how they would go in the gaming rig once fitted. They will be under water. Cheers
Put the more powerful one in your photo rig, gaming will never use the full power of either processor surely
Looking at the stats i think its just going to come down to which OCs the better. They are so close at stock.
Asides from the 4930 having a bit lower average power use and slightly higher memory bandwidth, they are effectively the same thing. Unless these are at two different sites entirely, I don't see the purpose in having both at all.
One will be in a large e-atx watercooled and overclocked gaming system. The other will be run at stock in a m-atx subtle and quiet photo editing rig. Two very different purposes.
OK... just if it was me, and they are both at the same place, I would just build one very nice silent and overclocked subtle gaming/photo/everything system. Put more money into one baller machine instead of dividing the effort on 2. No chance I would ever go for e-atx unless it was a no choice thing, like for MP system since smaller dual-quad socket motherboard are very few and hard to source. I definitely prefer a more compact system. It's basically what I did with my sig system, though I did it on a smallish budget and a lot of lucky deals. I made a sacrifice on CPU performance to have a really low TDP, half what the core i* parts have. I run everything passive until a certain load/temp is hit then the fans start and it's still pretty quiet. It's quieter than my old water pump by a good margin actually even when the fans are up full.
Both very easily served by one system without compromise, Ivan's got a point TBH. But, different strokes, spice of life, pays your money and all that jazz. Put the better clocker in the gaming system.
Theres a lot of benefit to having a seperate air cooled system. They're much more flexible, and can act as a backup when the wet one is down for maintenance. Ive run them all in one rig before and decided to split them. Basically its my play toy that doesn't get powered on until play time. The gaming rig will be powering a triple screen race rig setup (pic below) Anyway... it works for me. Any more opinions or experience of the CPUs?
Woah there chief, I never asked for en explanation, maybe this bit was a bit cryptic... I.E. - whilst it may not be what I personally choose to do, I respect your right to do whatever the hell you like! But back on the topic of the choice between CPUs. From a practical point of view the two are absolutely and utterly identical - you've stated you're running one stock and one overclocked - so the one that can reach the higher speed should be the one living in your overclocked system, but obviously none of us will be able to tell that.
Cheers Tad, appreciate the help. Il keep the 3960x in the photo editing rig for ease and see what i can squeeze out of the other
