Hi guys, I’m currently undertaking a course in developing in Unreal Engine 4 and I need a rig with enough grunt for the task. It’ll also be used for gaming in my down time so ideally – if possible on my budget – it would be capable of 1080p gaming for any modern title on high settings. I’ll be using 2 monitors too but will most probably only be gaming on 1 monitor – the dual monitor setup is for work, not play. Here’s my proposed build so far. The other thing to consider is this will be shared with my better half who is currently in the final year of her PhD. She will be using it mostly for office-type productivity software so spec-wise it’ll not be a problem but… and here’s the catch… she uses a bespoke application for analysing some very specific data from one of her experiments (she’s a mad scientist!) that is targeted specifically for Windows 7. I’m sure it’ll work on Win 10 too but we can’t really risk it given all the work she’s put in so far and the sheer importance at this stage of having reliable access to her data. So, the rig needs to be running Win 7 at least until she finishes her PhD but I’ve heard that Win 7 is unsupported for Kaby Lake CPUs. I know it should run, but is there anything specific I need to do or be aware of when trying to install Win 7 on this rig? I’ve heard USB support is a problem but I was hoping to install Windows from a slip-streamed image I have on a USB stick. Is that not possible with Kaby Lake? I’ll also be dual booting with Linux Mint (I’ve got a spare 500GB HDD that I’ll be using for this so the SSD in the proposed build is solely for Windows), if it matters? What do you guys think of the proposed build? Will it fit the bill? Any suggestions for saving some pennies without compromising on performance? My absolute maximum budget is around the £800 mark, which is where the above is currently sitting, but obviously the cheaper the better. One area I can potentially save money is the SSD. I’ve found a 480GB Mushkin SSD that’s about £40 cheaper (assuming I can find one as currently out of stock) but I’m still very unsure as to the long-term reliability/life of SSDs generally and I’ve heard good things about Samsung’s Evo series in terms of longevity. Something to do with their wear/load levelling techniques? I don’t know though. Is the extra £40 worth it do you think or will the cheaper Mushkin unit suffice? The 20GB capacity difference is neither here nor there, and I’m not too bothered about performance – I figure any SSD will be an upgrade compared to a mechanical HDD so I’m solely concerned with longevity and reliability here. Any other areas I can squeeze the budget a bit? Hopefully there’s enough of an upgrade path to potentially throw in a GTX 1080 and maybe a better CPU along with more/faster RAM in the future too, but again I’d be interested in your thoughts on this. Cheers guys.
Looks pretty good to me - a lot of power for very little money. You may want to wait until the 2nd March as AMD is set to announce their new Ryzen CPU. Whilst you may (or may not) choose that instead, it will likely lead to Intel reducing the prices of their Kaby Lake CPUs. EDIT: Looks like your DDR4 is out of stock. The price has gone up a lot in the last few months so expect to pay over £110 for the same set EDIT2: With regards to Windows 7 support, I believe it can be made to run (but it's a bit of a headache to set up). Further info here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3320827/kaby-lake-windows-thread.html EDIT3: Would it not be easier just to use an existing computer for Windows 7 until the PHD is over?
Hi oasked, Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. Can't really use another PC as the one we're using now runs the UE4 engine about as well as a pile of bricks would run it and unfortunately we really don't have the space for more than one PC in our flat. I do have a more powerful rig at my family home but even though it belongs to me the rest of my family use it quite a lot and I don't really want to take it from them. Therefore I thought I'd treat myself to a new build. On the Win 7 topic though I've just been reading up on it. To be honest I thought at first it was a technical thing but the more I read the more it looks like a deliberate push by Microsoft to force Windows 10 on people. Whilst I have no problem with progress nor with Windows 10 specifically I do have a problem with removing people’s ability to choose so the more I think about it the more I’m considering dropping to the Sky Lake platform. I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to install a still-supported OS on new hardware. Especially not an OS I’ve paid for fair and square! I could understand if it was Vista or XP or something, but not Windows 7 or 8. Dropping to Sky Lake might save a few pennies and I can at least still install and run Windows 7 at will. I should still easily be able to achieve solid 1080p gaming on a Sky Lake platform right? There might be less headroom for future upgrades but I’m not above cutting my nose off to spite my face on a matter of principle, all things considered. So, I’ll go back to the drawing board and research a Sky Lake build I think. Maybe something built around the i5-6500? Can anyone suggest a good, budget-friendly MoBo to get me started?
Windows 7 mainstream support has already ended - the OS is 8 year old in 5 months time! As for a build , personally I would wait till March 2nd and look at the new AMD Ryzen kit - the pricing suggests a lot of cpu power for not a lot of money
Hi Harlequin. Thanks for the reply. Whilst mainstream support may have ended it is still getting security updates etc. until mid-2018 for consumers and 2020 for businesses. I need to be able to run Windows 7 for the next 12 months anyway and there's no getting around that. It would be nice if I could run it without fuss on newer hardware but it doesn't appear to be that simple so I'm thinking dropping to Sky Lake is the better option for me now. I believe Ryzen will also be Windows 10 only? If so that's not an option either unfortunately. Do you think Ryzen's release will also affect Sky Lake prices or are they likely to remain about the same?
intel`s market share is so large , I honestly doubt they will lower prices. As for drivers , I believe AMD have said they wont be making a win 7 driver , which ofc doesn't mean the cpu wont work , just not optimally. Have you tried the older AM3 kit? the 8xxx series are really cheap now , but ofc I do not know how it runs under dev work for frostbite3
That's a good point, I hadn't thought about going down the AMD route to be honest. It's something I'll definitely look into. Does anyone have any good suggestions for potential MoBos for either AMD 8-series or Intel Skylake chips?
8 series FX? you need a very high end board. Do not buy one. Either wait for Ryzen or pull the trigger on Intel knowing you could have gotten far more for less had you waited
Hi Vault-Tec. Thanks for the reply. I take your point about waiting - I'm probably not in a position to begin this build for about a month anyway, but the problem (at least as it appears right now) with Ryzen is the same as with the Kaby Lake platform - namely that I'm not going to be able to run Windows 7 without jumping through all manner of hoops just to get it installed. Hence why I'm looking at the previous generation platforms now.
I'm looking at this for a potential Sky Lake build. I was hoping dropping to Sky Lake would save a few pennies but this is actually coming out slightly more expensive than the proposed Kaby Lake build Anyway, I'm not sure about that MoBo and my question regarding the SSD from my OP still stands. Any suggestions... especially budget-friendly ones?
For the sake of covering all the bases, could you run Win7 as a virtual machine? I ran a virtual version of windows on my mac while I was at uni for the stats package they offered us. That would remove the Win7 compatibility issue
I've thought about this but I wasn't sure if it would work or not. At the end of the day the VM would still be running on either Zygen or Kaby Lake hardware so would Windows 7 work properly inside the VM? Forgive me if that's a stupid question; I have several different flavours of Linux running in VMs and I once did a full Gentoo build inside a VM so I'm no stranger to using them but I don't really know anything about how they work on a technical level.
I'm not 100% sure either, I've not played around with VMs for a while, but you certainly used to be able to virtualise windows on the old PowerPC Macs, which would suggest the physical processor wasn't a limitation. Maybe worth a quick google for discussions about VMs on Kaby Lake? And it's only a few days now until Ryzen hits the streets...
