This overclocker's plaything is for the enthusiast with deep pockets and a craving for performance
When we get a big budget to build a system, we tend to turn giddy with anticipation. It's like Christmas for us. There are few machines that we get to build that top the specs of our Turbo build, save a couple of Build Its or our Dream Machine.
Needless to say, this machine screams performance. With a $3,000 budget to play with, we get to pick top-tier components that can accommodate overclockers and demanding gamers alike. While $3,000 sounds like (and is) a really big budget for most, we regularly review boutique systems that can cost up to $10,000. When taken into context, the $3,000 Turbo is still a value, and makes our $1,500 Midrange build really seem modest in comparison.
Even with $3,000 to spend, we still have to make some compromises. It seems hard to believe, we know, but this machine can't push everything to the max because some components just haven't come down in price enough yet. So we have to make a few compromises, although any of them seem small when you're using an i7-5930K.
So, enough of the introduction. What did we put in this machine? Let's take a look:
Prices reflect in-cart prices at time of procurement. Prices and availability are subject to change.
This build certainly lives up to its moniker, and has plenty of high-performance parts that will make any enthusiast's mouth water. Let's take a closer look at the choices we made.
CPU
We wanted a top-tier CPU to play with, and we definitely got what we asked for with the Core i7-5930K. The next jump up, the 5960X, is about twice the price for only two more cores. That's almost $250 per extra core. For us, that's pricey, even for our hefty budget.
This hexa-core CPU is unlocked, and overclocking is one of the CPU's main draws. Cooled by the trusty NZXT Kraken X61, we have plenty of thermal headroom to play with. At idle, this cooler keeps the CPU around 29 degrees Celsius.
The Kraken fit nicely into the roomy CM Storm Trooper, though the big case made routing the fan and power cables for the cooler a little uglier than we would have preferred. While everything reaches where it needs to be, builders might want to have a couple of extensions for the USB and PWM pinouts on hand to make cable management a little nicer.
GPU
What may strike some readers as odd is our decision to drop a pair of GTX 980s in favor of a single GTX 980Ti. The performance hit is substantial, but overall, we were still able to get playable frame rates in our 4K-gaming benchmarks. We took this hit in order to create room in our budget for the M.2 SSD we chose, but we also made sure to keep enough extra watts in the power supply to allow for a second 980Ti as an upgrade.
We went with MSI's factory-overclocked implementation to get the most out of the single card. We didn't overclock the video card in our tests, but we've been able to get moderate overclocks with EVGA's factory-overclocked 980Tis in other tests. We expect that we could push clocks with MSI's card a bit if we chose.
The one advantage the single 980TI has over the pair of 980s is the 6GB of memory over the 980's 4GB. While it doesn't completely make up for the drop in raw compute power, it does lessen the sting just a bit.
Motherboard
The X99S SLI Plus isn't adorned with the red dragon of MSI's gaming brand, but that's OK. By just about all other counts, this is a performance mobo. The back panel doesn't disappoint, and all eight of the USB ports besides the two ports for your mouse and keyboard are USB 3.0.
The other big selling point for this mobo was the M.2 connection. We wanted to go big on the data transfer on our storage, and there really was no better way to do it than to step up to the M.2 standard.
The BIOS can be a little confusing to use, but offered enough features for us. We had to make sure the M.2 port was in PCIe mode, which caused big problems when we wanted to install Windows 10 to run some tests. Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 installed just fine without additional drivers, and the Windows 10 installation worked as expected when we switched the M.2 to SATA mode. We went into deeper detail about this in an article about Windows 10 graphics performance.
It's worth noting that when we ran our benchmarks, there were no Windows 10 drivers for this motherboard. We looked again about a day ago and found that MSI had added Windows 10 drivers for this board on their website, so we have fewer concerns there.
Everything Else
The big thing to notice about this build is the SSD. At $470, a 480GB SSD is quite pricey, but what we were after was the transfer speeds. When we were shopping for an SSD, we knew we wanted M.2 in this build, but many of the cheaper SSDs only offer read and write speeds that are on par with their SATA brethren. To take full advantage of M.2's promised speed boost, you have to pay a premium, and that premium is high. For that price, you can get four 128GB Samsung 850 Pros (about $103 each), or add $20 to get the $494 1TB model of the 850 Pro.
Readers might also note that the Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper made a return as the Turbo case of choice. The case is a big steel frame, complete with a handle. You'll need that handle, too: This thing is heavy. It's definitely not a case to take to a BYOC LAN party, unless frag day is stepping in for arms day at the gym.
All that weight does make the case feel durable. It's tall size can accommodate up to an extended ATX board, which makes our ATX board look small in comparison. However, there's something to be said about having lots of room to work. Having that space (and beveled-out side panels) makes cable management easy, even if some cables have to stretch a little bit to get where they need to be.
The two drive cages are removable and can face either sideways or to the front, depending on the builder's presence. We decided to keep the bottom cage that housed the two spinning drive mounted sideways, and turned the top cage to the front, so the fan could push air toward our video card.
Speaking of fans, the radiator and fans for the Kraken fit nicely up top in the case. The plastic panel that forms the top molding has easy-to-use pop-out tabs that make removing and reinstalling the molding a breeze.
Finally, the RAM we chose is pricey for memory. We could have gotten away with using G.Skill's RAM that's more moderately priced, but we used these modules in a couple of builds last month, and we liked what we saw. The modules also feature white LED lighting, which doesn't sell us on them by themselves, but was a nice touch when we powered on the rig.
So, how did this thing fare in our benchmarks? Let's take a look.
Benchmarks
While our zero point's trio of GTX 980s in SLI dominate all of our Turbo's builds in Batman: Arkham City, once we step into the realm of 4K resolutions, the Turbo's 980Ti begins to shine. It's a much closer race at 2160p in both Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider, with Shadow of Mordor having less of a gap. The important thing to know is both 4K games benchmarked well within the realms of playable frame rates with a single GPU. That's impressive, and gave us a sense of vindication for going with the single GPU over an SLI setup. There was a sacrifice, but it looks like it wasn't crippling.
For raw 3D processing, more GPUs is almost always better in 3DMark. Still, the Turbo put up a fight and got over half the score of the zero point with two fewer CPU cores and a single GPU. Not bad, if we say so ourselves.
For the timed bechmarks, our Midrange's i7-4790K Devil's Canyon beats the other rigs. At first glance, this seems way off, but when you take into account that these tests are single-threaded, the devilish 4790K's turbo clocks really shine through.
This is the only benchmark where the Turbo beat our zero-point. For all eight of its cores, the 5960X's turbo clocks don't deliver the extra boost that the K-model i7s do in these benches.
For X.264 encoding, it's all about the cores. While our Budget Gamer has four cores just like the Midrange, the Budget's i5 couldn't keep up with the Devil's Canyon. But from there, adding more cores pays dividends in this number-crunching test. However, seeing as the 5930K is about half the price of the 5960X in the zero-point, and is only about 30 percent slower, the 5930K is the better buy for most.
