I’m getting closer to building a new desktop computer. It will seem like a normal gaming computer but is technically not one because I seldom play computer games. I’m leaning heavily on the gaming community because they’ve come to a rapid consensus on proven methods.

GRAPHICS

My choice of graphics cards is at the GTX970 level. This is by Nvidia. An equal card might be a Radeon 390. I’m going with the 970 because there is more information on it available. The next level up, the 980 costs about twice as much and inferior to two 970’s paralleled in, what’s called “SLI”. I doubt the need will arise but I can upgrade to that if it happens.

CPU

My choice of CPU’s is a little more overkill than I might need for gaming, the i7-6700k. It has additional features not used in gaming, like virtualization and encryption and things that make video encoding go more quickly.  For strictly gaming, an i5-6600k would save $120 and be almost as good. Processors with more than four cores are overkill for gaming because none of the games uses more than four cores. Also you have to overclock the i5 to its limits to match the i7 with just a modest overclock.

WI-FI ac

For the past several months I’ve been using WI-FI to talk to my lowly laptop and TV and I plan to continue with an upgrade to an “ac” standard router soon to handle the ever-increasing loads on the system. This necessitates a motherboard with a built-in “ac” antenna or adding a $60 one.

POWER SUPPLY

Power supplies for these parts shouldn’t dip below 500 watts and with SLI, 650 watts, like the Corsair CX750M, which has modular cables for the optional distribution to later-added GPUs. The extra cables wait in the box and don’t clutter up the air flow inside the computer case. This is a popular one and competes well in price.

CASE

I’m torn between the Rosewill R5 and the Corsair 200r cases. Either will accommodate a liquid CPU cooler, should I ever want to upgrade to that. I’ve chosen the Corsair because it is more conservative in appearance. The R5 has lights glowing through the front grill. It also has an older front panel case header with an E-SATA connector, which I wouldn’t have anything to connect to. The 200R has a couple USB 3.0 connectors (like the R5) and the usual microphone and stereo headphone jacks (like the R5). I may purchase an additional front panel pair of USB 3.0 connectors (two more are available from the motherboard) if I need them. There are a couple USB 2.0 plugs on the back, and a handful available for the front,if I would ever want them (not likely).

The motherboard is a Maximus viii Ranger, which is in the stratosphere for most gaming builds. I could have spent $40-$60 less, but would be limited a few years from now. It has, additional to the four USB connectors mentioned on the back, a USB 3.1 (ultraspeed) and a USB3.1 with a (reversible)  C connector. These are the latest USB spec and accommodate faster speeds and higher current.

MOTHERBOARD

The board accommodates two PCIE 3.0 card slots that can work in 8X8 channels, for the fastest type (of reasonably-priced) SLI arrangement of dual GPUs, should I ever feel like going to that.

It is the lowest in the upper “Republic of Gaming” series (ROG), which adds some extra overclocking features for people who like to fiddle with getting that last extra 2% out of the CPU and memory speeds. A simple overclock will give an extra 5% to the speed and the last few % after that take some tweaking and depend more on cooling and timing issues.

That’s the beauty of the z170 (sixth generation) Skylake series. It easily gives a stable overclock at a relatively low heat load. Because success is so easy, it is more of a common thing. The old pros don’t see the need for automatic software for overclocking and the new generation of overclockers pay a few extra bucks and “push a button” to get a well-balanced speed-up. In either case, overclocking provides a possible extra 8% in speed and is nothing to sneeze at.