Intel Core i7-5960X

It has been a long while since my last post and I have been busy with new hardware and with new Operating systems and other things of interest to me, but essentially this post is about my gaming rig, which I built back in January 2015 and am only now finding the time to write a few words about.

First things first, the system specs:
Once again I chose to stay with an ASUS Rampage Series Mainboard. I have always faired well with them in the past, and judging by the Reviews, apart from the pricetag, the MoBo is spectacular.

R5E

Since this is the new Intel Core i7 Haswell-E Processor, which has 8 Cores (and each core in turn 2 threads) packing 20MB of Intel SmartCache and supporting only DDR4 RAM, I figured it’s bound to pack huge amounts of processing power.
Intel i7 5960X Specs

That combined with 2 ASUS ROG NVidia GTX980 STRIX 4GB graphics cards in SLI should put me well ahead of most Enthusiast computer users.

ASUS GTX 980 STRIX OC

The sound card has also been “upgraded” from a Creative SoundBlaster to an ASUS Xonar Phoebus Solo. And yes, I also have the problem with 5.1 Surround Sound via the optical SPDIF.

As a mouse I’m now using the Razer Ouroboros, away from the previously used Cyborg-Gaming M.M.O. 7.

The Monitor has not been changed, still with Samsung’s UHD 28″.

Detailed Specs:
Motherboard: Asus Rampage 5 Extreme
RAM: G.Skill – 32GB DDR4@2666MHz
HDD: Samsung M.2 950 Pro SSD 512GB (this deserves a writeup on it’s own)
Graphics: 2 x ASUS STRIX GTX980 4GB (in SLI)
PSU: Corsair 1200W (unchanged from the last system)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NHD-14
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X

Samsung U28D590D 4K Monitor

Couldn’t resist getting one of these Samsung 4K UHD Monitors!

28″, 1ms (GTG) refresh and a resolution of 3840×2160

A problem I had with the new screen was that my R9 290x would cause the screen to black out randomly for 2 – 5 seconds at about 10 minute intervals.
The solution was to get a NVidia ASUS GTX780Ti DC2 OC

Sapphire R9 290x Reference Design

Finally my R9 290x has arrived!

FireStrike_R9290X

This is just a taste of the performance I’m getting, without tweaking anything:

This is what I used to get with the Sapphire HD7970 Dual-X OC:
FireStrike_HD7970

All in all, the card is very silent eaven under load, not at all as loud as some critics were claiming.