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[Matt]

I'm planning to get a 4770k Haswell for my work computer.

Originally I asked about this here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77667.0

I would appreciate some advice on squeezing the most performance from it.

I'm planning on these parts, but feedback appreciated:
i7 4770k
ASUS Z87-A
Samsung 840 Pro 512GB
Corsair Vengenance DDR3-2400 16GB (8GBx2)

For memory, I'm not really sure if it's worth getting memory faster than DDR3-1600, and also if 8GB or 16GB, and 2 or 4 sticks is the way to go.  I've had a lot of problems with memory going bad in the past, so I'm skiddish.

Thanks for any help.

[DarkPenguin]

I'd buy a Dell.

[rjm]

Paging glynor, paging glynor...

While we wait for him to respond, have you considered audiophile grade SATA cables? They have less resistance which results in faster data transfer rates. In addition they radiate less noise making JRiver audio sound better.

[6233638]

When you say squeezing the most performance from it, are you planning on overclocking or not?
If not, you will get essentially the same performance from any motherboard - even when overclocking it's unlikely there will be much difference unless you're talking about extreme overclocking. (i.e. not a workstation, but a hobbyist who can put up with downtime)
That said, ASUS is generally a reliable brand. (though their P67 boards had some issues)

For cooling, I would probably look to Noctua. I went with Corsair's new quiet series fans this time around and they're louder than I would like, even with speed reducers.
Apparently Noctua have solved the problem of PWM fans audibly pulsing, but I can't confirm that myself.
I generally can't stand PWM fans, but PWM is a lot better in theory (more energy efficient, and allows for lower speeds without stalling) so if Noctua have solved it, that would strongly put me in favor of them.

With a Z-series chipset, have you considered SSD caching rather than a large SSD? I have a smaller SSD that I use as my boot drive on a P67 board, and that's one feature I wish I had.
When used as a boot drive, there's a lot of data on the SSD that really doesn't have to be, because it's accessed so infrequently (if at all) and I'm always finding myself moving files back and forth between the SSD and HDD. (this happens a lot with games, which may be 20-30GB each, and are one of the tasks which seems to benefit from an SSD the most) At 512GB, that's certainly going to be less of a problem though.

I don't know that I would be wanting to spend much on an SSD right now either, as drives have been saturating the SATA3 bus for a couple of years now (theoretically 600MB/s, realistically around 540MB/s) and if Apple's recent announcements are anything to go by, we may be starting to see a shift towards PCI-E drives. The new MacBook Airs, which are Apple's consumer line of notebooks, are reading data at just under 800MB/s.


As for RAM, some tasks do benefit from higher speeds, but generally as long as you have 1600MHz (I don't think that has changed since Sandy Bridge) you will have virtually identical performance in most tasks.
The latest Intel designs don't really seem to benefit much from faster RAM, as long as you meet the specification. (below 1600MHz, performance drops quite a bit)
It may make more of a difference if you are using the Intel HD graphics, rather than having a dedicated graphics card though.

Generally fewer sticks of RAM are more stable. Haswell is still dual channel, so you want to be adding in pairs though.
I have 8GB in my machine right now, but would probably be looking to get 16GB for my next upgrade. (or possibly 32, using four sticks)
With an increasing number of 64-bit applications, there are times where I'm pushing the limits of 8GB.

[rjm]

For cooling, I would probably look to Noctua.

I can vouch for the Noctua NH-D14. My system is near silent and runs cool.

[Daydream]

Matt said squeeze and performance. Forget Noctua. Watercooling!

And watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sehXHzi4cWo. What Asus did with their latest motherboards and software is sick.

[Matt]

To answer a few questions:

I'll do a mild overclock.  It doesn't seem cost-effective to chase every drop of performance overclocking, but normally the first 10% increase is pretty easy to get and stable.

The SSD is because I'm running out of space (mostly from virtual machines).  I want the single fastest drive, as that's an important part of compile times and virtual machine performance.

Thanks for the help.

[6233638]

I'll do a mild overclock.  It doesn't seem cost-effective to chase every drop of performance overclocking, but normally the first 10% increase is pretty easy to get and stable.

I don’t have experience with Haswell yet, but if it is anything like previous generations of Intel chips, unless you get really unlucky, you should be able to run the max turbo clock on all four cores at once without any trouble. (Normally turbo scales depending on the number of cores used)

So you can probably hit at least 3.9–4.0GHz on all four cores with ease. (Stable without pushing the voltages up)

Beyond that, you’d have to look into what people are finding is a generally stable overclock for the new chips.
For example, most 2500Ks will hit 4.5GHz, which is why I use it on my system. Any high than that and I have to turn the voltages up higher than I would like.

The SSD is because I'm running out of space (mostly from virtual machines).  I want the single fastest drive, as that's an important part of compile times and virtual machine performance.

Ah, it makes sense for that. Virtual Machines probably benefit from a large SSD far more than an SSD cache. (Especially when Intel limits the cache to 64GB—I’d love to have something like a 512GB cache drive)

Matt said squeeze and performance. Forget Noctua. Watercooling!

Watercooling is only necessary for extreme overclocks, and even the closed-loop systems are louder than the best air cooling when you aren’t putting a ton of volts into the CPU.

For extreme overclocking (enthusiast machine, rather than a workstation) you definitely want watercooling though.

But frankly, I just don’t trust it. I have bad enough luck with hardware as it is. Even if you buy something like a Corsair closed-loop water cooling kit, which covers your system for five years, I'd rather do without the headache of rebuilding if it leaks. If a fan dies on an air-cooled system, nothing bad is going to happen.

[Daydream]

Now, I wasn't talking about 5 radiators and 3 loops . In my opinion 'casual overclocking' is 4.5Ghz because, like you're saying, that's what we got used to in Sandy Bridge land. On air, with ease. Anything less is a step back. But Haswell is such a bad overclocker (by comparison) that I would not attempt any overclocking on air. I'd say a Corsair closed loop ($60 - $120) for any OC, and the likes of Koolance Exos-2 ($285) for 4.5Ghz. By comparison Noctua D14 is ~$80 (and - whoa! - 1.2Kg and how much clearance does that thing need? )

I still don't like anything about Haswell. But if Matt doesn't want to wait till September or whenever Ivy Bridge-E launches...

[Matt]

But if Matt doesn't want to wait till September or whenever Ivy Bridge-E launches...

We need a new computer in the office anyway, so it's a good excuse to get a fast one and trickle down the old one.

[jmone]

I've been pretty happy with my ASUS MB and their "Auto Tune"  Pushed my JRMark up by 20% without any issues or any tweaking.

[glynor]

Sorry, I've been quite busy lately (it is summertime).

1. Continuing reports confirm what we said at the end of the last thread... Haswell doesn't overclock as well as Sandy/Ivy, and there's more variability per-chip, but still has decent headroom.  There's a decent overview of this in the most recent Tech Report podcast, if you feel like it.

2. If you want to overclock at all, you now need a K series.  They completely locked the non-K varieties this time (ugh, but we knew it was coming eventually).  You don't get the "free" multipliers on the non-K varieties anymore.  The bummer about the K series this time is that they disabled the VTx and TSX extensions (along with the vPro stuff).  Why, Intel, why??  (Most consumer level VMs don't require VTx, though, and the K's still have VT-d.  TSX, however, could be very cool as software starts supporting it better.)

3. That's the best SSD, unless you want to go with a PCIe based SSD.

4. I haven't deeply investigated the motherboard offerings, but ASUS had the best ones for Ivy (mostly due to their EFI implementation) and it doesn't look much different this gen.  Gigabyte made their EFI better, but I don't know that it is better enough.  If it were me, I'd probably lean towards an ASUS.

5. I've always had very good luck with GSkill RAM (in particular, the Ripjaws series), but people seem to really like those Corsair sticks.  I don't know what the "sweet spot" is for Haswell RAM yet.  For Sandy/Ivy it was basically DDR3-1600, but there's been enough changes with Haswell that this has likely changed.  It supports higher speeds officially now, so I'd probably go on price.  Usually RAM speed makes a very small overall contribution to system performance, so don't go crazy on the RAM.

[DarkPenguin]

Sorry, I've been quite busy lately (it is summertime).

They let you out?

5. I've always had very good luck with GSkill RAM (in particular, the Ripjaws series), but people seem to really like those Corsair sticks.  I don't know what the "sweet spot" is for Haswell RAM yet.  For Sandy/Ivy it was basically DDR3-1600, but there's been enough changes with Haswell that this has likely changed.  It supports higher speeds officially now, so I'd probably go on price.  Usually RAM speed makes a very small overall contribution to system performance, so don't go crazy on the RAM.

I've had great luck with GSkill RAM.

[6233638]

Corsair memory has been fine for me (1600MHz Vengeance, 8-8-8-24 here) and it comes with a lifetime warranty. Most RAM seems to these days.
It seems like RAM is a pretty stable thing now, and there isn't much difference as far as quality is concerned.

What I will say though, is that the Vengeance sticks have stupidly large heatsinks on them, which are unnecessary, and can get in the way of other components.
If I was buying RAM again, I would be looking for something which has a low profile heatsink. Honestly, 1600MHz RAM doesn't even need a heatsink. It's all for show.

[InflatableMouse]

Heatsinks on memory is a marketing gimmick. Get this: The stuff they use to stick the heatsinks to the chips is actually hurting heat dissapation. You're better off without it. Every set of memory I bought I've removed the heatsinks from and the double sided tape wasn't even stuck to every chip; those airbubbles insulate. Only if you overclock memory with higher voltages will you need extra cooling, and then the factory heatsinks won't suffice. Don't pay extra for LP or heatsink-less memory, just remove them. If you do it properly you can stick it back in case you need to RMA it.

Past couple of years all my memory has been corsair. Never a bad stick and XMP always worked properly.

[Jaguu]

i7 4770k
ASUS Z87-A
Samsung 840 Pro 512GB
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-2400 16GB (8GBx2)

For a company in the steel manufacturing industry we are in the process of setting up a very fast pc for running Jetcam, a software that generates programming instructions for a punching press for steel sheet fabrication. We use similar specs as above but added the following to optimize speed. Jetcam needs both number crunching speed and graphic speed and processes thousands of very small files.

1. 2 x Samsung 840 Pro 256GB joined as Raid 0. Read/Write is spread over two drives and almost doubles read/write speed (Read 1115 Mb/s, Write 498.5 Mb/s). We can afford Raid 0 as program instructions for the punching press are immediately stored on NAS and sent directly to another pc that drives the punching press.
2. Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1800 32GB (8GBx4) of which 16GB will be used as RAM Cache using Ram Cache 5 (80$) from www.superspeed.com. This means most used files read from the SSD will be held in RAM.

Still experimenting with the optimal graphic card.
 
Ram Cache 5: http://superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php