Please help me narrow down some components for a new PC

Solarstarshines said:

tgfyhre said:

I was probably going to go with an Nvidia 960 from EVGA as it's one of the only cards that supports HDCP 2.2. I don't know anything about Pascal.

I would like to know more about the issues with coolers on the Skylake chip before I make any decisions on a cooler:

Intel Skylake CPUs bent and broken by some third-party coolers | Ars Technica

I wouldn't want to buy a cooler that would damage the CPU.

Get a Waterblock the Third party coolers that are breaking them are Air coolers

I'm using a Corsair H110i like a champ

I mentioned above that I'm not interested in water cooling. I'd like to stick to air cooling. From what I understand from reading about the Skylake chips getting bent from air coolers, it was an early issue with certain brands using older mounts that applied too much pressure and were heavier than the Skylake specs allowed for. I'd assume by now that any cooler that specifically mentions Skylake should be fine. I was never a fan of those heavy beasts for coolers anyways. The CoolerMaster V8 was heavy and it didn't do a great job, plus the fan died relatively early in it's life, and a replacement unit lasted only a year before failing.

I hear good things about Noctua.

I'm still considering if I should step back and wait until Kaby Lake gets released. I'm assuming new motherboards will come out when Kaby Lake arrives? One thing I want to be sure of is that my new PC will handle HEVC/4k, and right now it seems Skylake has limited support, and I would need a video card capable of decoding HEVC along with HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0. Kaby Lake is supposed to support HEVC decoding natively so that should give me more choices with media playback instead of being forced to use hardware decoding. I know there's no such thing as being fully future-proofed, but HEVC is going to be the 4k codec of choice for the next few years, so if I'm building a new PC I want to be sure I can handle playback and encoding natively.

ignatzatsonic said:

tgfyhre said:

I'm still considering if I should step back and wait until Kaby Lake gets released. I'm assuming new motherboards will come out when Kaby Lake arrives?

I saw the following blurb recently. It doesn't look like you will be able to get the strong desktop Kaby Lake machines until very late this year at best. I wouldn't expect Skylake to drop in price when that happens. Kaby Lake will probably be slightly more expensive--at least that's the typical trend with Intel.

"Intel's Kaby Lake series will begin with the U-series which will start small volume production in June 2016, with mass production to start in November or December. The corresponding chipsets including the Z270 and H270-series will be announced in October at the earliest."

Interesting. That's a long wait - about another year. My PC is giving me lots of headaches and I don't know that I want to deal with this for another year. On the other hand, I don't want to jump into a new PC if the next chip right around the corner will include native support of UHD video codecs that I will be relying on for years ahead. Sounds like if I go with Skylake now, I'll have to rely on my video card to handle all the HEVC/x265 processing. I always have issues with getting my video card to properly handle CUDA/DXVA. Just this past week I tried setting my DVDFab media player from the default software setting to CUDA or DXVA, since my NVidia card is supposed to handle those. Yet the player wouldn't give me a picture, just a black screen, if I selected CUDA or DXVA. I'd like to avoid as much hassle as possible with codecs, so if Kaby Lake will make it that much easier to handle next-generation UHD video, I think I'm better off waiting.

I wish it was hitting earlier. Last thing I want to do is work on building a PC right around the holidays, as I don't have that much room in my apartment, so likely I'll have to wait until early next year. I think my current PC build hits 6 years old this spring. Everything I do is a frustrating experience because of the old processor and slow memory, and it runs very hot, too. But I'm not putting any more money into this old PC.

Based on previous releases, how much more expensive can I expect the Kaby Lake I7 4Ghz to cost as opposed to the Skylake? Do the newer chips usually run 10% higher? More? Is it expected to run around the same temps as Skylake? It wouldn't be expected to run hotter, would it?