OCUK Titan Riptide X99 System Review

Intel launched Skylake this week and obviously much of KitGuru's focus has been on the new architecture and supporting motherboards from partners such as ASUS. But what if you need more processing cores and a gaming system that has greater potential to double up as a personal workstation? Overclockers UK have released their new Titan Riptide X99 system with that goal in mind. With a price point almost identical to a similarly spec'd Skylake system does the 5820k powered Titan Riptide actually make more sense? Prices of the 6 core i7 5820k have dropped in recent weeks, and the processor is now available for £299.99 inc vat (HERE) - only £10 more than the 4 core i7 4790k (HERE). This is at time of publication, OCUK can change their pricing quite often. Overclockers UK Titan Riptide X99: Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor @ 4.2ghz. SuperFlower FX 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black. Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Midi Tower Case with Window - Black. TeamGroup Elite 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black. Samsung 120GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive. Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache. Alpenföhn Matterhorn Black CPU Cooler. MSI X99S SLI Plus Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard. MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB OEM - GTX970-4GD-5TBW/OC. Price: £1189.98 inc vat. (HERE) Overclockers UK double box the system, and it is important to remove the packing foam inside the chassis before turning it on. The chassis of choice for this build is the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M. This is a great case and you can read our full analysis on the chassis from July, HERE. The quality of the build is excellent, and the company have clearly placed a focus on cable routing. The system build is based around the very capable MSI X99S SLi Plus motherboard. OCUK are using 2400mhz TeamGroup Elite DDR4 memory in this system. The MSI GTX970 graphics card is very attractive, the PCB and fans are all black, and even the cooler is black, with a modest white surround. The build is almost devoid of all colour, but we think this 'monochrome' configuration is rather elegant. All the cables are routed out of sight, at the rear of the motherboard tray. OCUK have tied them down in multiple places to ensure the rear panel won't bulge when closed.On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the Canon 1DX camera and Canon F2.8 24-70mm lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later. The OCUK Titan Riptide X99 System is built around the MSI X99S SLi Plus motherboard and Intel Core i7 5820k, overclocked to 4.2ghz. An overview of the system in CPUz and GPUz. We can see the 5820k is overclocked to 4.2ghz. You can read our analysis of this processor from back in October 2014, when it launched. The GTX970 graphics card is running at 1,102mhz core, 1,241 mhz boost, and the memory is configured at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective). The card is comprised of 56 ROPS, 104 Texture units and 1,664 Cuda Cores. The Kingston memory is running at 2,400mhz at 16,16,36 1T timings. The Windows install is clean, with no crapware or bloatware installed (CPUz is our install). Full marks for this as many system builders do install specific anti virus clients - which we don't like to see. We want to choose our own software to install. We are featuring results today with an Asus PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K screen running at 1440p and Ultra HD 4k resolutions. Room ambient was held at 23c throughout testing. Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares): Overclockers Evolution Wrath Core i7 4790k Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro ATX Power Supply: Superflower CPU: 4790k @ 4.5ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte Gaming 5 RAM: 8GB Kingston DDR3 SSD: Samsung Evo 850 Graphics Card: R9 380 Cooling: OCUK Techlabs AIO Liquid Cooler Overclockers UK Infin8 Nebula System Case: Carbide AIR 240 Power Supply: Corsair 850W RM CPU: Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.2ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX Fury 2,400mhz SSD: Intel 750 400GB PCIe Card Graphics Card: MSI GTX970 4GB Cooling: Corsair H100i Hydro PCSpecialist Predator X99 System Case: Carbide AIR 540 Power Supply: Corsair 1000W RM CPU: Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.4ghz Motherboard: Asus X99-S RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX Predator 2,400mhz SSD: 240GB Kingston HyperX 3K Graphics Card: AMD R9 295X2 Cooling: Corsair H100i Hydro CyberPower Achilles Pro Case: InWin 904 Chassis Power Supply: Corsair 750W Modular CPU: Intel Core i5 4690 Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87 Gaming 3 RAM: 8GB DDR3 Kingston SSD: 256GB Plextor PCI-E SSD Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX780 2GB GPU Cooling: Cooler Master Seidon AWD Ignis Aqua 290X 250D Mini ITX PC Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Power Supply: XFX XTR 650W Gold Certified Power Supply CPU: Intel Core I5 4670K Overclocked @ 4.0Ghz (Liquid Cooled with XSPC Raystorm) Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87N-Wifi Motherboard RAM: 8GB DDR3 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive SSD – Samsung 840 EVO 120GB Solid State Drive Graphics Card: Radeon R9 290X (Liquid Cooled with R9 290x Block) Sound: Realtek 7.1 High Definition Channel Sound (On-Board) Optical Drive: N/A Cooling: Custom XSPC Watercooling Hazer Mini Gaming PC Case: Bitfenix Colossus M Micro ATX Case – Black Power Supply: Corsair VS450 450W Power Supply Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-S2PV Motherboard Processor: Intel Core i3 4130 3.4GHz Dual Core Processor Graphics: Nvidia GTX 750 Ti 2GB Graphics Card Audio: Onboard 7.1 Surround Sound Audio Optical Drive: 24x DVD Re-Writer SSD: Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB SATA3 6Gbs Solid State Drive HDD: 1TB SATA3 6Gbs Hard Drive Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB 1600MHz Memory Mesh Elite Mini Gamer Plus: Power Supply: 750W Cooler Master GX RS-750, 85% Eff’, 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire. Motherboard: MSI Z87I WIFI – Mini-ITX Motherboard Socket 1150. Processor: i7-4770K Quad Core Processor (3.5GHz, 8MB Cache) @ 4.2ghz. Memory: 16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory (2x8GB) Kit. Graphics: 4GB AMD Radeon™ R9 290 – 4GD5 Gaming Series Graphics. SSD: 240GB SSD – Solid State Drive. HDD: 2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive. PCSpecialist Vanquish 230X: Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K @ 4.2GHz Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX BEAST @ 2400MHz Motherboard: ASUS Z87-A Motherboard SSD: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD HDD: 1TB SATA III 6Gb/s HDD Graphics: 3GB AMD Radeon 280X Graphics Cooler: CoolerMaster Seidon 120M Liquid Cooler Power Supply: Corsair TX650M Modular PSU Intel E5 2687W x 2 Motherboard: Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS Coolers: Corsair H80 x2 Memory: 64GB Kingston Predator 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory). Power Supply: Seasonic 1000W Platinum Modular Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD Boot Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron GTX SSD Secondary Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron SSD Intel E5 2660 Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI Cooler: Corsair H100 Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28 Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory). Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Lian Li X2000a Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire Intel i7 3960X EE Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation Cooler: Corsair H100 Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory). Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2 Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE Intel i7 3820 Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M Cooler: Intel reference cooler Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Chassis: Lian Li PC60 Boot Drive: Crucial C300 Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB Intel i5 3570K @ 4.2 – OCUK Prodigy Arctic Gaming System Motherboard: ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77 Cooler: Coolit Liquid Memory: Corsair Vengeance White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit Power Supply: OCZ ZS 750W PSU Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX Case – White Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB Secondary Drive: 1TB HDD AMD FX 8150 Black Edition Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Cooler: Noctua NH D14 Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB) Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3 Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire Intel Core i7 990X Processor: Intel Core i7 990x Cooler: Corsair H100 Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz Graphics: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory). Cooling: Coolit Vantage Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32 Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot) Intel Core i7 2700k Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3. Power Supply: Corsair 850W. Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD. Intel Core i7 2600k Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3 Cooler: Intel XTS-100H Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB Intel Core i5 2500k Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB) Power Supply: Corsair 850W. Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD. AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Cooler: Noctua NH D14 Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB) Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3 Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire. Software: 3DMark 11 3DMark Cinebench R11.5 64 bit Cinebench R15 FRAPS Professional Unigine Heaven Benchmark Unigine Valley Benchmark CrystalDiskMark Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11 Cyberlink MediaEspresso Atto Disk Benchmark CrystalDiskMark SiSoft Sandra Games: Tomb Raider Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Grid AutoSport Grand Theft Auto 5 Metro Last Light Redux All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Some game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. Overall performance is excellent, with a well balanced all round score thanks to the powerful GPU and CPU. 3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.” Earlier indicators highlight performance with Direct X 11 titles at high resolutions.SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Native ports for all major operating systems are available: Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86) Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64) Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64) Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01) Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02) All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of: SMP – Multi-Processor MC – Multi-Core SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86 IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit The overclocked Core i7 5820k scores as we would expect - aided by the overclock to 4.2ghz. The quad channel memory scores well, around 45GB/s. CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free. The Core i7 5820k is a fantastic processor for serious duties, especially in an overclocked state. At 4.2ghz, the processor scores close to the top of our chart, scoring 13.58 points. The benefits over a 4770k or 4790k are easy to see. CINEBENCH 15 is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With the new Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested. CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards. 1252 points is a super result, and it indicates that the system will deliver great results with semi professional 3D rendering workloads.Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3. We test the Solid State Drive and the mechanical drive. Performance is as we would expect from the Samsung Evo SSD - and the hard drive scores very well - hitting between 210 MB/s and 220 MB/s in the sequential read and write tests. SSD performance is not lacking, and the mechanical drive delivers well over 200 MB/s. To test USB 3.0 performance we need a drive that is capable of completely saturating the bus. Until recently we used the Corsair Voyager GTX drive, one of the fastest pen drives on the market. We have recently switched to using a 500GB Brinell Drive, available on Amazon for around £250 inc vat. Inside is a 500GB SAMSUNG EVO 840 SSD, a product all our readers are familiar with. We have not reviewed this product, but it is one of the fastest external SSD products you can buy, and is self powered from the USB 3.0 port. Performance from the USB 3.0 ports are a little lower than we have seen with previous systems, but you are unlikely to notice any difference in the real world. Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia). We test with the image quality on ULTRA and 8x anti aliasing enabled. No problems powering this engine at 1440p, holding a frame rate well in excess of 70 at all times. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia). We test at 1440p with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image quality profile selected. Superb results, holding a 60+ average frame rate - in real world terms the game feels very smooth. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change. Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia). We test with the highest image quality settings, although I have disabled the Nvidia Hairworks option specifically as it does kill frame rate on many cards. Graphics Preset is on ULTRA and Postprocessing is on HIGH. I have played The Witcher 3 for around 85 hours and I have completed the single player campaign. I tested the game today by playing 4 different save game stages for 5 minutes each, then averaging the frame rate results for a real world indication of performance - one of the map sections we tested is one of the most demanding in the game and our results can be considered strictly 'worst case'. The Witcher 3 is a dynamic world, so it is important to run tests multiple times to remove any discrepancies. The game plays smoothly, although those who like frame rates to hold closer to 60 would need to dial down the image quality settings.Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia). We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled - based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’. We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K. A good experience, even when the image quality settings maximised. Reducing the draw distance or some of the image quality settings would push the minimum frame rate higher. On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off. A tough engine to power at these high settings. No problems for the Riptide X99 - averaging over 50 frames per second.The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Tomb Raider 2014 for 60 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. Temperatures are well maintained as the chassis produces a reasonable level of airflow throughout. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA – High Quality Computer fan 40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA – Normal Conversation 60dBA – Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA – Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum The system can be heard in a quiet room - not too intrusive, but clearly audible. Under heavy load the noise levels increase a little, peaking at almost 38dBa.We test power consumption at the socket with a calibrated meter under the following conditions. 1: when idle 2: running Tomb Raider at Ultra HD 4K with 'ultimate' image quality settings. The monitor is not factored into the power draw, just the demand via the system power supply. The system consumes up to 380 watts when gaming, dropping to around 120 watts when idle.You will likely have already read our coverage of Intel's Skylake earlier this week - you can recap HERE. How does a comparatively spec'd/priced X99 system compare against Skylake ? Do the two additional processing cores on the 5820K make much of a difference against 6700k? My colleague Luke did delve into the subject already on THIS page however Overclockers UK wanted to highlight some of the benefits of a competitively priced X99 system (this very one we are testing today). They supplied benchmark figures from the X99 and Skylake system - both of which are available to buy directly from their website. Price points are very close indeed - see below. We need to point out with complete transparency, the figures on this specific page were supplied directly by 8PACK in Overclockers UK (we don't have the Skylake system in our labs). That said, Ian '8PACK' Parry is a renowned world class overclocking and benchmarking pro, so we have no reason to question his results. Now it is worth pointing out that Overclockers UK have a tendency to change their pricing on a fairly regular basis, so we took screenshots below with both systems specified with the same amount/speed of memory (16gb 2400mhz), hard drive, SSD and GTX970 graphics card. "Titan Riptide" Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.2GHz Overclocked Six Core Gaming PC - buy and customise HERE. "Titan Bayonet" Intel Core i5 6700K @ 4.4GHz DDR4 Overclocked Skylake Gaming PC - buy and customise HERE. 8PACK's Cinebench R15 results closely match our own published earlier in this review (within the variable of a simple rerun). A good 'confirmed' baseline to take from the first test. The 5820K completes the Terragen 3 run 29 seconds faster than the 6700k system, even with a clock core disadvantage of 200mhz (4.2ghz v 4.4ghz). As we would expect, the extra cores, even under a clock deficit still drive a 6% speed increase. Synthetic 3D performance is very closely matched in Firestrike, Valley and Heaven benchmarks. Gaming performance is going to be very closely matched between the two systems, however when the processor is heavily called upon, the benefits of the extra 2 cores come into play. We have been rather impressed with Overclockers UK system builds within the last couple of months. The Evolution Wrath System which I reviewed late July walked away with one of our highest awards and there was no questioning the fine attention to detail throughout. OverclockersUK Titan Riptide X99 is a very subdued looking build - almost monochrome in appearance due to the careful component selection. If you enjoy dazzling LED lights and multicoloured, eye catching components on view through the side window, you will likely be very disappointed. I actually grew rather fond of the appearance throughout the last week of stress testing. It looks 'serious', and I like that. As a gaming system, the Titan Riptide X99 is not going to disappoint. Obviously a GTX970 has limitations and won't be an ideal first choice for Ultra HD 4k gaming - unless you reduce image quality, frame rates are going to be too low to be playable. That said if you tweak the configuration tool on the OCUK store page, you add add a GTX980 Ti for an additional £300 cost. The GTX970 is an ideal partner for a 1080p or 1440p panel. Other component choices are stellar, Samsung 850 Evo SSD, fast 2TB storage drive, MSI X99S SLI Plus motherboard and 16GB of high grade TeamGroup Elite DDR4 2,400mhz memory. Much of the debate right now focuses on the Core i7 5820K which is very competitively priced against the new Skylake Core i7 6700k. Which system should you build? If it was a personal decision, I would have to opt for the X99 platform myself, I firmly believe that 'more cores is the way to go.' I have an overclocked 5960x gaming system at home and another Xeon based workstation for video editing and rendering - this incorporates a 2697 V2 processor (12 cores, 24 threads). I tend to run multiple programs and use plenty of cores in my daily use, so I would find a 4 core hyperthreaded processor a rather significant downgrade. In closing I do want to hand over to my colleague Luke Hill, KitGuru's Senior Editor who handles all CPU and motherboard reviews - he has spent several weeks now with Skylake systems and I feel his views on this are an important addition to this review today. Luke Hill's opinion: With such a small pricing gap between a system based around the Haswell-E i7-5820K, an entry-level X99 motherboard, and 16GB of quad-channel DDR4 and one that utilises the Skylake i7-6700K, a mid-range Z170 motherboard, and 16GB of dual-channel DDR4, the decision process is a tough one. As we highlighted in the Skylake CPU review, those who prioritise cores, cache, and plentiful PCIe connectivity should opt for the 5820K system. Those who value a feature-filled platform with many of the latest motherboard goodies, such as USB 3.1, will be best served by a Skylake system. Focusing on CPUs, the 5820K has extra cores, more cache, and plenty of PCIe lanes in its favour, however the 6700K can typically be overclocked higher, has better IPC from newer architecture, and is equipped with an iGPU which may (and this remains to be seen or validated) bring benefits with DX12's multi-GPU options. There's unlikely to be a noticeable performance difference between the 5820K or 6700K CPUs in games, although GTA V has shown that a well-optimised game engine can indeed take advantage of several threads (we saw 10 threads being utilised in our testing shown here). I think that OCUK's decision to opt for the 5820K is a smart one. Coupling it with the incredibly popular GTX 970 GPU leaves plenty of room for an SLI upgrade in the future. The extra PCIe lane flexibility for an X99 system also means that a PCIe SSD is a viable future upgrade without significant change being made to the hardware. And for those times when you aren't gaming, six well-overclocked Haswell-E cores will provide significantly higher performance in multi-threaded workloads than four fast Skylake cores would. The sheer quantity of gamers and enthusiasts who consistently reference how happy they are with their 3- or 4-year old Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge systems makes me think that CPU performance is more valuable to them than a feature-healthy chipset and overall platform. And it is for that reason that I think opting for the higher-performance, six-core Haswell-E 5820K is the correct decision by OverclockersUK. You can configure your own OverclockersUK Titan Riptide system at THIS page, with a starting price of £1,197 inc vat. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: first class component selection. excellent build quality. 5820k is the best value powerhouse processor in Intel's lineup. plenty of configuration options such as GTX980 Ti's and Fury cards. excellent cooling performance. Cons: Will Skylake prove too tempting for many? KitGuru says: The OCUK Titan Riptide X99 is a powerhouse rig perfectly capable of delivering super smooth frames rates with the latest game engines. For more serious duties it will also prove difficult to ignore, the extra processing cores, when compared against an identically priced Skylake system is the win for me.