The main things that stand out to me:

- The difference between a 1060 and 1070 is pretty significant. You're buying a 144Hz monitor with a GPU likely not fast enough to drive it at 144fps.

- You're not going to be storing much on a 250GB SSD. The difference between m.2 nvme and m.2/sata is not significant enough in real-world performance to justify a 250GB nvme drive over a 500GB SATA drive.

- Since you're going with a Z270, you *may* be better off getting an Optane drive and a larger SSD instead.

- No high-capacity HDD? You planning on storing everything on 250GB? Not likely in 2017.

it's not a fuel additive, it's a caching module you can buy for the puter

Intel Optane was one of Intels new features they introduced available for 7th gen Core processors and the Z270 chipset to enable fast caching and disk access for regularly accessed files (eg, OS files and drivers) at a low cost. You pair it with another disk to get a huge performance increase - but the increase over an SSD is negligable (ie, you'd use it with a regular HDD). See here for more info: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11210/the-intel-optane-memory-ssd-review-32gb-of-kaby-lake-caching

The monitor you've picked out is fine to use with a 1070 - it's a 144Hz monitor already. It's just that if you go with a lower GPU, the monitor might be wasted for some tasks. For some games (or on some graphics settings), you'll be able to use it to it's potential - depends what you play. You can always upgrade later, of course.

How much space you need is a question I can't answer for you. It depends how much crap you're going to use and install. I have just a single 500GB nvme drive in my notebook, which I mostly use for work and that's it (lots of dev stuff), and it's almost full.

Tomshardware has the 1060 getting 100+ fps in titles like Battlefield 4 and GTA 5 at 1080p with ultra settings. It really depends on what games you play but the 1070 is more targeted towards the 1440p resolution and the 1060 the 1080p so for that monitor a 1060 should be fine.

That monitor doesn't support G-Sync though from what I can see, adaptive sync only which is AMD. Most monitors don't support G-sync though because I believe Nvidia charge out the ass for it.

Each to their own but for me size and colour matters more than speed, I'd get a 27+ monitor with IPS and a 1440p resolution with a 1070 if you can stretch it, or I'd still get the bigger monitor and play games at lower settings on the 1060 if you have to as the monitor is something that will last well beyond the life of the gfx card.

Also the Optane is an upgrade for machines running platter drives, it's a waste of money for a new build with SSD's

Looks like most new SSD's are NVME, only the older models are SATA. They are still cheaper but the m.2 form factor and newer tech is worth the extra $40 or so difference IMO.

Each to their own but for me size and colour matters more than speed, I'd get a 27+ monitor with IPS and a 1440p resolution with a 1070 if you can stretch it, or I'd still get the bigger monitor and play games at lower settings on the 1060 if you have to as the monitor is something that will last well beyond the life of the gfx card.

Yeah, see I'd rather run a lower resolution at higher framerate. I'm the type who turns stuff like FSAA off, because all you're really doing is rendering at a higher resolution then downsampling. To say the 1070 is aimed at 1440 is a bit misleading because you might want higher framerates (125, 144, 165, 180) at 1080 - like I did.

Yes, nVidia charges out the ass for GSync. I have a Predator, which is GSync - if I had to do it again I won't buy another GSync monitor, I don't feel there's enough advantage to be had.

Also the Optane is an upgrade for machines running platter drives, it's a waste of money for a new build with SSD's

Yes, I agree. If you're going to stick a boot drive in that's an SSD, there's no point bothering with Optane.

Looks like most new SSD's are NVME, only the older models are SATA. They are still cheaper but the m.2 form factor and newer tech is worth the extra $40 or so difference IMO.

I disagree. I have 5x SATA HDDs in my system and 1x nvme drive - there's no real-world improvement and in some benchmarks the 600p is slower than the 850EVO.

The biggest problem I have with m.2/nvme is the number of slots available. You typically get one, two if you're lucky. At least with SATA you have 6x ports pretty standard - which is why I have so many drives. I couldn't do that with nvme without buying additional pcie cards.

Yeah, see I'd rather run a lower resolution at higher framerate. I'm the type who turns stuff like FSAA off, because all you're really doing is rendering at a higher resolution then downsampling. To say the 1070 is aimed at 1440 is a bit misleading because you might want higher framerates (125, 144, 165, 180) at 1080 - like I did.

Yeah it was more the size of the monitor and a non-TN panel that I was talking about, I'd still say a 27+ monitor is more immersive when run at 1080p than a 23/4 inch monitor running at a million fps.

I think most z270 boards have at least 2 m.2 slots and again, you should only really need 1 for a new build. Not all M.2's are NVME and I'd rather get a m.2 SATA than a standard SATA drive just because it's a cleaner build. I do 100% agree that you are better off with a 500GB drive over a 250GB one and if that means dropping from NVME to SATA then that's what I would do. I'd still be getting something like this though.

Interesting what you guys are saying about GSync. FreeSync is supported by the HDMI2.0a spec so all AMD cards support it - but I'm a die-hard nVidia supporter. Surely however, tearing at 144fps, even if it occurs, would be very mininal? Like, if you have a card able to push 180fps in a game, the number of times it would happen and the duration the tear would be visible (at 144fps) would be so short it would barely noticable, no?

As for Z270s with 2x m.2 slots - I recently looked and it was only the higher-end gaming boards that had 2 slots. I was actually considering upgrading my Z170 board to a Z270 for a second slot - but I'd have to go high-end to get the two slots, so I'm better off just getting a pcie card for the next nvme m.2 slot.

Next drive will probably be a 2TB 850EVO.

Khel, I'm the same as you when it comes to picture quality. What monitor do you have? I'm in the market for once now that I have my tax done :)


haha this:-
First time I got into a game with Gsync going, the difference blew my mind, I literally just sat on the spot spinning the camera around in circles and marvelling at the silky smoothness of it, its like sex for your eyes.

i suspect if you spend all that money, your brain just tells you it HAS TO BE GOOD.

If you have a 144hz monitor, and you're not running at more than 144fps, then you wont get any tearing. Tearing happens when the game is rendering frames faster than the refresh rate of the monitor can display them. If you're running a much lower fps than your refresh rate (like, 80fps on a 144hz monitor), you wont get tearing as such but there'll still be other motion artifacts like a bit of jerkiness/shuddering/juddering type of thing if you do a big camera pan or something.

If you've ever watched a 24fps film on a computer monitor or television with a higher refresh, you might have noticed in big panning shots that it feels like the camera isn't panning smoothly and the picture is kind of shuddering or juddering a bit as it pans, thats basically the same thing. Its why a lot of televisions and apps like Kodi have a function to run the refresh rate of the screen at 24hz while watching films, to minimise that effect. Thats basically what Gsync (or Freesync) does, it adapts the refresh rate of the monitor on the fly to the actual fps you're rendering at so one frame rendered equals one refresh cycle. For some people it might not matter, it might not bother them or they might not even notice it, but I'm really succeptible to things like that, so for me its a godsend.

@rrrocket I got one of these last year https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33848/asus-pg279q-rog-swift-27in-165hz-g-sync-ips-gaming-monitor

Its probably a bit more expensive cos of the ROG branding, but its a damn good monitor, I think someone else from here had one too (maybe Psycho?). I have last years model, that one in the link looks like a new 2017 model, but pretty much exactly the same thing

@rrrocket I got one of these last year https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33848/asus-pg279q-rog-swift-27in-165hz-g-sync-ips-gaming-monitor Its probably a bit more expensive cos of the ROG branding, but its a damn good monitor, I think someone else from here had one too (maybe Psycho?). I have last years model, that one in the link looks like a new 2017 model, but pretty much exactly the same thing

Oh yes, absolutely love my Asus Rog PG279Q. Best damn monitor I've ever owned and yes G-sync rocks your world.