New Desktop Build - Haswell or wait for Skylake?

I'd wait - the first release only about a month away, and the new architecture is going to feature a whole new generation of tech, including SATA Express, DDR4, and PCIE 4.0.

I've read that Intel has said Skylake will be their biggest leap forward in a while.

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do I gain anything by waiting for Skylake to drop?

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Yeah, your standard IPC improvements, plus not having to buy new RAM if you decide to upgrade again in the next 5+ years.

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I just wonder if all of that is going to add up to a performance gain worth the premium

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Depends on what the premium is. The flagship unlocked i7 on the Z platform is generally $350 retail, and I imagine motherboard pricing will be the same as what you'd pay for an equivalent Z97 board today. You could always wait for Skylake and then buy a Z97/Haswell refresh combo second hand. Prices in retail don't come down very much on last-gen Intel hardware, so the used market right after the release of a new architecture/chipset will be your best bet, to get the stuff that enthusiasts are unloading in favor of the Next Big Thing.

In terms of the true benefit--

DDR4: It's still in its awkward infancy. Clearly, DDR3 is going to be abandoned, as is the nature of things. But it doesn't mean switching to DDR4 right this minute is going to yield you any drastic performance gains. In fact, right now most of the DDR4 kits are slower than cheaper DDR3 kits. DDR4 brings lower-voltage DIMMs and higher base frequencies, but the process is still in refinement. You'll notice that DDR4 kits have very high latencies compared to DDR3. I can go into more detail on that if you want, but suffice it to say that the higher latencies of DDR4 make them overall a little slower, since RAM performance is measured by response time, which depends on both frequency (clock cycle speed) and various latency specs (delay measured in number of clock cycles). It's not slower in any meaningful way, and you'll never see or feel the difference, but it is kind of irritating to pay 25%+ more for what amounts to slightly slower performance on paper. 16GB DDR4 kits are about $30-50 more, 8GB DDR4 about $20-25 more, $50 more for 32GB. These are rough estimates but you get the idea. DDR4 will get faster and cheaper over time. No idea how much faster or how much cheaper or how much time.

Nevertheless, if you do a Haswell build today, it's guaranteed that your next upgrade will require a new RAM purchase. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I've enjoyed bringing my same 16GB DDR3 across upgrades for the past 5 years.

PCIe 4.0 doesn't matter. PCIe 4.0 could quadruple the bandwidth per lane vs 3.0 and you'd see no benefit in any GPU. However, the latest I've heard is that Z170 won't feature PCIe 3.0. Supposed to have 4 extra lanes, but that's not a big deal either.

Supposed to get some extra M.2 slots for PCIe SSDs, more USB 3.0 ports as well. Nothing super-exciting, so as I said the main advantages of Skylake will be grabbing DDR4 instead of more DDR3 (if that theoretical future cost is even an issue), and an IPC (instructions per cycle) improvement as is standard in each "tick" or "tock" release, generally 5-15% faster.

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is USB 3.1 a must have for a general purpose desktop?

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Skylake won't have native USB 3.1 support (but that doesn't stop mobo manufacturers from implementing it, as some are available on Z97 boards already). Personally, I would love to see them implement USB-C, but hasn't happened yet. Some of the motherboards previewed for Z170 include USB 3.1 with the standard connection. My external drives are all for high-capacity storage (hard drives). As such, they don't come close to saturating the bandwidth of USB 3.0, let alone 3.1. You'd need an SSD or two to benefit from the bandwidth increase. Too cost prohibitive for me to use for external storage right now.

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Any other current build advice is welcome. My out the door budget (with a new monitor) is $2k - but I'm not set on spending all of that if I can avoid it.

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What are you going to use it for?

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I've read that Intel has said Skylake will be their biggest leap forward in a while.

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Yeah, I read that about Haswell too, but it ended up being the standard 10% IPC increase and die shrink (which just made overclocking more annoying). Intel hasn't made a big leap worth the hype since Sandy Bridge. Skylake was hyped similarly, but preliminary benchmarks are showing the standard IPC improvement.

ILikeLSUToo

where to you go (what do you read) to stay current on the latest hardware?

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future proof for the next Elder Scrolls game and what may come.

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Tough to predict. Could be out next year, or 2017 and beyond. Will you still be on 1080P at that point, or moved on to 4K? Rhetorical question I guess, but that'll make a huge difference. It's may be better to get a mid-range card now for the games you enjoy, and then see what happens in the next few years. That said, you can do a lot with a $2k budget, but you can do a lot with less, too. You can funnel lots of money into the graphics card, or scale it back and focus on some other type of luxury such as noise reduction (quiet cooler, all-SSD system, etc.). I'd recommend coming up with a budget that you're truly comfortable with, because it's easy to get carried away.

Maybe it would be easier to have a starting point. Here's my usual $1,000 budget recommendation for a well-rounded PC with a focus on gaming.

PCPartPicker part list: LINK
Price breakdown by merchant: LINK /

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.98 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($26.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($97.78 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($60.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.95 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card ($329.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1036.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-09 18:51 EDT-0400

You can go up from there however you think it might suit your usage. Switch to Nvidia if you prefer or go bigger on the GPU in general, increase RAM if you think you'll use it, go with an i7 if you think hyperthreading will be of some use to you, go all-SSD, upgrade the cooler, add a freesync or g-sync monitor, etc.

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ILikeLSUToo

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I've got 2 more workstation builds coming up and can wait on both; what do you think? Can I get the performance for around the same price ($2500±) if I cut back on the fluff?

Yep, thanks.

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Here's my usual $1,000 budget recommendation for a well-rounded PC with a focus on gaming.

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And I was looking at a very similar build and budget back in the Spring - I upped my budget to facilitate an i7 option - I've been a Radeon guy, for the most part, but am at least considering Nvidia this time. I also have to make that 4k decision - particularly as I'm buying a new monitor (almost certainly will be 4k).

I have an Asus Z97-A in my Newegg cart, and an i7-4790k - as a foundation and then I ended up here to just get a logic check from the tech board on Skylake.

Going 1T on the Samsung 850 is $500. I'm going to do 16g or 32g ram (probably 16). I may be tempted to not get internal spinners at all, and just use an external 2T or 3T for truly bulk and archival storage that won't go on the cloud.

An nVidia 980 is going to be ~$500 as well, so I'm looking at maybe the Sapphire R9 290x as an attractive option at about $325 from Newegg - to drive a 4k monitor - that alone might shave enough to justify the 1T 850.

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380X? 390X? I don't recommend anything below a 390.

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I meant 290X.

(And the 300s are just rebranded boards with more memory, for the most part - the 290X is probably the better 4k board for the money.)

I'm looking at single card solutions - I considered multiple monitors, but my workspace just isn't conducive to that, right now. Next build (~2020) will be a triple monitor set up, but who knows what tech will drop in that time? I do think we're going to level out on performance from here on out and more progress will be made in SSD, lower wattage/lower temp chips and ultimately desktop power will be had in an sub ITX box - maybe not by 2020 but not long thereafter - this very well may be my last ATX mid-tower build.

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Doesn't really work that way if you're looking for top-end performance.

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Certainly you're correct at the bleeding edge.

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You can already build a very high-end mini-ITX machine

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I considered it - but one of the advantages of both single card combined with ATX is air flow and spacing. I keep coming back to them because I like my optical drives (and I could absolutely do without an internal as it is) - and I like the space for airflow and chord management. I've never gone full modular on the PS before, so I'm looking forward to that, too.

But, with SSDs becoming the standard, M.2 drives - SATA Express on the external side - sure - you can get 99% of the way to a high end build with an ITX or mini-ITX right now - and save lots of space. I'm old enough to cringe at the thought of "laptop parts in a desktop chassis" - but laptops have had massive improvements over the past 5, 6 years as the drive for mobility, miniaturization, reducing heat and increasing battery life have, somewhat ironically bleed back into improvements on the desktop side.

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I easily hit a 4GB vram bottleneck running skyrim with texture mods at 4K on my two 980s.

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I bet - isn't that a "They don't really make a GPU for this processing challenge - yet" problem?

(ETA: Sorry for the joviality - I just recall a forum post a few months back where a guy was complaining about performance issues with $650 cards when he was driving 2 4k monitors and Skyrim on max settings with all kinds of graphic mods. The consensus response was, "Well, I guess you are having frame rate issues, buddy." )