New system 2020

[Dune]

I'm thinking about buying another machine for working in TG, modeling, and rendering, and found this interesting site for basic knowledge about systems:https://www.cgdirector.com/best-computer-3d-modeling-rendering/
As the amount of information is dazzling, I seek some advice to get a decently fast machine which doesn't make lots of noise, and doesn't need complicated cooling, or sucks electricity like a madman. Price is not really a problem (if it's less than say $3000 in total), but overkill is unnecessary.
I also want to take into account the fact that GPU rendering will maybe be possible, be it in TG or other engines. And a good GPU is handy to work smoother in the preview, I guess. But I'm not gaming!
And I need to consider any pitfalls (like the number of cores not all used, or something).

So I have two semi-final lists of stuff that I'm thinking of:

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700x boxed 289 euro
Motherboard: MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max 104 euro
GPU:  MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio 775 euro Is this overkill? Or good for GPU rendering?
case: Fractal Design Meshify C - Dark TG 82 euro
processor cooling: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black 38 euro
ventilators: be quiet! Pure Wings 2 PWM, 140mm necessary?
memory: 64GB (4 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 C16
Power Supply: Fractal Design ION+ 560W Platinum 100 euro
SSD: Kingston A2000 1TB E100 or Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB

CGDirector.com Parts List: https://www.cgdirector.com/pc-builder/?=Db1Pf0c0Epq

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5GHz 16-Core Processor ($709.99)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 ($89.90)
Motherboard: MSI X570 Tomahawk ATX AM4 ($268.50)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700XT - Gigabyte Gaming OC ($470.98)
Memory: 64GB (4 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 C16 ($322.14)
Storage PCIe-SSD: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 Solid State Drive ($169.99)
Power Supply: Seasonic Focus GM-650, 650W 80+ Gold Power Supply ($99.99) or Fractal Design ION+ 560W Platinum (is 560W enough?)
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 780T ($189.31) or Fractal Design Meshify C - Dark TG (nicer)
Total:  $2320.80


I now work on an i7 2600K with 16GB of memory, and a GT610 GPU, so I guess any of the above will be a huge improvement.

If any of you have any recommendations, I'd really appreciate a word!!

[KlausK]

Two things I`d recommend after a quick view at your lists:

- Power Supply with more headroom / +700W
- NVidia Grafics Adapter

This will be Windows 10 then, I guess? Go for the Windows 10 Pro version.
If not, you won`t have the benefits of the latest graphics drivers, directx, opengl and cuda and all that kind of stuff.

1) You`ll reach the capacity of a smaller ps very soon, or you had to update the ps again once the system changes somehow.
Especially once you upgrade your Grafics card later.

2) Gaming or not is not really a concern anymore, since you are not going for a Pro NVidia Quadro Video card.
In the past I always found that AMD caught up to NVidia sometime and then fell back again.
And I was under the impression that the big software companies always favoured NVidia.
So this is my preferred route.
On the other hand I do not know if the Ryzen cpus take advantage of anything the AMD video card has to offer.

Get a card with as much as fast video ram as possible. That is what keeps it going in gpu rendering. At least 8GB.
The textures get loaded into vram to be used in the viewport. If that is filled, it slows down considerably.
This might not do much good (now) for TG but almost all the other apps in this field benefit from that.
All the realtime render engines for example. Or Unity or Unreal engines.
You`ll get to use those someday as well I am sure.

As usual: my premise is to get the best one can afford at the time buying. Anytime is the wrong to buy anyway.
Just now nvidia announced / released the next TRX generation...

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

Thanks for your fast and extensive recommendations, Klaus. Very helpful! It will (probably need to) be win 10. I have win 7 pro, but probably need an extra licence anyway. The machine will in principle be offline, but I still need to figure out how automatic updating of win 10 can be switched off. Not wanting to have renders broken or workflow suddenly interupted by win 10 hickups.
Yes, the best at any time will be expensive, and getting cheaper as other hardware is produced, which is even better. I wouldn't necessarily go for the best, but for 'the best for bucks'. Sometimes a 10% better performance will cost you 50% more, and 10% better performance is not really a breakpoint for me. That's why I had these 2 lists. The Ryzen 9 is faster than Ryzen 7, but is it worth the extra money?

Two more builds I found that have interesting parts:
High-Performance Rendering Build ($1700)

CPU: Intel i5-10600K
Graphics Card: RTX 2070 Super
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z490M-Plus
RAM: 32GB Dual-channel DDR4
Storage 1: 500GB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD
Storage 2: 4TB Toshiba HDD
Power Supply: SeaSonic Focus GM-750
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4
Case: Fractal Design Meshify C
Operating System: Windows 10

Professional level build. Very high performance, although not twice as much as the higher value Balanced Price-to-Performance build.

If you've got 3D design work to do in a professional capacity and want to minimize the amount of time you're wasting with tools, then this is an excellent build for you.

This build sports a new Intel i5 CPU, with the some of the highest single-threaded performance of any CPU. This build will have exceptional performance for creating, modifying, and animating 3D models. It will have very good rendering performance, although not as high as the more expensive builds.

This build also has a very efficient and quiet CPU cooler to keep the powerful CPU running cool and reliable, a graphics card with enormous performance for CUDA rendering, one of the fastest SSDs around, and a very high quality power supply.

If you want to do any gaming, this PC will handle all games smoothly at up to 4K.
Professional Rendering Build ($2500)

CPU: Intel i9-10900K
Graphics Card: RTX 2080 Super
Motherboard: MSI Z490-A Pro
RAM: 32GB Quad-channel DDR4
Storage 1: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD
Storage 2: 2x 4TB Toshiba HDDs
Power Supply: Corsair HX850
CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S24
Case: Corsair 750D
Operating System: Windows 10

The most performance you can get, before going off the deep end of the performance / price curve.

If you're not too concerned about budget, but balk at the price tag of the build below, this build is a good option.

The high-clock-speed, 10-core, 20-thread CPU has a great combination of single- and multi-threaded performance. Very balanced.

1TB of extremely fast SSD storage will make booting up, shutting down, accessing files, and opening programs snappy.

However, it seems Intel i9-10900 isn't the best.

[KlausK]

You can`t go wrong with the best bang for buck approach, of course.
I think I just got lazy Later on I always find myself thinking: "I should have ...", hehe.

Regarding the Ryzen CPUs Tangled-Universe might be a good candidate to help decide.
Remember his "New Ryzen Machine Build" thread? He did quite extensive tests.
And for TG work there is always the - your - TG Benchmark result sheet to take a look at.

As I said, Win10 only gives you the benefit of all the bells and whistles the latest drivers for video cards need to be at their optimum.
That goes for all the new breeds of SSD and cpus as well.

Afaik it is not possible to turn off Win10 updates completely. You can delay updates for a certain amount of time.
But the best strategy would be to have a stable running system cloned and ready to be installed back once Win10 dupes you anyway.
It was always a good thing to do, but since Win10 I think it is essential.

CHeers, Klaus

[Kadri]

Ulco i would wait just a little more to buy anything right now.
New Nvidia cards are announced and AMD cards will fallow. New AMD CPU's are on the horizon too.
Better to wait a little more then to buy now if you ask me.

[Dune]

Thanks again, guys. If win 10 is offline, it might not try to update anyway. I have to investigate.
I will look up Martin's thread, and maybe give him a hoot.
How long should the waiting be? I intend to buy something well before the end of the year. Tax, you know

[Kadri]

New AMD CPU's will come out supposedly in October.
https://www.techradar.com/news/amd-ryzen-4000
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/amd-radeon-rx-5950-xt-release-date-price-specs-3972186
Looks like AMD GPU's could be out in that time frame too.
But you know nothing is certain for now.

For PSU i wouldn't buy anything less then a good 750W one.

Still not out (next month i think) but for example this Nvidia card looks like (if those news are right) will be cheaper but faster then the "GeForce RTX 2080"
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-rtx-3070-most-important-ampere-graphics-card/

[Kadri]

If you use or will use a 4k monitor in the near future a GPU with at least and if possible more then 8 GB ram would be good.

[WAS]

There is a a procedure to disable windows 10 updates, windows defender, etc. It requires entering in a few command line stuff, I'll see if I can find the article. I did it on our multimedia compute stick so it would stop downloading and updating stuff while it's limited resources tried to play videos.

And yeah the new series of Nvidia GPUs will be debuting at the same price as last from what I heard so you could wait and get something beefier.

I honestly would go with AMD CPUs right now, but that's just me. Intel really doesn't have much overhead, and with the price gaps, isn't really even worth it.

[WAS]

If you use or will use a 4k monitor in the near future a GPU with at least and if possible more then 8 GB ram would be good.

I'd say over 8gb. I have 8gb and it's a strained on 4K ultrawide when it comes to GPU-end stuff. GPU is my bottleneck right now.

[Kadri]

We have a Ryzen 7 2700X and a Ryzen 9 3950X at home.

The Ryzen 2700X is a great CPU for that price. The Ryzen 9 3950X was 4 times more expensive but 2 times faster in rendering.
Approximately of course. Now it is 3 times more expensive when i looked at Newegg.
If money is not a problem i would buy at least a Ryzen 9 3950X. And a faster Threadripper even

But as i said if you can wait there could be better deals in 2-3 months.

[Kadri]

If you use or will use a 4k monitor in the near future a GPU with at least and if possible more then 8 GB ram would be good.

I'd say over 8gb. I have 8gb and it's a strained on 4K ultrawide when it comes to GPU-end stuff. GPU is my bottleneck right now.

Yeah. I would buy at least a 10 or more GB card too.

[Kadri]

With these prices of AMD i wouldn't even think about Intel.
But from some of those news it looks like AMD will be slowly using higher pricing too in their CPU's.
Just says how good their CPU's are these days.

[WAS]

Approximately of course. Now it is 3 times more expensive when i looked at Newegg.

I wonder if that's a import cost? It was nearly 600 dollars, and it's not in the low 400s. MSRP is 499.99 and when I was looking it was like 550+ at retailers, now it's like 438.99 on shopping lists from what I see.

[Kadri]

Approximately of course. Now it is 3 times more expensive when i looked at Newegg.

I wonder if that's a import cost? It was nearly 600 dollars, and it's not in the low 400s. MSRP is 499.99 and when I was looking it was like 550+ at retailers, now it's like 438.99 on shopping lists from what I see.

Could be.