Brent744

CADD is a cpu intensive application. I as well, recommend at least an i5 9600k. They're currently on sale at NewEgg and CanadaComputers.

If you have the correct RAM and the machine still is not gaining any image then it's likely the motherboard or GPU.

A 550w PSU should be sufficient for your build, you're sure its 550w? You know the wattage but you don't know the brand? And you're connecting the 8-pin power connection to the GPU correct?

Most of the time I would think, but not always the case. This is the third card where I've changed the paste and it made no difference. Previous cards were EVGA 1050 Ti and Gigabyte 1060 which both made no difference, maybe because they use a lot less power, not sure. Then I changed paste on a EVGA 1070 and temps went down 6 degrees under load so I figured I might get the same result in the Vega, but it didn't change. Using Arctic Silver 5 for each unit.

AMD is the way to go with this title. It relies heavily on CPU performance and at the moment, AMD offerings give you more cores and more threads for a better price.

Not always. Many brands use very good thermal compounds for their aftermarket cooler cards, and even after a few years it will maintain full thermal performance.

The motherboard will have some form of display output. It's an older board so it's likely a VGA port.

Actually you're right, that model does not have a display output on the motherboard. Do you have any other GPU that you can use for the time being that you know 100% works?

If you're sure the PSU is good to go and you're still not getting a bios image or anything, my guess would be a motherboard problem or you don't have the correct RAM.

Next, remove the GPU, power down the machine and clear cmos. You need to eliminate as many potential problems as possible, and this cpu does have integrated graphics so it's able to boot without a GPU providing the cpu and mobo are functional. Plug the display directly into the motherboard then try booting the PC again.

Yep.

when diagnosing a problem like this only place 1 ram stick in, in DIMM_A1.

I wouldn't've expected it to. AS5 was the best, 15 years ago... Now it's almost 4°c off the average for high-end thermal pastes, plus it dries out fast. Prolimatech PK-3 is my go-to paste, and is up there with the absolute best non-liquid metal pastes available, but much cheaper per ounce. (it's about 1/2 the price of AS5 last I checked)

i did. it on a VII which is pretty similar. Has improve temps!. but you need a good amount and be super careful with that HBM! 
 
i have my VII under LM now but with high end TIM i saw a temp decrease of about 6deg. this however could be lower in your case because vega is not spitting out that much heat as my VII does.
 
all in all it’s easy to do and can’t hurt, so try it! Wich cooler do you have?

Why do you think your RAM is not supported by XMP? Your motherboard will determine whether or not you can enable this. I have G.SKILL 3200. Without XMP it's running at 2133mhz.

get s crewdriver between the heatspreader on the chip and the cooler and then just twist it a bit.

I7 2600 would be a safer bet on an OEM board that came with Sandy bridge. There may be no bios for ivy bridge.

Was this a brand new machine? or a second hand one? If brand new I would return it. If you have dual channel ram I'd try removing 1 stick and boot. if the result is the same, swap the sticks and try booting with the other. Let us know how you make out.

You will see a massive downgrade in performance switching to a MacBook Pro and I highly doubt you'll be able to run any game at 1440p on a MacBook. Most MacBook's are running dual core i5's without any dedicated GPU. Your current i5 is a little dated but still a good high performance chip. The GTX 1660 GPU is still quite new as it only came out recently and should be a decent card in gaming.
It's been a few years since I've owned one, my last model was 2015 MacBook Pro and it couldn't really run any game at a comfortable setting.

I'm still rocking my 1070 and loving it! I only game at 1080p and don't have one of those fancy monitors with the higher refresh rates so for me a 1070 is perfect and runs everything maxed out. A lot of PC enthusiasts want max performance with max frames.

I'm sure for everyday use a Ryzen 3 would suffice. But a Ryzen 5 has more powerful integrated graphics and would allow for some light gaming. I recommend the Ryzen 5 but depending on budget, a Ryzen 3 would be good as well.

I would recommend any laptop with an 8th gen i5 (or higher) or Ryzen chip. Preferably something with an SSD but not necessarily required.

The upgrade to Ryzen is in your best interest, trust me. I had an FX 8350 years ago. Any intel i5 or even first gen Ryzen 3 would perform better than any FX series chip.

For the record, I've owned a Ryzen 7 1700 with B350 board, Ryzen 5 2600 B450 board and now a Ryzen 7 2700X. Never had a single issue with any of my chips or boards. Personally I love both Intel and AMD, although I have more history with Intel. Both the i7 9700K and Ryzen 7 3700X will make a great build so I recommend going for whichever is more cost effective.

The benchmark when it throttled dropped performance.
there is the difference.