avector

Thank you, super helpful reply, both re UserBenchmark and the Blender benchmarks

Budget (including currency): ~£800 Country: UK Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CAD (Fusion350 and TurboCAD2015), Blender, Gaming Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Upgrading from: Intel Core i5-6500 @3.20GHz 16 GB of Ram H110U Motherboard NVidia 970 GTX Graphics Card 250 GB SSD 1 TB HDD My proposed parts list for him: PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£164.97 @ Amazon UK) Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£71.98 @ AWD-IT) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£62.35 @ Amazon UK) Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£58.08 @ Amazon UK) Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card (£353.40 @ Amazon UK) Case: Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£67.98 @ Amazon UK) Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£53.60 @ CCL Computers) Total: £832.36 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-18 23:05 BST+0100 The questions are: Buying a better motherboard to make upgrading to CPUs with higher current draw a viable upgrade path I think is worth it, so to go at least to Tear C so that he can get to a 3900X if he wanted to. Probably a B550 would be all he needed, rather than a 570. I'd need to research which is the cheapest in that tier. He could probably leave off the nvme drive and just buy that later if need be. I did consider the 5700XT but he's used to Nvidia and Blender, when last I checked, played better with the green team. The 3600X seems like the sweet spot at the moment, so even though CAD would benefit from more cores, the cost per core goes up a lot from there. UserBenchmark, if it is to be believed, has a decent boost: Thoughts?

Given the announcement from AMD to support 4000 series chips on B450 and X470 I upped by budget a bit and made this PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£284.97 @ Laptops Direct) Motherboard: MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£104.98 @ CCL Computers) Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (£135.99 @ Alza) Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£58.66 @ Amazon UK) Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB Gaming OC 3X Video Card (£524.99 @ CCL Computers) Case: Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.98 @ Amazon UK) Power Supply: Corsair RMx White (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£114.99 @ Corsair UK) Total: £1299.56 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-22 12:37 BST+0100

Thanks for all the responses!

Budget (including currency): £1000 Country: UK Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Apex Legends or general FPS @1440p using 144Hz monitor, Blender, Photoshop, World Generator Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Acer XF270HUA monitor. I gave my PC away so I'm building from scratch again. I play a variety of games, and am a 3D hobbyist so use Blender and Photoshop extensively. Given the whole B450 disaster from AMD I'm inclined to buy the cheapest B450 motherboard for now, and then upgrade to B550 at a later point. My main question is will the motherboard I picked cause this build any issues? The other question is will the RAM speed make that much difference if I upgrade it to 3600? PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£152.00 @ Amazon UK) Motherboard: MSI B450M-A PRO MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£58.40 @ CCL Computers) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£74.97 @ Laptops Direct) Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£59.64 @ BT Shop) Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC 3X Video Card (£497.99 @ Technextday) Case: Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£72.95 @ Amazon UK) Power Supply: EVGA B3 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£59.99 @ Amazon UK) Total: £975.94 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-13 17:48 BST+0100

Fair point, I downgraded the M.2 to something reasonable and stuck an HDD in. I also (probably unwisely) paid a couple extra for GB memory as everything else was coming tomorrow and well hey I get to build it tomorrow now PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor £287.99 @ Aria PC Motherboard MSI - B450M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard £82.96 @ Amazon UK Memory Corsair - Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory £116.98 @ Amazon UK Storage Crucial - P1 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive £63.59 @ Amazon UK Storage Seagate - BarraCuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive £34.50 @ Amazon UK Video Card Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini Video Card £229.96 @ Amazon UK Case Thermaltake - Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case Purchased For £0.00 Power Supply XFX - XTR 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Purchased For £0.00 Case Fan Noctua - NF-F12 PWM 54.97 CFM 120mm Fan Purchased For £0.00 Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total £815.98 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-05 23:29 BST+0100 Thanks again for all your help, great 1st experience on the forum ?

Thank you for all the help, much appreciated! @trevb0t great resource thank you, I've switched to the mortar, and thanks to all who pointed out the mobo was no good! The mortar is actually the same price so I can leave the rest as is. Gaming nexus seems to indicate the mortar has the best VRM in the mATX form factor which is why I went with it. Would be good to have the mobo comparison in form factors too. FWIW I couldn't find a Tomahawk in mATX, although I guess the mortar kinda is that. @Herman Mcpootis I looked at this comparison which seemed to indicate the 1070 was faster, although not by much, but it was a lot cheaper. @paddy-stone @jstudrawa Holding off for 3000 -> Yes you are correct I should do that *hovers mouse over buy button* (but I probably can't wait) The SSD is really too much on this build, but the next down the rung it £63 for 45% less effective speed (according to this if it is to be believed, how much real world difference that'll make I don't know) so may just stick with it. Thanks again for all the responses, super useful!

Oops my bad that's a mistake in the list, it was a 750Ti 2Gb -> corrected.

So my current pc sucks -> PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU Intel - Core i5-2500 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor Motherboard Intel - DH67BLB3 Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard Memory Corsair - XMS3 8 GB (4 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 Memory £94.60 @ SmartTeck.co.uk Storage Intel - X25-M 160 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage Western Digital - RE3 500 GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive £71.25 @ Amazon UK Video Card GTX 750 Ti 2Gb (Edit) Power Supply XFX - XTR 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply £120.75 @ Amazon UK Case Fan Noctua - NF-F12 PWM 54.97 CFM 120mm Fan £16.99 @ Amazon UK Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total £303.59 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-05 13:46 BST+0100 Doing an upgrade as follows: 1. Budget & Location UK, around £800 2. Aim I do a lot of things so it's multi-purpose. I sculpt, model and render in Blender and kept running out of GPU memory. Note currently rendering in Blender is faster in Cycles so Vega is out. I game and want to be able to stream. I also design and illustrate. #allthethings 3. Monitors I currently run a single ultra-wide monitor but it drives me mad so in the future will be switching (back) to dual monitors probably 1440p. 4. Peripherals Don't need any, will be running Windows, have a Thermaltake mATX case with decent cooling. 5. Why are you upgrading? Machine is so old gaming is not running well and have to run most things on low settings, rendering in blender ram out of ram a lot which is a pain and want to stream. Here's my parts list: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor £286.98 @ Aria PC Motherboard Asus - TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard £82.99 @ AWD-IT Memory Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory £101.50 @ Aria PC Storage Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive £99.00 @ Amazon UK Video Card Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini Video Card £229.97 @ Ebuyer Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total £800.44 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-05 13:51 BST+0100 I've already bought the GPU as the price was so good, I haven't bought the other parts yet. You can see some predicted stats on userbenchmark https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCBuilder/Custom/S93988-M475904.141989.700020.89269vsS93462-M475904.141989.700020.89269?tab=MBD Questions I want to make sure the motherboard can handle the ryzen 2700x, I'm not planning on overclocking it myself. The M.2 specs on the motherboards confuse me, I could spend an extra £20 to get the Pro version of the motherboard that has 2 M.2 slots but it seems like the second slot doesn't get the full set of PCI lanes in which case isn't it pointless? I'm planning on using the existing XFX 550W PSU, I think that's enough power for now? Expandability I may at some point buy a second GPU not for SLI but for rendering power, I think the motherboard is fine for this, the transfer rate doesn't really matter as most of the time is taken up rendering. At some point I'll buy another set of RAM if I run into issues running out. Guess that's it, seems like a seriously good build for the money, but wondering what other people think?