Lowfat_Cheese

Setting up a used parts HTPC, running Intel Xeon X3470 on an Intel DH57JG with 8GB DDR3-1333. Installed my GT 730 to test the system and everything worked great! I enabled XMP in the BIOS, installed Windows and all the necessary drivers. Then I powered the system down, removed the GT 730 and installed an R9 380. Upon powering back up, the system would load the initial splash screen and then freeze, not allowing me open the BIOS or boot to Windows. I took the R9 380 out and tried it in another system and it worked just fine. I also tried installing another card (RX570) and that wouldn't work either. For some reason, only my GT 730 will allow the system to boot. The motherboard is running the most recent BIOS that Intel released. Is there any way to fix this?

I got an old HP office PC and I’ve been trying to configure it into an emulator box with Batocera.Linux. The machine posts and I was able to access the BIOS and boot menu just fine. When I select to boot from USB, it takes me to the Batocera.Linux splash screen and I’ve been sitting here for about 20 minutes without any visible progress. Should I keep waiting or am I doing something wrong System Specs: CPU: Core 2 Duo e8400 RAM: 4GB DDR2 Storage: 32GB USB drive (3.0 drive to 2.0 port) GPU: Pending GT 730 Mobo: mATX Intel DQ45CB

I appreciate the feedback, I'm really tying to test my knowledge against forums like this to see if I'm missing anything important with my build plan. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the release of Ryzen 3000 to see how it affects CPU prices.

I want to go with Ryzen because having those extra cores is particularly important for multitasking, and my current quad-core CPU already maxes out while rendering certain scenes. The closest 6-core Intel solutions either don't support simultaneous multi-threading, can't be overclocked, or are too expensive, plus with an AM4 board I can upgrade to Ryzen 7 easily when I have the need. Puget Systems recommendations are all well outside my budget, and they are also limiting their results to the Arnold render engine. I plan on switching from Arnold to AMD ProRender to take advantage of that engines better optimization with AMD components.

I was considering the 2060 because with the upcoming release of Arnold GPU, I was interested in seeing if the RT cores would allow for a massive boost in render times for raytraced scenes. I'm currently planning to go with a Vega 56 since it's $50 cheaper for nearly the same performance (minus RT cores). So far I do alright making videos at 1080p with 8gb of RAM on my current setup, but I'm going to upgrade to 16GB for this tower. 32GB would eat too much into my budget for the other components and I can just add more RAM down the line if need be.

Thanks for the advice! I've integrated your suggestions into my current build plan and swapped out the RTX 2060 for a Vega 56 to save $50 that I can allocate to RAM.

Thanks for the heads up! This is going to be a bit of protracted build, as I'm only purchasing one component with each paycheck, so chances are the Ryzen 3000-series will be out be the time I actually get around to buying a CPU.

Thanks for the advice! I was actually considering going for a Vega 56 over the 2060 as they're about $50 cheaper on some models. The 2060 is at about the maximum I can afford to spend on a GPU, but the Vega 56 seems to have comparable performance, even next to a 1070-ti.

Below I have listed my current build for a tower that will be used primarily for 3D modeling, animating and rendering student films in Blender and Maya. My absolute maximum budget is $1000. I have already bought the case, which is why it's listed as $0.00 My primary questions are: Is it better to have 8GB of faster system RAM, or 16GB of slower RAM, if i wan't to keep my RAM budget to around 50USD? How much of a performance boost in Blender/Maya renders do I get with RTX 2060 versus a RX Vega 56? Is it better to have 8GB of HBM2 VRAM (Vega56) or 6GB of GDDR6 VRAM (RTX2060)? Is it a better value to have a mobo with built-in wifi, over a non-wifi board with a network card? PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor $179.99 @ Amazon Motherboard Gigabyte - B450 AORUS PRO WIFI (rev. 1.0) ATX AM4 Motherboard $109.89 @ OutletPC Memory Team - Vulcan 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory $50.88 @ OutletPC Storage Kingston - A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $29.99 @ Amazon Storage Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $44.89 @ OutletPC Video Card MSI - GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB VENTUS OC Video Card $349.99 @ B&H Case Fractal Design - Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case Purchased For $0.00 Power Supply SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $79.99 @ SuperBiiz Case Fan be quiet! - Pure Wings 2 120 51.4 CFM 120mm Fan $10.89 @ OutletPC Keyboard Kensington - K72357US Wired Slim Keyboard $24.99 @ Amazon Mouse Logitech - G203 Prodigy Wired Optical Mouse $27.00 @ Amazon Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total (before mail-in rebates) $933.50 Mail-in rebates -$25.00 Total $908.50 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-29 18:28 EDT-0400

All of the research I've done on RTX seems to always come back to real-time raytracing in video games, and any discussion of using Turing for workstation use seems limited to the Quadro RTX and other similarly high-end GPUs. What I want to know from anybody with hands-on experience, is whether or not there is a significant boost in speed when rendering ray-traced scenes in render engines like Arnold or Cycles on an RTX card vs on a non-RTX card with otherwise similar specs at a midrange price point. If, for example I buy an RTX 2060, will there be a massive boost in non-game ray-tracing performance over a GTX 1070 ti or RX Vega 56?