Upgrade my old Alienware Aurora R4?

[Santi.Prada]

Hi guys, I'm currently at a crossroads and hoping you can help me out. I'm an Architecture Student, currently going into my 4th year, the first few years I didn't really do too much intensive 3D rendering or modeling but now I'm basically doing Parts of a City with a lot of components making up the model and even producing short videos that do a walkthrough of the model. I use Autocad, Sketchup, Revit, Photoshop, and sometimes TwinMotion or Lumion, altough with my current setup I can't really say my work time is really efficient because of the downtime I have waiting for my PC to catch up. I do end up having many of these programs open at the same time and in some cases use older versions just to be able to run them, which really doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't overclock my Rig, just because I don't really want to and am a Light Gamer.

My current setup is about 10years old, I've gotta say I'm surprised it's still kicking. It has an Intel Core I7-3820 3.6Ghz with a 2gb GTX 750 (I know, it's extremely bottlenecked, something I just recently learned), 8gb of RAM (1600Mhz) and liquid cooling (which I have to replace) and a CoolerMaster (MasterWatt Lite) 700W (80Plus White) Power Supply. I have to specify that I am from Argentina so getting a larger market of component is hard and the economy here is just terribly unstable. With that in mind, I was saving up to buy a whole new system and sell mine as is (Was looking at a Mother: MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max, Procesor: Ryzen 5 1600AF / Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 2700X, Cooler: CPU ID-Cooling SE-214 Intel 1151 AMD AM4, RAM: 2 Sticks of DDR4 4GB 3200Mhz, ASUS 4GB GTX 1650 Super GDDR6 ROG Strix Advanced or an Asrock 8GB RX 580 OC PhantomGaming, Deepcool 600W DA600 80Plus Bronze, SSD+Hardrive and a nice but cheap case) but since I found out my current CPU is 100% bottlenecked and it's taking me serious time to save up the whole amount for that setup, I thought: Why not just buy a better Graphics Card and some more RAM (I think I am limited to 1600Mhz with my processor) and buy the rest at a later date (or maybe even get the Ryzen 3 3300X).

My questions for you guys are:

                  1. Which graphics card do you think is better for my workload? The GTX 1650 Super (4GB) or the RX 580 (8GB)?

                  2. If I were to update the whole RIG at a later date, which procesor do you recommend for my workload? I know some of the programs I use will take advantage of multithreading, so more cores will benefit me, but does the new Ryzen 3 3300X Architecture make up the diference with less cores?

                  3. What new cooling system do you recommend for my CPU? I have an LGA - 2011 socket. I don't mind switching to aircooling, it'll probably be cheaper for me. I have this liquid cooling in mind "FrostFlow X 120 1151 and AMD AM4" or this air cooling "SE-214 Intel 1151 AMD AM4". The difference in price es about double (the aircooling is about 2200 Pesos (20USD) and the liquid cooling is around 5200 Pesos (44USD).

                 4. Am I correct on my current RAM situation or can I buy and use higher frequency RAM?

 

For those you you that take the time to read this and respond I thank you dearly, I apologize for the long post! Hope to hear from someone soon. If any other information is needed please leave a comment.

[Entropy.]

4 minutes ago, Santi.Prada said:

Hi guys, I'm currently at a crossroads and hoping you can help me out. I'm an Architecture Student, currently going into my 4th year, the first few years I didn't really do too much intensive 3D rendering or modeling but now I'm basically doing Parts of a City with a lot of components making up the model and even producing short videos that do a walkthrough of the model. I use Autocad, Sketchup, Revit, Photoshop, and sometimes TwinMotion or Lumion, altough with my current setup I can't really say my work time is really efficient because of the downtime I have waiting for my PC to catch up. I do end up having many of these programs open at the same time and in some cases use older versions just to be able to run them, which really doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't overclock my Rig, just because I don't really want to and am a Light Gamer.

My current setup is about 10years old, I've gotta say I'm surprised it's still kicking. It has an Intel Core I7-3820 3.6Ghz with a 2gb GTX 750 (I know, it's extremely bottlenecked, something I just recently learned), 8gb of RAM (1600Mhz) and liquid cooling (which I have to replace) and a CoolerMaster (MasterWatt Lite) 700W (80Plus White) Power Supply. I have to specify that I am from Argentina so getting a larger market of component is hard and the economy here is just terribly unstable. With that in mind, I was saving up to buy a whole new system and sell mine as is (Was looking at a Mother: MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max, Procesor: Ryzen 5 1600AF / Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 2700X, Cooler: CPU ID-Cooling SE-214 Intel 1151 AMD AM4, RAM: 2 Sticks of DDR4 4GB 3200Mhz, ASUS 4GB GTX 1650 Super GDDR6 ROG Strix Advanced or an Asrock 8GB RX 580 OC PhantomGaming, Deepcool 600W DA600 80Plus Bronze, SSD+Hardrive and a nice but cheap case) but since I found out my current CPU is 100% bottlenecked and it's taking me serious time to save up the whole amount for that setup, I thought: Why not just buy a better Graphics Card and some more RAM (I think I am limited to 1600Mhz with my processor) and buy the rest at a later date (or maybe even get the Ryzen 3 3300X).

My questions for you guys are:

                  1. Which graphics card do you think is better for my workload? The GTX 1650 Super (4GB) or the RX 580 (8GB)?

                  2. If I were to update the whole RIG at a later date, which procesor do you recommend for my workload? I know some of the programs I use will take advantage of multithreading, so more cores will benefit me, but does the new Ryzen 3 3300X Architecture make up the diference with less cores?

                  3. What new cooling system do you recommend for my CPU? I have an LGA - 2011 socket. I don't mind switching to aircooling, it'll probably be cheaper for me. I have this liquid cooling in mind "FrostFlow X 120 1151 and AMD AM4" or this air cooling "SE-214 Intel 1151 AMD AM4". The difference in price es about double (the aircooling is about 2200 Pesos (20USD) and the liquid cooling is around 5200 Pesos (44USD).

                 4. Am I correct on my current RAM situation or can I buy and use higher frequency RAM?

 

For those you you that take the time to read this and respond I thank you dearly, I apologize for the long post! Hope to hear from someone soon. If any other information is needed please leave a comment.

What's your current build? (Sorry I'll respond with a deatailed message in about 12 hours) 

[Orange_dogg]

The biggest bottle necks the gpu and the ram 8gb is barely enough for photo editing let alone rendering. I am sitting here with just chrome open using 7.7 gb ram. 16gb should be suffice but for heavy rendering 32gb would be a much better option. the b450m motherboard only has 2 slots so to upgrade from 16gb to 32gb you would need a whole new set of ram. the more gb the gpu has the better it will perform. 4gb gpu could be a bottleneck with a ryzen 7 2700x. The rx 580 phantom would be the way to go with more memory but it also has over 1,000 more shading units and 64 more texture mapping unit. The i7 you have now has a tdp of 130w the air cooler listed can support upto 150w those numbers are very close Iadvise going for the water cooler listed which is listed at 200w tdp or a beefier air cooler. Your cpu is limited to the 1600mhz ram, upgrading to 16gb would depend on your motherboard.

[Santi.Prada]

51 minutes ago, Brok3n But who cares? said:

What's your current build? (Sorry I'll respond with a deatailed message in about 12 hours) 

Hi Brok3n, as mentioned in the post I currently have an Intel Core I7-3820 3.6Ghz with a 2gb GTX 750 (I know, it's extremely bottlenecked, something I just recently learned), 8gb of RAM (1600Mhz) and liquid cooling (which I have to replace) and a CoolerMaster (MasterWatt Lite) 700W (80Plus White) Power Supply. Currently rocking just a HardDrive, but will soon adquire and install an SSD.

[Santi.Prada]

11 minutes ago, Orange_dogg said:

The biggest bottle necks the gpu and the ram 8gb is barely enough for photo editing let alone rendering. I am sitting here with just chrome open using 7.7 gb ram. 16gb should be suffice but for heavy rendering 32gb would be a much better option. the b450m motherboard only has 2 slots so to upgrade from 16gb to 32gb you would need a whole new set of ram. the more gb the gpu has the better it will perform. 4gb gpu could be a bottleneck with a ryzen 7 2700x. The rx 580 phantom would be the way to go with more memory but it also has over 1,000 more shading units and 64 more texture mapping unit. The i7 you have now has a tdp of 130w the air cooler listed can support upto 150w those numbers are very close Iadvise going for the water cooler listed which is listed at 200w tdp or a beefier air cooler. Your cpu is limited to the 1600mhz ram, upgrading to 16gb would depend on your motherboard.

Hi Orange_dogg, first of all thanks for the feedback! So if I understand you correctly the RX 580 would be better for my Architecture style workload, correct? I don't really understand in depth the difference between the 2 GPU's listed, but I also found that the GTX has better driver stability (Not sure if this problem has been fixed), I can't really afford having complications. And the Ryzen 7 2700x is a looong ways away for me I believe, just because of the prices I've been seeing, so by then I may be able to upgrade to a better GPU. Thanks for the cooling input, I actually had no idea how to pick one properly, now I'll look at similarly priced models and actually understand the difference. My current motherboard has 4 slots and I think it supports up to 64Gb of RAM, have not been able to identify what

[Santi.Prada]

Sorry for repeting the messages, I just now noticed how to properly Respond.

[Orange_dogg]

You are correct that the rx580 would indeed be better, I actually play games and a little bit of editing with an rx 580 and have never had driver issues, the drivers on the gtx are better for overclocking, but if not you should be fine. The rx 580 can render about 1.7x more at a moment then the gtx, though the gtx is faster not that much faster. For a cooler just look for a cooler with a max tdp of at least 175w if not more. The ram that you currently use can not be used with any other ram as you can not mix ram. Look for 2 sticks of 8gb ddr3 ram 1600mz then later if you need to you can get 2 more stick of the same kind and have 32gb ram, but try 16gb first as it may be enough.

To clarify on ram. Your pc supports ddr3 ram no other kind can be put in it.

[Santi.Prada]

10 hours ago, Orange_dogg said:

You are correct that the rx580 would indeed be better, I actually play games and a little bit of editing with an rx 580 and have never had driver issues, the drivers on the gtx are better for overclocking, but if not you should be fine. The rx 580 can render about 1.7x more at a moment then the gtx, though the gtx is faster not that much faster. For a cooler just look for a cooler with a max tdp of at least 175w if not more. The ram that you currently use can not be used with any other ram as you can not mix ram. Look for 2 sticks of 8gb ddr3 ram 1600mz then later if you need to you can get 2 more stick of the same kind and have 32gb ram, but try 16gb first as it may be enough.

To clarify on ram. Your pc supports ddr3 ram no other kind can be put in it.

Thank you Orange_dogg for all your feedback. Yeah the dream for me is to get to 32GB of RAM, good thing you confirmed the fact that I can only use DDR3 1600MHz as I was about to buy DDR4 3000MHz RAM thinking I would benefit.

[Orange_dogg]

You are very welcome, I am happy I could help