Workstation Upgrade

[BrooklynXIII]

Hi all,

 

First of all, thanks for reading.

 

1. Budget & Location

    Less than 1000 dollars

    France (Europe)

 

2. Aim

    Mainly for rendering VFX (Houdini), some 3D (3DsMax), and the Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere Pro in particular).

    Also used for gaming (Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Minecraft, Anno ...).

 

3. Monitors
    Already have those : LG Ultrawide 2560x1080 (29 inches) and Asus 1920x1080 (24 inches)

 

4. Peripherals

No needs

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

I feel like my GTX 980 is getting old, and the work it has to do for Houdini rendering is getting too slow (fluid simulation is a "no, no" at medium resolution).

 

Here's my current build :

 

 

With a HDD of 3To and two SSD (500 Go and 1To each) and the case is a Cooler Master Silencio 652S (I'm at work right now so I couldn't get my current power supply)

 

I'm thinking of changing my GPU with an AMD Radeon Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5700 TX at 471 dollars... But I don't know if I need to change anything else (compatibility, bottleneck and all) and I'm getting lost with all the parts I may have to change...

 

I have this good deal that I found, but I don't know if all this changes is necessary... (Sorry it's in french :/)

Thank you in advance for your help ! (I'm getting pretty desperate and lost with this project that started with a simple GPU upgrade)

Brooklyn.

PS: sorry for the grammar

[Meganter]

14 minutes ago, BrooklynXIII said:

Hi all,

 

First of all, thanks for reading.

 

Hello,

 

I read multiple times that intel+nvidia is better to use with adobe, I don't know about everything else.

The 3600 won't bottleneck the 5700xt. You also need DDR4 ram (3000-3200mhz minimum, 3600mhz if possible)

 

You should use PCP (in french) :

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	€215.89 @ Alternate
Motherboard	Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard	€195.89 @ Amazon France
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	€102.89 @ Alternate
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB NITRO+ Video Card	€479.99 @ Amazon France
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€994.66
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-03 11:59 CEST+0200

 

Also maybe a new PSU could be recquired.

[BrooklynXIII]

2 minutes ago, Plouffe said:

Hello,

 

I read multiple times that intel+nvidia is better to use with adobe, I don't know about everything else.

The 3600 won't bottleneck the 5700xt. You also need DDR4 ram (3000-3200mhz minimum, 3600mhz if possible)

You should use PCP (in french) :

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	€215.89 @ Alternate
Motherboard	Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard	€195.89 @ Amazon France
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	€102.89 @ Alternate
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB NITRO+ Video Card	€479.99 @ Amazon France
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€994.66
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-03 11:59 CEST+0200

 

Damn that's a big upgrade... I was coming at 755 euros max.. But I didn't get into account that I would have to change the ram lol

Do I really need to change the motherboard/processor for it to work -I can't find my motherboard on PCP-? (It would allow me to buy the GPU first and then upgrade the rest after).

 

As for the use of AMD with Adobe products, I'm not really impacted with the difference it'll bring, it's mostly for personal use.

Thanks !

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, BrooklynXIII said:

As for the use of AMD with Adobe products, I'm not really impacted with the difference it'll bring, it's mostly for personal use.

You should probably at least get an Nvidia GPU then.

 

In the meantime here is so.rthing that makes more sense to buy

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (€215.89 @ Alternate) 
Motherboard: MSI B450M MORTAR MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€103.00 @ Amazon France) 
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (€86.90 @ Amazon France) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB PULSE Video Card  (€441.95 @ Amazon France) 
Total: €847.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-03 12:15 CEST+0200

[Meganter]

3 minutes ago, BrooklynXIII said:

Damn that's a big upgrade... I was coming at 755 euros max.. But I didn't get into account that I would have to change the ram lol

Do I really need to change the motherboard/processor for it to work -I can't find my motherboard on PCP-? (It would allow me to buy the GPU first and then upgrade the rest after).

 

As for the use of AMD with Adobe products, I'm not really impacted with the difference it'll bring, it's mostly for personal use.

Thanks !

 

You can keep your actual CPU/motherboard/ram. The i7-4790k is still a really good processor and you already have 16Gb of ram which is enough for most games. I don't know if you would need more for rendering though.

 

If you just want to change the GPU, the 5700xt is best for bucks at the moment, similar to 2070S/2080 which is 150-200€ more and a little bit under the 2080S which start at 750€. But as said before Nvidia is better for rendering than AMD.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Plouffe said:

But as said before Nvidia is better for rendering than AMD.

Depends on the application, but i. General, Navi is just garbage at rendering. (Edit: not to be confused with GCN which is pretty glld at rendering)

[BrooklynXIII]

18 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Depends on the application, but i. General, Navi is just garbage at rendering. (Edit: not to be confused with GCN which is pretty glld at rendering)

Yeah for sure, I'll have to think about it... Since I was ready to put 800 bucks for a new rig... I can as well get a RTX lol

 

Do you think I should at least change the motherboard or is it still good to go? ( I have to upgrade my Ram also since 16Go is the strict minimum for fluid rendering and the gigabyte is limited at 32Go max)

 

Thanks for the help :)

[GoldenLag]

5 minutes ago, BrooklynXIII said:

Do you think I should at least change the motherboard or is it still good to go? ( I have to upgrade my Ram also since 16Go is the strict minimum for fluid rendering and the gigabyte is limited at 32Go max)

if you need 32GB. just upgrade the CPU and mobo this time around and get 32 GB of Ram. 

 

otherwise there is no point in swapping mobo. 

6 minutes ago, BrooklynXIII said:

Since I was ready to put 800 bucks for a new rig

a whole new system?

[BrooklynXIII]

2 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

if you need 32GB. just upgrade the CPU and mobo this time around and get 32 GB of Ram. 

 

otherwise there is no point in swapping mobo. 

a whole new system?

Do you have a good recommendation of mobo?

 

Nay, I misspoke, but someone I know told me to just buy a new rig. But it seems too expensive to be interesting.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, BrooklynXIII said:

Do you have a good recommendation of mobo?

the mortar Max i suggested should be fine unless you need a lot of IO. 

[BrooklynXIII]

6 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

the mortar Max i suggested should be fine unless you need a lot of IO. 

Oh my bad, I stupidly thought that AM meant that it was exclusively for AMD GPU ! Thanks !

 

I think I'll go with the RTX 2070S... Thanks a lot GoldenLag and Plouffe for your recommendations and advices !