Designing a Productivity PC - Australia

[fluppagus]

Hi everyone. My sister has requested my assistance in designing a computer for productivity work.  She’s a graphic designer by trade and uses most of the adobe suite -  Lightroom, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects being the main ones, with the possibility to using Character Animator and Blender down the road.

 

Now normally she would buy the most recent iMac Pro and call It a day. But I felt I could do better, if only the thermals.  For reference a starter iMac Pro starts at about $7300 AUD

 

So I threw together what I imagined to be a decent system on PC Case Gear, which ended up in the same price range as an iMac Pro and I found a monitor which I think will work well. Mostly what I hoping for here is to get opinions on how well I’ve done.

 

Did I over do it? Is there some considerations I’ve missed? Are there parts that would do a better job for the same or less?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

https://www.pccasegear.com/wish_lists/999217/Productivity PC

 

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-32-8k-monitor-up3218k/apd/210-alez/monitors-monitor-accessories?fbclid=IwAR1Bd5yzt5UpaiAdUMu6wNTaDGM7R2kLtbTA6Rb_MVuYgD8BiG3UeyJxr0U

[SliceT]

Looks pretty decent, but not sure if you need such expensive motherboard, wont render any performance increase.
Get a solid board with plenty of features like the Taichi and you will be good.

[OnionFromOrion]

You might want consider an Intel CPU with the iGPU, which allows you to use quick sync if that is desirable. The motherboard is definitely overkill. If there are some feature needs you can always use an extra pcie extension card. A windows key from various vendors will be a lot cheaper than a retail license. A single HDD drive might not be ideal as she might want to run RAID 1.

[dizmo]

Is she writing off the computer?
If not, then that motherboard is massively overkill and completely unnecessary.

The 2080 Super is better value. 90%ish of the performance at half the cost.

You don't need a 1000w PSU. 750w, if that, realistically 650w is plenty.

Does she actually need 16TB of space?

I feel she could get away with 32GB of RAM.

 

As @OnionFromOrion said you'd be better off with Intel.

It's important to remember, RAID is not a back up.

[SupaKomputa]

29 minutes ago, OnionFromOrion said:

You might want consider an Intel CPU with the iGPU, which allows you to use quick sync if that is desirable. The motherboard is definitely overkill. If there are some feature needs you can always use an extra pcie extension card. A windows key from various vendors will be a lot cheaper than a retail license. A single HDD drive might not be ideal as she might want to run RAID 1.

Yes if you extensively use Quicksync, but if not you can use the massive core power of the Ryzen + gpu rendering, you won't bother with quicksync.

Rather than 16tb why not 2 in RAID 1 to add redundancy. Plus seagate ironwolf is not a fast drive.

1000w power suppy is too big, 650 should be enough.

[fluppagus]

44 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Is she writing off the computer?
If not, then that motherboard is massively overkill and completely unnecessary.

The 2080 Super is better value. 90%ish of the performance at half the cost.

You don't need a 1000w PSU. 750w, if that, realistically 650w is plenty.

Does she actually need 16TB of space?

I feel she could get away with 32GB of RAM.

 

As @OnionFromOrion said you'd be better off with Intel.

It's important to remember, RAID is not a back up.

She will be able to claim this at least a little on tax (I'm no expert on that sort of thing). I will admit I was kinda aiming for overkill when I threw the pieces together.

 

I chose that motherboard mostly because it was the only one with 3 m.2 slots and it would definitely be able to throw whatever overclock I managed to get stable on the chip. Again I made that choice as deliberate overkill so thats probably a good place to save a few bucks.

 

Dropping down to the 2080 super is probably a good idea.

 

The HDD probably doesn't need to be that big (again I was just going for overkill), and if running multiple drives in raid is better thats not something I have a lot of experience with.  I had intended for the main storage to be the 3 2TB NVMe drives with the HDD being for long term storage.

 

With the power supply again my choice was mostly overkill. I have an 850W in my own system and I put that together about 4-5 years ago, so no biggy dropping it down the one that would go in this down to something similar.

 

If I was to switch to an Intel cpu which ones would I be looking at? I don't have any experience with quicksync beyond a quick look at the wikipedia page.

 

Thanks for the advice so far

[seagate_surfer]

IronWolf is an excellent device that works at 7200 RPM, except for options 4,3,2 and 1 TB that work at 5900 RPM, the Pro version of the same product line works at 7200 RPM all sizes/capacity. For soemthing faster you will need to build your set up using SSD devices.

[brob]

At least three drives are generally considered optimal for premiere and other Adobe products. You might consider all ssd storage.

 

Quicksync when available is used to accelerate some Adobe functions. As a result an I9-9900K can offer better performance in some areas. Of course the higher core count of the 3900X make it the higher performance cpu in other areas. 

 

The case comes with three stock fans. If one adds the three fans of the cpu cooler I think it is reasonable to concluded there are sufficient to establish good airflow.I

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($798.00 @ Centre Com) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i PRO 47.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($247.00 @ Shopping Express) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($329.00 @ Centre Com) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($449.90 @ Newegg Australia) 
Storage: Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($319.00 @ Scorptec) 
Storage: Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($319.00 @ Scorptec) 
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 4 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($929.00 @ Shopping Express) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card  ($1199.00 @ Newegg Australia) 
Case: be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 ATX Full Tower Case  ($349.00 @ PCCaseGear) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic PRIME Ultra Gold 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($283.00 @ Skycomp Technology) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Full - USB 32/64-bit  ($215.00 @ Amazon Australia) 
Total: $5436.90
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-23 07:23 AEDT+1100

 

[fluppagus]

Thanks for all the help everyone. I think I've gotten all the info I need to make a decision. I've revised the AMD build based off the advice here and got it down to a price point similar to the suggested Intel build. If forwarded them to my sister so she can make her decision when the time comes

[seagate_surfer]

You are welcome!