Question About a General Approach/Philosophy

[cokeandfries]

Budget (including currency): $1200

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft (with ray tracing is a plus), SoldWorks CAD, light stats modeling/machine learning.

Other details:

• Existing parts:
  • 250GB SSD
  • Keyboard & Mouse
  • Windows OS License
• Whether any peripherals are needed: No.
• What you're upgrading from: Dell Latitude 3570 14" Laptop, 6th Gen core i5, 8GB DDR3L RAM, Integrated Intel HD 520 Graphics.
• When you're going to buy: in the next 30 days +/-
• I don't care about aesthetics, just performance.
• I will need to buy a monitor, but I am not including it in my $1200 budget. I am open to suggestions..

Backstory: My cat knocked a glass of water all over my laptop (purchased in 2017) which I was hoping would serve me until 2023. Suffice to say the SSD is the only part I was able to salvage.

 

Now, on to my question. The main design objective for my system is for it to be able to chug along for at least 5-7 years with minimal upgrades. Of course building a machine with the best of the current best will put me well outside my budget. So keeping my design objective in mind, as a general approach/philosophy:

1. Which components do I need to invest in now to ensure the machine will be able to make it into 2025 (at least)?
2. Which components can I save money on, and cost effectively upgrade no earlier than 2 years down the line?
3. Does a system that meets my design objective within my budget exist? If not, please help me readjust my expectations.

Thank you!

 

[Guest]

It's a better idea to upgrade some components every 2-3 years than try to get current hardware to last that long.

[LIGISTX]

31 minutes ago, cokeandfries said:

Budget (including currency): $1200

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft (with ray tracing is a plus), SoldWorks CAD, light stats modeling/machine learning.

Other details:

• Existing parts:
  • 250GB SSD
  • Keyboard & Mouse
  • Windows OS License
• Whether any peripherals are needed: No.
• What you're upgrading from: Dell Latitude 3570 14" Laptop, 6th Gen core i5, 8GB DDR3L RAM, Integrated Intel HD 520 Graphics.
• When you're going to buy: in the next 30 days +/-
• I don't care about aesthetics, just performance.
• I will need to buy a monitor, but I am not including it in my $1200 budget. I am open to suggestions..

Backstory: My cat knocked a glass of water all over my laptop (purchased in 2017) which I was hoping would serve me until 2023. Suffice to say the SSD is the only part I was able to salvage.

 

Now, on to my question. The main design objective for my system is for it to be able to chug along for at least 5-7 years with minimal upgrades. Of course building a machine with the best of the current best will put me well outside my budget. So keeping my design objective in mind, as a general approach/philosophy:

1. Which components do I need to invest in now to ensure the machine will be able to make it into 2025 (at least)?
2. Which components can I save money on, and cost effectively upgrade no earlier than 2 years down the line?
3. Does a system that meets my design objective within my budget exist? If not, please help me readjust my expectations.

Thank you!

 

Cores, lots of cores. AMD 3700 would be a good option here. If that is not in the budget, 3600. The thing with "future proofing" is, its just impossible to do. With that said, the industry and software is going towards core count mattering a lot. So the more cores you can get, the longer the CPU will effectively last. Hopefully things like Vulkan keep improving which allows for games to not need RAW GHz, but that is sort of a hard bet to make. Its likely by 2025, a 3700 will not be "fast", but it will be "fine".

 

RAM is something I think you can go low on now, and upgrade later. 16 GB is plenty for todays work, and in 2-3 years if there is a need for 32 (likely won't be so your probs fine with 16 for the life of the machine), you can likely grab some cheap DDR4 when DDR5 starts to hit the market in ~3 years, maybe 4, we are still not 100% sure when that will be.

 

GPU's are a horrible thing to try and future proof. If you spend 250 now vs 500 now, and just put that 250 in the bank and spend it again in 3 years on another 250 dollar card, you will ha ve the same performance you did today by spending 500, but likely with cool new "DLSS 5.0" or "Ray Tracing EXTREME SUPER QUANTUM Ti" which doesn't exist yet. Its a hard question to answer... Spend more now to have a higher FPS/higher resolution experience RIGHT NOW and for the next few years, or save a bit now, so you can upgrade without "feeling bad" about it later. Sorta up to you on that one.

[cokeandfries]

22 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Cores, lots of cores. AMD 3700 would be a good option here. If that is not in the budget, 3600. The thing with "future proofing" is, its just impossible to do. With that said, the industry and software is going towards core count mattering a lot. So the more cores you can get, the longer the CPU will effectively last. Hopefully things like Vulkan keep improving which allows for games to not need RAW GHz, but that is sort of a hard bet to make. Its likely by 2025, a 3700 will not be "fast", but it will be "fine".

 

RAM is something I think you can go low on now, and upgrade later. 16 GB is plenty for todays work, and in 2-3 years if there is a need for 32 (likely won't be so your probs fine with 16 for the life of the machine), you can likely grab some cheap DDR4 when DDR5 starts to hit the market in ~3 years, maybe 4, we are still not 100% sure when that will be.

 

GPU's are a horrible thing to try and future proof. If you spend 250 now vs 500 now, and just put that 250 in the bank and spend it again in 3 years on another 250 dollar card, you will ha ve the same performance you did today by spending 500, but likely with cool new "DLSS 5.0" or "Ray Tracing EXTREME SUPER QUANTUM Ti" which doesn't exist yet. Its a hard question to answer... Spend more now to have a higher FPS/higher resolution experience RIGHT NOW and for the next few years, or save a bit now, so you can upgrade without "feeling bad" about it later. Sorta up to you on that one.

I'm glad my initial intuition was pointed in the right direction. 

Quote

3700 will not be "fast", but it will be "fine".

... is exactly what I am looking for - a system that is "fine" 5 years from now.

 

How about the motherboard and powersupply? What are the features I should place a premium on to enable upgrades 2-3 years down the line without a complete rebuild?

 

Thanks!

 

[LIGISTX]

12 minutes ago, cokeandfries said:

I'm glad my initial intuition was pointed in the right direction. 

... is exactly what I am looking for - a system that is "fine" 5 years from now.

 

How about the motherboard and powersupply? What are the features I should place a premium on to enable upgrades 2-3 years down the line without a complete rebuild?

 

Thanks!

 

Mobo really doesn't matter at all. There are no real features on a mobo that are forward looking, besides PCIe Gen 4, which AMD supports. Even with that, the chance of 3.0 being over sutured in the next 5 years is extremely unlikely.

 

PSU, a quality 650 watt will be enough for any single GPU you ever want to throw at it.

[igormp]

Since you already have a SSD, this should do:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($289.99 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler  ($38.99 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($114.99 @ Best Buy) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($164.99 @ Corsair) 
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB Video Card  ($399.99 @ Best Buy) 
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case  ($69.04 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Corsair CXM 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  ($94.99 @ Best Buy) 
Total: $1172.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-19 09:57 EDT-0400

 

The 2060S is the cheapest RTX card with 8gb of vram, which should be enough for most ML models and allows you to do some ray traced minecraft.

 

Now, as for

11 hours ago, cokeandfries said:

1. Which components can I save money on, and cost effectively upgrade no earlier than 2 years down the line?

You could save a couple bucks going for a 550w supply, and I doubt you'd even need more than that. If 6gb of ram and no ray tracing is ok for you, a 1660 Super should be enough instead of the 2060S.

[HM-2]

You can get a high quality PSU in the 500-650w range with a 10 year warranty for a very reasonable price (under £100 here in the UK so probably under $100 in the US).

That fulfills both the "save money" and "keep functioning until 2025". I'm currently using a 750W Corsair AX750 that I've had since 2011 and shows no signs of giving up the ghost. The EVGA SuperNOVA 550 GA probably fits the bill, or one of their 650w models at or near $100, and unless you intend on heavy overclocking or multiple GPUs that should serve you well (especially given that power efficiency tends to increase from generation to generation).

[SavageNeo]

try this: 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	$172.39 @ Newegg
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$83.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$58.98 @ Newegg
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card	$719.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair iCUE 220T RGB Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case	$99.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1250.33
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-19 11:41 EDT-0400