Upgrading Blender / CAD machine. Advice please!

[frankynbhall]

Budget (including currency): £500 (give or take; preferably take)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Blender, Solidworks, Fusion 360, Illustrator, FL Studio, Ableton, Keyshot, Premiere

 

Hello all,

 

First time user of this forum and new to the idea of building a computer. Currently using a second hand CAD machine from an office. I've got a pretty intensive Blender project underway spanning the space of several months and have been seriously suffering with cycles render times. This is a pretty CPU intensive task so that's the main focus of the upgrade / rebuild. I'm also planning on doing some Eevee rendering (which uses the GPU) - add on top of that the fact that my current GPU is not compatible with Premiere. Struggling to justify the steep costs however as I'm not much of a gamer. I do also produce music but I don't see this as being a big factor in my reason to upgrade. 

 

Another struggle I've had is big lag with large CAD assemblies. I'd basically like my computer to be a beast at all of the softwares listed above. I've very quickly thrown together a parts list with some help from a friend and was hoping for some feedback. I would be very appreciative of any advice!

 

 

And for those interested, I'm toying with the idea of throwing this all in a Mac G5 case as I think they're damn good looking. I've got a 3D printer to do all the mounting with. 

 

 

Current specs:

 

 

Proposed parts list:

 

 

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Franky

 

[SupaKomputa]

If you wanna save money get a Ryzen 3700, it's pretty cheap right now.

Get a B550 instead of B450, better support for ryzen 5000, if you need to upgrade it in the future.

If you wanna use G5 case keep it micro ATX or smaller (ITX), space is limited.

[boggy77]

the motherboard is terrible, and the 212 evo isn't much better than the stock cooler.

the 3800xt isn't much better than the 3800x, which isn't much better than the 3700x.

you probably also need 32gb ram.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	£284.95 @ AWD-IT
CPU Cooler	Gelid Solutions Phantom Black CPU Cooler	£43.23 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard	MSI MAG B550M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	£109.99 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	£139.19 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply	Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply	£68.70 @ Amazon UK
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£646.06
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-30 17:34 GMT+0000

 

[Jeppes]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor	£154.97 @ CCL Computers
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Freezer i13 X CPU Cooler	£21.95 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard	MSI MAG B460M BAZOOKA Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard	£78.95 @ AWD-IT
Memory	Kingston HyperX Fury 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	£56.47 @ Ebuyer
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB OC Video Card	£196.16 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply	Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply	£59.99 @ Amazon UK
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£568.49
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-30 17:35 GMT+0000

Double the ram if you need it.

[wat3rmelon_man2]

I would definitely reccomend a Radeon Pro card for Blender/CAD and a Ryzen if possible. Depending on budget, you would want a Radeon Pro WX 3100 or WX 7100. For music, you might want a Sound Blaster Z soundcard, if that's a concern.

[SupaKomputa]

7 minutes ago, boggy77 said:

the motherboard is terrible, and the 212 evo isn't much better than the stock cooler.

well i use 212 and it's way better than the stock cooler.

not as good as noctuas, but it does the job pretty good.

 

8 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

 

CPU	Intel Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor	£154.97 @ CCL Computers

What is this?? 2.9ghz in 2020?

[Jeppes]

10 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

What is this?? 2.9ghz in 2020?

Low base clock is not a new thing.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/turbo-boost.html

[SupaKomputa]

2 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

Low base clock is not a new thing.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/turbo-boost.html

Turbo boost won't last you a long time. Plus it's intel, which run better in higher clock speed.

[Jeppes]

5 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Turbo boost won't last you a long time. Plus it's intel, which run better in higher clock speed.

It will run 4 to 4.1GHz on most loads. Its much faster than similarly priced amd cpu:s unless you can find a 2700 on sale and dont care about single core perf that much.

[SupaKomputa]

5 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

It will run 4 to 4.1GHz on most loads. Its much faster than similarly priced amd cpu:s unless you can find a 2700 on sale and dont care about single core perf that much.

Well similar price as in Ryzen 3600, it's still slower.

[Jeppes]

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

Well similar price as in Ryzen 3600, it's still slower.

Its 80£ cheaper, or 3600 is 50% more expensive at the moment. Dont get fixated on fanboyisms and just buy the best value parts that are available. And if getting a tiny bit slower cpu means you can get a real gpu for Blender, which one is faster in that use case?