Budget Blender Build Suggestions

Klamboshki · August 18, 2022

Budget (including currency): 750~1000€

Country: Bulgaria

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mainly Blender (3d modelling + rendering), Spine Pro, Quixel Mixer (maybe), Clip Studio Paint, To a lesser extent Da Vinci Resolve, Light Gaming (I mostly play Indie) and maybe very later down the line some music/audio related projects.

Right, so my PC went kaput recently - started BSOD-ing constantly, the mobo fried (clean your PC regularly kids) and now, when i turn it on, the screen is pitch-black and the PC doesn't turn off unless i manually shut the PSU down. So, i guess I'm in the market for a new Build. I do however also have a lot of questions.

The main bottleneck I'm worrying about is my own skill level, as I'm still an amateur, to put it kindly. I also have some health issues, though temporary (I hope), that currently limit how much work I can do on a pc (nothing severe, but still a detriment). As such, I'm reluctant to spend too much money on something I probably wont be able to utilise fully, at least until both my skills and health improve; however I also don't really want to screw myself with something particularly bad either.

I've boiled my options down to 2 potentially flexible variants:

V1. The Low Budget Variant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bF4jv3 ~720€

V2. The Higher Budget One: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Nkgh2m ~1040€

I already have the PSU, the Monitor, some HDDs, an old ~128gb SSD with Windows installed and the Case to cannibalise from my previous build, also I don't know if it affects much but I also have an XP-Pen Display Tablet (so a second monitor essentially). I have been planning on switching to Linux as well due to general frustration with Windows and maybe keeping the old SSD for a dual-boot in case I need something specific.

As a slight add I generally use this site: https://www.pazaruvaj.com/harduer-c3068/ to compare prices from local retailers; It doesn't have all of them and some are a bit shady, but it's otherwise been a good help. As it stands I'll probably order most, or at least a good chunk, of my parts from the retailer Plasico, so i don't have to worry about shipping from too many places and it's a fairly well liked store (if this info even matters). Just a heads up the prices are in lv./лв. so just slash whatever you see in half and you'll get the actual € value.

A Thousand and One Questions:

Q1: For V2 is it possible to go for 16gb RAM?

Q2: For V2 is it also possible to go for a B450?

Q3: Would a R5 3600 work with a 3060, or would it bottleneck and affect render times too much?

Q4: Should I upgrade later, since apparently new parts would be coming out by the end of year and things might reduce in price?

Q5: Or now, to avoid soaring prices if inflation and supply chain stuff is at too high a risk?

Q6: Or am i overthinking it?

Q7: How useful would an NVME be, or is it more of a luxury buy?

Q8: Is it preferred to install the OS on a separate partition and/or drive or is it unnecessary?

Q9: Is resell-ability something I should keep in mind when buying a system or does tech advance too fast for it to matter?

Q10: Should I worry about BIOS version compatibility or is upgrading it easy enough?

That's about it for now, I think.

I hope this isn't too hard of a read, I don't really post on forums much.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Have a good one.

4ce_Games · August 18, 2022

Q1: If you are meaning downgrading, then yes it would be fine

Q2: It could be, they are the same socket type, so it would probably work, you might just need to update the bios using an older cpu

Q3: It should be perfectly fine

Q4, Q5, Q6: Honestly I'd just wait a few months and either get newer parts or get the ones you want discounted

Q7: They are better than sata, its not luxury, they are just better, and honestly go for a crucial ssd, nvme or sata, they are great and cheaper than samsung(while the samsung would perform better, the crucial gives you a bit more spending room

Q8: If you can use a boot drive, do so, it gives you more room for storage on your bigger drive, and I personally don't use partitions, it is more just your preference

Q9: Unless you want to sell it withing the next 3-5 years, don't worry about resell-ability, and even then, 3-5 years is still pushing it

Q10: Bios compatibility is a big thing, if the bios doesn't support the cpu, it won't run. Now upgrading isn't too difficult, you just need a cpu that is support in the mobo, the once upgraded, you can switch to the other one

Ryuikko · August 18, 2022

I'd probably wait especially for a ryzen build, for next gen which should come out in a month or so. Either way you'd benefit from reduced am4 prices or are able to get more perfromance for about the same price you'd pay anyways with am5

jones177 · August 18, 2022

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

A Thousand and One Questions:

Q1: For V2 is it possible to go for 16gb RAM?

Yes, but is limiting with larger 3D projects.

I went to 32gbs mainly for Photoshop.

The free version of Da Vinci Resolve likes more ram as well.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q2: For V2 is it also possible to go for a B450?

Yes, but the you may want more cores latter on.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q3: Would a R5 3600 work with a 3060, or would it bottleneck and affect render times too much?

It would not make a difference if you were GPU rendering

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q4: Should I upgrade later, since apparently new parts would be coming out by the end of year and things might reduce in price?

How much 3D are you not going to do in that time.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q5: Or now, to avoid soaring prices if inflation and supply chain stuff is at too high a risk?

There is always a risk.

I paid $2,300 each for my RTX 3090s and they cost half that now. Sometimes you have to pay to play.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q6: Or am i overthinking it?

No.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q7: How useful would an NVME be, or is it more of a luxury buy?

It depends on your rending size. Mine was 8k plus so lots of big files to move around.

Also your system is as slow as your slowest drive so if you have HDDs on the system it will not matter.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q8: Is it preferred to install the OS on a separate partition and/or drive or is it unnecessary?

No.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q9: Is resell-ability something I should keep in mind when buying a system or does tech advance too fast for it to matter?

No.

It is not a good idea to sell at all doing 3D unless the computer/parts are no longer capable of doing 3D.

I used dedicated rending machines and did pre/post production or gaming on the computer that was not rendering.

I started doing 3D as a hobby but it turned out to be the way I made a living so my view on these sort of things may be a bit different.

11 minutes ago, Klamboshki said:

Q10: Should I worry about BIOS version compatibility or is upgrading it easy enough?

You may have to do an bios upgrade. I did with my X570.

NF-A12x25 · August 18, 2022

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sFwpDq

Here’s a cheaper alternative that should outperform list 1. You’d be able to get a much better GPU.

And here’s a cheaper and better alternative that will outperform list 2 for the price especially. Again, you could get a better GPU with the money saved.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/RkGwDq