Thoughts on specs for system for Unity development / games etc. Help :D

[CriSis_]

Overall the system will primarily be used for Unity development over the next few years and games such as BG3. Ray tracing is not all that important and won't be used during development of games etc. Budget for the desktop is £2250 and a colour accurate monitor for £300 + calibrator for £100 . Any thoughts on the specs etc, haven't decided on a monitor just yet.... https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Gy3JkJ 

 

Cheers for any help in advance,

Lex.

[PDifolco]

22 minutes ago, CriSis_ said:

Overall the system will primarily be used for Unity development over the next few years and games such as BG3. Ray tracing is not all that important and won't be used during development of games etc. Budget for the desktop is £2250 and a colour accurate monitor for £300 + calibrator for £100 . Any thoughts on the specs etc, haven't decided on a monitor just yet.... https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Gy3JkJ 

 

Cheers for any help in advance,

Lex.

Nice system for gaming, but 64GB RAM and a NVidia GPU are heartily recommended for Unity development from what I've read

https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/real-time-engine-workstations/unity/hardware-recommendations/

As this will make your build over budget you can maybe downgrade the CPU to a 7900X which is still quite powerful

[YoungBlade]

As someone who has been using Unity for the Ludum Dare game jam about once a year for the last 7 years, I can tell you that you want as much RAM as possible. I would consider 32GB to be the bare minimum for a game dev system of this caliber. Go with 64GB instead, downgrading the CPU if you have to.

 

Multicore CPUs are very useful for making project builds, which is certainly important, but not generally something you'll do on a regular basis until near the end of the process. A more modest core count is fine when actually making the game.

 

As for AMD vs Nvidia, I've not found problems with using AMD for Unity - my secondary system that I loaned out to a friend to help us with a game jam a couple of years back did totally fine with an i5 9600K and RX 580 4GB, but we haven't tried doing dev work that uses newer technology like ray tracing. Game jam games need to be playable on a broad range of hardware to get as many people to rate and play as possible. However, if you intend to include DLSS in your game, then you'll need an RTX card to test and configure DLSS.

 

The other reason to go with an Nvidia card would be if you intend to render things in Blender. That is noticeably faster with an Nvidia card, but will only be a factor if you think you'll be making a lot of the assets, and if they are going to be rather complex. If you only need to go into Blender to tweak something on occasion, or to make a simple asset, then an AMD card will be sufficient for that.

 

It sucks that Nvidia's pricing and configs at the higher mid range is so messed up right now. The RTX 4080 would be ideal if it cost the same as the 7900XTX, but it doesn't. The 4070 Ti feels like a waste since it only has 12GB of VRAM. So I'd probably suggest either going up to the RTX 4080 or all the way down to the RTX 4070 and just ignoring the 4070 Ti - it costs too much for so little VRAM.

 

Since you don't plan on using RT, the RX 7900XTX should do fine. You could also step that down to the RX 7900 XT to save a couple hundred bucks. 20GB of VRAM is still going to be plenty. Unity itself isn't that VRAM hungry, so it all depends on what you put into your game.

[CriSis_]

1 hour ago, PDifolco said:

Nice system for gaming, but 64GB RAM and a NVidia GPU are heartily recommended for Unity development from what I've read

https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/real-time-engine-workstations/unity/hardware-recommendations/

As this will make your build over budget you can maybe downgrade the CPU to a 7900X which is still quite powerful

Will probs be going for 64gb of ram esp with black Friday coming up   I did read that page a while back but from what iv'e heard and this video it doesn't seem to matter which gpu so long as it has a reasonable amount of vram. Do you have any other sources that say nvidia cards are better for unity?  Cheers for the help

 

[brob]

2 hours ago, CriSis_ said:

Overall the system will primarily be used for Unity development over the next few years and games such as BG3. Ray tracing is not all that important and won't be used during development of games etc. Budget for the desktop is £2250 and a colour accurate monitor for £300 + calibrator for £100 . Any thoughts on the specs etc, haven't decided on a monitor just yet.... https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Gy3JkJ 

 

Cheers for any help in advance,

Lex.

 

The GPU (325mm long) and the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 (38mm thick) exceeds the 355 max shown on page 35 of the North user manual. Consider a case that allows the AIO radiator to be top mounted.

 

Consider a system with more memory.

 

Consider an Intel build. The i7-14700K offers 28 threads and higher single core performance than the 7900X.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K 3.4 GHz 20-Core Processor  (£402.34 @ Amazon UK) 
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 Rev. 2 56.33 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (£101.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 UD AX ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£199.98 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory  (£338.39 @ Newegg UK) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£134.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: MSI GAMING TRIO CLASSIC Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card  (£922.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£109.94 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£129.99 @ AWD-IT) 
Total: £2339.58
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-16 14:11 GMT+0000

[YoungBlade]

30 minutes ago, brob said:

 

The GPU (325mm long) and the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 (38mm thick) exceeds the 355 max shown on page 35 of the North user manual. Consider a case that allows the AIO radiator to be top mounted.

 

Consider a system with more memory.

 

Consider an Intel build. The i7-14700K offers 28 threads and higher single core performance than the 7900X.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K 3.4 GHz 20-Core Processor  (£402.34 @ Amazon UK) 
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 Rev. 2 56.33 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (£101.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 UD AX ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£199.98 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory  (£338.39 @ Newegg UK) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£134.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: MSI GAMING TRIO CLASSIC Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card  (£922.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£109.94 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£129.99 @ AWD-IT) 
Total: £2339.58
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-16 14:11 GMT+0000

While Intel is totally fine for game dev, I do think the upgrade path potential for AMD is a compelling factor here if price sensitive. If the OP goes with an R9 7900X, yes, there are less threads, but in a few years, there will be the potential to upgrade. At worst, there will be the Zen 5 8000 series, which rumors suggest will offer another 10-20% performance uplift for single core. At best, there may be a Zen 7 offering that completely annihilates the 14700K in every way via a drop in upgrade that is way cheaper than upgrading the whole platform.

 

Once you have sufficient processor resources for Unity and other applications to run, anything else is really only useful for doing builds. Like I said in my post, Unity dev can be done on an i5 9600K just fine, and the only issue comes in when you go to do a build, where the 9600K is pretty slow. Obviously, if you make your game complex enough, and you multitask enough, the 9600K can be an issue, but I don't see a situation where the R9 7900X is too slow to keep up in Unity while the 14700K gives a smooth experience - they are comparable in performance.

 

And with more threads, the only real advantage is reduced build times, which matters, but not as much as you might think. At least, not until you get to the end of the dev process. In the 11th hour, you may be doing builds all the time, but in all the time before that, builds are pretty infrequent. But again, it's not like the 7900X is slow compared to the 14700K. It's slower, yes, but not so slow that it's going to ruin development that would have been smooth with the 14700K.

[brob]

23 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

While Intel is totally fine for game dev, I do think the upgrade path potential for AMD is a compelling factor here if price sensitive.

 

Disagree. Basing a purchase in the assumption that one will be able and want to plop a new $400+ CPU on a 3 year old motherboard doesn't strike me as clear thinking. I'd also point to the history of AM4. Three generations of chipsets all introducing new, desirable features. Why would one expect AM5 to be any different?

[CriSis_]

1 hour ago, YoungBlade said:

As someone who has been using Unity for the Ludum Dare game jam about once a year for the last 7 years, I can tell you that you want as much RAM as possible. I would consider 32GB to be the bare minimum for a game dev system of this caliber. Go with 64GB instead, downgrading the CPU if you have to.

 

Multicore CPUs are very useful for making project builds, which is certainly important, but not generally something you'll do on a regular basis until near the end of the process. A more modest core count is fine when actually making the game.

 

As for AMD vs Nvidia, I've not found problems with using AMD for Unity - my secondary system that I loaned out to a friend to help us with a game jam a couple of years back did totally fine with an i5 9600K and RX 580 4GB, but we haven't tried doing dev work that uses newer technology like ray tracing. Game jam games need to be playable on a broad range of hardware to get as many people to rate and play as possible. However, if you intend to include DLSS in your game, then you'll need an RTX card to test and configure DLSS.

 

The other reason to go with an Nvidia card would be if you intend to render things in Blender. That is noticeably faster with an Nvidia card, but will only be a factor if you think you'll be making a lot of the assets, and if they are going to be rather complex. If you only need to go into Blender to tweak something on occasion, or to make a simple asset, then an AMD card will be sufficient for that.

 

It sucks that Nvidia's pricing and configs at the higher mid range is so messed up right now. The RTX 4080 would be ideal if it cost the same as the 7900XTX, but it doesn't. The 4070 Ti feels like a waste since it only has 12GB of VRAM. So I'd probably suggest either going up to the RTX 4080 or all the way down to the RTX 4070 and just ignoring the 4070 Ti - it costs too much for so little VRAM.

 

Since you don't plan on using RT, the RX 7900XTX should do fine. You could also step that down to the RX 7900 XT to save a couple hundred bucks. 20GB of VRAM is still going to be plenty. Unity itself isn't that VRAM hungry, so it all depends on what you put into your game.

Will likely be going for 64gb of ram since black friday is soon and did consider the 4080 but pricing is just too steep :9.... Don't think dlss or ray tracing will be used at all for any games over the next few years for me and will probs make some assets but not hyper detailed so no real need of an nvidia card xD. 

 

Thanks for the help  

[CriSis_]

1 hour ago, brob said:

 

The GPU (325mm long) and the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 (38mm thick) exceeds the 355 max shown on page 35 of the North user manual. Consider a case that allows the AIO radiator to be top mounted.

 

Consider a system with more memory.

 

Consider an Intel build. The i7-14700K offers 28 threads and higher single core performance than the 7900X.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K 3.4 GHz 20-Core Processor  (£402.34 @ Amazon UK) 
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 Rev. 2 56.33 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (£101.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 UD AX ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£199.98 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory  (£338.39 @ Newegg UK) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£134.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: MSI GAMING TRIO CLASSIC Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card  (£922.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£109.94 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£129.99 @ AWD-IT) 
Total: £2339.58
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-16 14:11 GMT+0000

Case is not 100% confirmed merely a place holder in terms of price, will double check compatibility xD. As for intel, from my understanding Unity favours multi core so single core performance is not all that important xD and will probs be buying 64gb of memory . 

 

ty for the help 

 

[YoungBlade]

8 minutes ago, brob said:

Disagree. Basing a purchase in the assumption that one will be able and want to plop a new $400+ CPU on a 3 year old motherboard doesn't strike me as clear thinking. I'd also point to the history of AM4. Three generations of chipsets all introducing new, desirable features. Why would one expect AM5 to be any different?

Being able to put a Ryzen 7 5800X3D onto an old B350 motherboard that used to run a Ryzen 5 1600 is an absolutely insane upgrade option, even when it was $450 at launch. The performance gains are ludicrous ; +100% is totally normal.

 

What are you really giving up? PCIe 4.0? Multi-gigabit LAN? More, faster M.2 slots? Sure, those are all nice-to-have, but for most folks, there isn't a tangible benefit - especially if your use-case is gaming.

 

You can argue that in the use case of game development, that something there could be useful, but even then, it's iffy. For very large builds, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive could potentially help, but realistically, it won't be a primary performance limiter. Multi-gigabit LAN, if you need to move assets between computers a lot, can be added with an expansion card. And more M.2 slots, while nice, again aren't going to be make-or-break.

 

And even if some killer new feature comes out in the future on motherboards, you can always upgrade then. Having a CPU upgrade path gives you the flexibility to choose whether a full platform upgrade is worth it or not.

[CriSis_]

41 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

While Intel is totally fine for game dev, I do think the upgrade path potential for AMD is a compelling factor here if price sensitive. If the OP goes with an R9 7900X, yes, there are less threads, but in a few years, there will be the potential to upgrade. At worst, there will be the Zen 5 8000 series, which rumors suggest will offer another 10-20% performance uplift for single core. At best, there may be a Zen 7 offering that completely annihilates the 14700K in every way via a drop in upgrade that is way cheaper than upgrading the whole platform.

 

Once you have sufficient processor resources for Unity and other applications to run, anything else is really only useful for doing builds. Like I said in my post, Unity dev can be done on an i5 9600K just fine, and the only issue comes in when you go to do a build, where the 9600K is pretty slow. Obviously, if you make your game complex enough, and you multitask enough, the 9600K can be an issue, but I don't see a situation where the R9 7900X is too slow to keep up in Unity while the 14700K gives a smooth experience - they are comparable in performance.

 

And with more threads, the only real advantage is reduced build times, which matters, but not as much as you might think. At least, not until you get to the end of the dev process. In the 11th hour, you may be doing builds all the time, but in all the time before that, builds are pretty infrequent. But again, it's not like the 7900X is slow compared to the 14700K. It's slower, yes, but not so slow that it's going to ruin development that would have been smooth with the 14700K.

Other thing with the 1400k is power draw, heat, price of the cpu and the overall platform cost and lack of a potential upgrade later if required. I wouldn't normally make a decision based on something that may or may not happen but it is compelling to see that there could be an upgrade path in which i don't have to replace my mobo as well if I really need the power.  Thanks for the help

[CriSis_]

12 minutes ago, brob said:

 

Disagree. Basing a purchase in the assumption that one will be able and want to plop a new $400+ CPU on a 3 year old motherboard doesn't strike me as clear thinking. I'd also point to the history of AM4. Three generations of chipsets all introducing new, desirable features. Why would one expect AM5 to be any different?

Intel platform costs more overall, has a higher heat output, higher power draw and is confirmed to be a dead platform this gen. Whilst AM5 may suffer the same fate as say AMDs hedt platform, if it doesn't the option is there to upgrade if needed (which i also doubt will be required). As for features, pcie gen 5 is not needed for my storage needs at all as im not editing 8k footage directly off of the drive or anything like that and pcie gen 5 or 4 for that matter will not be saturated by even the highest end gpus atm. Perhaps later it will be, though i doubt it. Cheers for the help  

[CriSis_]

Laptop is only really a benefit if portability is paramount, in this case I don't believe it is.  As for performance per £ a desktop is almost always the more economical option and is usually more powerful  ty for the help

[DanieIinnilo06052003]

What is the Max Budget for this build 

[brob]

24 minutes ago, CriSis_ said:

Case is not 100% confirmed merely a place holder in terms of price, will double check compatibility xD. As for intel, from my understanding Unity favours multi core so single core performance is not all that important xD and will probs be buying 64gb of memory . 

 

ty for the help 

 

 

I see that you are committed to AMD. So I'll just try to correct an apparent misunderstanding.

 

Intel CPU offer as many threads as competing AMD. In fact the i7-14700K offers 4 more threads than the 7900X. 

 

Single core performance is always important, even in highly threaded apps.

 

Consider 2x48GB instead of 2x32GB.

[CriSis_]

5 minutes ago, brob said:

 

I see that you are committed to AMD. So I'll just try to correct an apparent misunderstanding.

 

Intel CPU offer as many threads as competing AMD. In fact the i7-14700K offers 4 more threads than the 7900X. 

 

Single core performance is always important, even in highly threaded apps.

 

Consider 2x48GB instead of 2x32GB.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Xg2WGX/gskill-trident-z5-neo-64-gb-2-x-32-gb-ddr5-6000-cl30-memory-f5-6000j3040g32gx2-tz5n

 

64gb is about the same price or cheaper than 48gb  

[brob]

5 minutes ago, CriSis_ said:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Xg2WGX/gskill-trident-z5-neo-64-gb-2-x-32-gb-ddr5-6000-cl30-memory-f5-6000j3040g32gx2-tz5n

 

64gb is about the same price or cheaper than 48gb  

 

I didn't suggest 48GB. I suggested 2x48GB, 96GB total.

[CriSis_]

3 minutes ago, brob said:

 

I didn't suggest 48GB. I suggested 2x48GB, 96GB total.

oh mb xD