AI build upgrade

[Islam.Sherif]

Budget (including currency): 1000 USD

Country: Egypt

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: AI research mainly LLMs and Deep nerual networks along with occasional 1080p gaming for fun as ARK survival, EU4 and AC whatever the latest release is now

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Hello All,

 

Recently I started a side study for AI DNNs and LLMs for audio and video processing, I have an old gaming PC that I started to use, however network training and inference is very slow usually takes hours to complete.

 

I want to upgrade my PC to minimize this time as much as possible, I can spend up to 1000USD but prefer not to if not needed. so I want to upgrade as strategically as possible

 

My Current setup

• CPU: i5 10400F
• RAM: 16
• GPU: 1070 Ti
• MB: H410M S2
• PSU: I don't remember and too lazy to open pc now, I know I need to upgrade anyway

 

What I was planning to do:

• Upgrade ram to 32G
• upgrade GPU to 4060 Ti 16G
• Upgrade PSU to 700 or 750W maybe? let me know if need higher

Above shall cost around 600-700 USD as per my last research here in egypt

 

My question is

• First welcome any feedback on above
• I would like to avoid MB and CPU update as much as possible but I dont want to have bottlenecks as well so Is it worth to try and update the CPU to most powerful one compatible for this MB? like 10900? dont know if available now or not probably will look for the highest performance CPU possible to be paired with my MB

 

Appreciate your feedback

 

Kind Regards

 

 

[Why_Me]

23 minutes ago, Islam.Sherif said:

Budget (including currency): 1000 USD

Country: Egypt

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: AI research mainly LLMs and Deep nerual networks along with occasional 1080p gaming for fun as ARK survival, EU4 and AC whatever the latest release is now

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Hello All,

 

Recently I started a side study for AI DNNs and LLMs for audio and video processing, I have an old gaming PC that I started to use, however network training and inference is very slow usually takes hours to complete.

 

I want to upgrade my PC to minimize this time as much as possible, I can spend up to 1000USD but prefer not to if not needed. so I want to upgrade as strategically as possible

 

My Current setup

• CPU: i5 10400F
• RAM: 16
• GPU: 1070 Ti
• MB: H410M S2
• PSU: I don't remember and too lazy to open pc now, I know I need to upgrade anyway

 

What I was planning to do:

• Upgrade ram to 32G
• upgrade GPU to 4060 Ti 16G
• Upgrade PSU to 700 or 750W maybe? let me know if need higher

Above shall cost around 600-700 USD as per my last research here in egypt

 

My question is

• First welcome any feedback on above
• I would like to avoid MB and CPU update as much as possible but I dont want to have bottlenecks as well so Is it worth to try and update the CPU to most powerful one compatible for this MB? like 10900? dont know if available now or not probably will look for the highest performance CPU possible to be paired with my MB

 

Appreciate your feedback

 

Kind Regards

 

 

That's a good upgrade ^^

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-10400f/

[Somerandomtechyboi]

maybe look for a used 3060 which should be half the cost of a 4060ti 16gb or maybe even a used 3090 with 24gb of vram which will be outright faster and be able to fit larget models albiet not sure how expensive they are over there given theyve dropped to 500-600$ used for the rest of the world which is a great deal for what they are

 

used tesla p40/100 might also be worth looking at though youd usually buy these on a much tighter budget just for the vram and ofc its slower than the 3090 somewhere around 1/3-1/4th the speed atleast looking at this guys results but should be pretty cheap, just check wether or not these gpus can actually run your llms as they are older cards though same generation as that 1070 just with more vram

[igormp]

On 3/28/2025 at 11:43 PM, Islam.Sherif said:

What I was planning to do:

• Upgrade ram to 32G
• upgrade GPU to 4060 Ti 16G
• Upgrade PSU to 700 or 750W maybe? let me know if need higher

Sounds like a solid plan. Would 32GB of RAM actually be enough for your tasks? If so, then great!

Can't say about the PSU since you didn't specify the model, but 650W~750W is more than enough for the setup you described.

On 3/28/2025 at 11:43 PM, Islam.Sherif said:

I would like to avoid MB and CPU update as much as possible but I dont want to have bottlenecks as well so Is it worth to try and update the CPU to most powerful one compatible for this MB? like 10900? dont know if available now or not probably will look for the highest performance CPU possible to be paired with my MB

No need to upgrade the CPU if all you're looking for is speeding up training/inference, just make sure to properly make use of your GPU and to not data-starve it.

[Islam.Sherif]

On 3/29/2025 at 5:05 AM, Why_Me said:

That's a good upgrade ^^

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-10400f/

Thank you I didnt see this review site it is quite informative

 

On 3/29/2025 at 10:15 AM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

maybe look for a used 3060 which should be half the cost of a 4060ti 16gb or maybe even a used 3090 with 24gb of vram which will be outright faster and be able to fit larget models albiet not sure how expensive they are over there given theyve dropped to 500-600$ used for the rest of the world which is a great deal for what they are

 

used tesla p40/100 might also be worth looking at though youd usually buy these on a much tighter budget just for the vram and ofc its slower than the 3090 somewhere around 1/3-1/4th the speed atleast looking at this guys results but should be pretty cheap, just check wether or not these gpus can actually run your llms as they are older cards though same generation as that 1070 just with more vram

I looked into the 3090 s9me budget cards as PNY are available used for 750 usd but i am a little concerned about buying a used hogh end card #mining also this would reqiure a much higer psu like 850 or maybe 1000 i guess to support power spikes

I tried to compare performance as per what i found 3090 is better by around 20 25% than 4060 ti. however with the hassle of used cards and maybe need to repaste them along with higher price i think i will stay with the 4060 ti but this was a good suggestion thank you for it

 

On 3/30/2025 at 7:20 PM, igormp said:

Sounds like a solid plan. Would 32GB of RAM actually be enough for your tasks? If so, then great!

Can't say about the PSU since you didn't specify the model, but 650W~750W is more than enough for the setup you described.

No need to upgrade the CPU if all you're looking for is speeding up training/inference, just make sure to properly make use of your GPU and to not data-starve it.

yeah I would have prefered a 64G ram but my MB H110M only supports up to 32G unfortunately so need to work with that for now

thank you for confirming no need to upgrade the cpu

 

I think I am ready now and shall proceed in the upgrade. Thank you all for your help and godd suggestions

[igormp]

3 hours ago, Islam.Sherif said:

I looked into the 3090 s9me budget cards as PNY are available used for 750 usd but i am a little concerned about buying a used hogh end card #mining also this would reqiure a much higer psu like 850 or maybe 1000 i guess to support power spikes

I tried to compare performance as per what i found 3090 is better by around 20 25% than 4060 ti. however with the hassle of used cards and maybe need to repaste them along with higher price i think i will stay with the 4060 ti but this was a good suggestion thank you for it

FWIW, I bought my 2 3090s from miners and have been using them for quite some time without any issues.

I also used to run it on a 650W PSU without issues either. You can just set a power limit as well if you want to be more comfortable. I now run both 3090s on a single 850W PSU.

[Islam.Sherif]

Unfortunately I already executed and bought the 4060 ti 16G but using it now. I think you were right.

 

I was under impression that 16 vs 24 vram shall not make much difference but I see now that many models are larger than that and start using system ram which is also considered low at 32G

 

The performance is much better than 1070 ti of course but still not getting the results I hoped for

 

I shall look if possible to return my 4060 ti and buy a higher gpu