Build for 3D Art and Sort of a Crisis

Hidden Orange · September 27, 2017

1. Budget & Location

$1000 to $1200 and USA. Also, no mail-in rebates. I just don't like them and you have to pay for the entire thing anyway.

2. Aim

Primary focus: 3ds Max, Maya, Mudbox?, ZBrush, and Photoshop. Secondary focus: gaming.

3. Monitors

Don't think I need another one at the moment. I currently have a 1920x1080, I think 24" TN Asus monitor I bought years ago. For my purposes and needs, I think it will be fine.

4. Peripherals

Don't think I'd need anything at the moment. A new, mechanical keyboard would be nice, but I think my old HP KU-0133 would be fine -- yes, I know, it's old and no, my monitor isn't as old as the keyboard. I'm more concerned about the PC than anything else.

Gonna just section this one off...

5. Why are you building?

So, in my struggles in trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, I think I want to work in the game industry as a 3D artist. Maybe environmental since character and animation are things a lot of people want to do despite also being interested. That doesn't mean I wouldn't do character art and animation for fun and for practice. Also, maybe VFX; stuff with particles and whatnot. Anyway, looking at job applications, I found some common applications game artists use, checked the requirements for them, looked at some benchmarks, etc., and figured that if this is something I want to do, then I need a system that can run these programs and preferably not a laptop since I killed my laptop's battery once and it wasn't a fun experience. I don't think my laptop could even run Maya. It might, but rendering would probably kill it and there goes another ~$200 for a new battery, but I digress.

My biggest fear is that this ends up being just a gaming PC build. I think this is something that I need to answer myself, but I'm worried that I might not like any of this which would suck even more considering my career figuring out issues. Still, I have to try and considering I would need to continually develop my skills and build a portfolio, it would probably be best if I did have a PC for this.

So, I do have an idea of what I would need. Probably something like this as like a rough estimate. Also, considering Intel's Coffee Lake is going to be out next week and I'm in no real rush, I'll wait until benchmarks on them are released.

Spoiler

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XFVR7h
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XFVR7h/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($196.29 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! - Pure Rock Slim 35.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($19.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI - B350M GAMING PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($138.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial - MX300 525GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($148.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB SC GAMING ACX 3.0 Black Edition Video Card ($434.89 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design - Define Mini C TG MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($68.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($92.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1250.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-09-26 23:32 EDT-0400

Speaking of CPUs, main reason I decided on the R5 1600 is other than it being affordable, rendering does benefit from having more threads. That said, different CPUs and different architectures, so maybe the i5-8400 would be all right too. Another thing that concerns me, assuming this ends up being a Ryzen build, is memory and that is Ryzen benefits from having higher speeds, but part of me wonders if maybe I should get 32GB instead which is apparently really expensive from what I just checked. Storage is a bit weird, but I have a 640GB 2.5" HDD lying around, so I would like to throw it in there too as the drive for school work and other miscellaneous files while the SDD is the boot drive, gaming drive, etc. I think GPU is pretty much locked in. I don't think I could afford a Vega 56 and the RX 580 would be weaker than the GTX 1070.

For gaming, I have a giant backlog of older games, so it's fine, but I would play stuff like a heavily modded Skyrim, Bastion, Dark Souls games, Dragon's Dogma, Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV when it's released, Metal Gear Solid V, Transistor, the Witcher 3, etc. Basically, if it's out and I'm interested, then I'll play it. Some games are optimized, some aren't, but I would focus on trying to get stable 60FPS on the highest settings possible. The GTX 1070 is probably overkill for 1080p gaming, but it's more for the software I would be learning.

Anything else I should be considering or thinking about?

SquintyG33Rs · September 27, 2017

rendering without GPU acceleration depends 100% on CPU and scales 100% on it too so an i5 would be about 3x worse or 33% the performance...... so getting a 1700 for that would be significantly better (after-all you said it was primary focus and 1600 is more of a gamer's choice). putting GPU acceleration in the picture changes things significantly but on that front the single core performance will matter more and you should go intel i7 route.

i personally can't work without a second monitor for production work. it's just too useful to go without, reference images or different angle or live rendered view. it just adds so much efficiency to workflow.

that's my 2 cents on the topic i work in cinema4d

ItsTheDuckAgain · September 27, 2017

Like many mATX boards it only comes with 2 ram slots, for your planned use case I would say you might want to slap in more ram rather sooner than later (maya is a ram whore). I would opt for a full size ATX board and case.

something like this:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zbsBkT

Changed case and board, also removed the cooler since the cpu comes with a decent one, the one you picked will not be significantly better.

Also consider overclocking it, even with the stock cooler it 3.5GHz should be doable easy enough while not getting too loud, especially in the case I picked.

Hidden Orange · September 28, 2017

Forgot about this, but I should have mentioned that I don't want to buy anything with mail-in rebates. The discount is nice, but I would still have to pay upfront for the entire thing. Moving on...

@SquintyG33Rs, I feel like the i7 and R7 CPUs wouldn't work with my budget. I did see combo listings on Newegg. That might work, but the cheaper one will probably come with meh motherboards -- lowest price for a combo was $330 with this motherboard: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813145003&ignorebbr=1. Hmm, maybe I should look if there are any R5 1600X combos.

As for monitors, having two or more would be nice, but I would also need to buy a new desk and it might be better to grab two new, IPS monitors. It'll be something for later, but yeah, I understand.

@ItsTheDuckAgain, yeah, I just threw in the CPU cooler just cause. Probably wouldn't need it and I should have just slapped the Hyper 212 Evo or looked for a different CPU. The case was a similar thing too, I haven't looked into recent cases much, so I just threw in something around $70. Apparently Phanteks just released their P300 case and it looks all right and the Eclipse P400 seems all right too from what I've gathered watching videos of them by HardwareCanucks.

Anyway, any reason why you're suggesting I get an ATX motherboard and case? I could just get a mATX motherboard that has 4 slots and a mATX case could be fine too. Not a fan of big cases, but whatever. If the case is good, sturdy, and doesn't look stupid, then whatever, I'm fine with it.

I've never overclocked before, but I remember people saying that the non-X Ryzen CPUs are worth it to at least overclock to match their X versions. Something about the R7 1700 being a "better" buy than the 1700X since you could just overclock the 1700 to the 1700X's specs and save money. Or was it the 1800 and 1800X? Basically, yes, I would overclock R5 1600. Why not, after all.

SquintyG33Rs · September 28, 2017

1 hour ago, Hidden Orange said:

Forgot about this, but I should have mentioned that I don't want to buy anything with mail-in rebates. The discount is nice, but I would still have to pay upfront for the entire thing. Moving on...

@SquintyG33Rs, I feel like the i7 and R7 CPUs wouldn't work with my budget. I did see combo listings on Newegg. That might work, but the cheaper one will probably come with meh motherboards -- lowest price for a combo was $330 with this motherboard: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813145003&ignorebbr=1. Hmm, maybe I should look if there are any R5 1600X combos.

As for monitors, having two or more would be nice, but I would also need to buy a new desk and it might be better to grab two new, IPS monitors. It'll be something for later, but yeah, I understand.

if you can't fit the 300$ tier CPU in budget Ryzen will be best choice all around. and there is no point in buying the 1600x over the 1600 so save yourself the extra buck they are identical once you clock the lower one up yourself.

ItsTheDuckAgain · September 28, 2017

2 hours ago, Hidden Orange said:

@ItsTheDuckAgain, yeah, I just threw in the CPU cooler just cause. Probably wouldn't need it and I should have just slapped the Hyper 212 Evo or looked for a different CPU. The case was a similar thing too, I haven't looked into recent cases much, so I just threw in something around $70. Apparently Phanteks just released their P300 case and it looks all right and the Eclipse P400 seems all right too from what I've gathered watching videos of them by HardwareCanucks.

Anyway, any reason why you're suggesting I get an ATX motherboard and case? I could just get a mATX motherboard that has 4 slots and a mATX case could be fine too. Not a fan of big cases, but whatever. If the case is good, sturdy, and doesn't look stupid, then whatever, I'm fine with it.

I've never overclocked before, but I remember people saying that the non-X Ryzen CPUs are worth it to at least overclock to match their X versions. Something about the R7 1700 being a "better" buy than the 1700X since you could just overclock the 1700 to the 1700X's specs and save money. Or was it the 1800 and 1800X? Basically, yes, I would overclock R5 1600. Why not, after all.

Concerning the case: Well I went with a bigger one because it got more room for upgrades, better airflow and in my opinion looks great, there are multiple color version of it including windowed side panels if need be.

The Define R5 is rather on the big side of cases though.

Full size ATX because they all got 4 ram slots (to my knowledge), not all mATX do, of course you can pick one with 4 slots. I am not a fan of those little boards, because if you want to upgrade with additional cards for some reason not present yet, you will run out of PCI slots quite fast. Depends on your used "case" (quite literally).

Overclocking the Ryzen chips is pretty easy: http://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master

Works with all Ryzen CPUs and doesn't involve rocked Science.

What you mentioned is correct, overclocking a non X to it's X counterpart will yield pretty much the same performance, then again, one can always overclock the X chip.. so there is that. However: the 1600nonX is a great CPU, balls to the walls little chip and performance per dollar is just stupidly sick (same goes for the X version of it).

It's up to you to decide :-)

GPU wise: Have a look at Palit GTX 1070 Super Jetstream. I'm running that one and depending on where you live they come quite a lot cheaper than EVGA or ASUS cards. Maybe an option to consider.