Possible New Rig/Setup?

SpacePioneer · May 16, 2018

This all really depends on what I can get based on a lower end budget, so if I can't get something that's better, or at least the same as, what I currently have then I'll just stick with my current situation, but I'd like to get a PC for more resource consuming/heavy/intensive things that I do that the, as far as I'm aware, pretty good laptop just can't quite handle or runs too long to dedicate my only computer to. That might sound odd, I don't know, but why I say such is that I tend to run longer-running simulations in Universe Sandbox ², so I'd like to be able to let it run but also handle a lot of objects, which requires some computational power, but I'd also like to do other things on it too like rendering scenes or animations, mainly from Terragen, and likely do some video editing, as well as what you might call gaming, althoughI'm not sure because I'd be working with things like Space Engine, so..

Anyway, I know it probably seems like I'm asking for the perfect rig at very low cost (which, who knows, maybe I am, I'm a newbie at this so I know very little) but if the thing works well enough I'll probably be doing almost an even divide between simulating, rendering, and video editing in my time actively giving user input (as far as hours of the thing being on, however, it'd probably look more like 90% simulating, 7% rendering and 2% video editing and 1% various other things simply due to the sheer amount of hours I'd be letting some simulations run) but if such a system would be way too expensive I'd be willing to do the other things on my laptop and just do the simulation stuff on this and focus on that alone, and maybe some longer running renders, which I could just let take a long time...

In any case, enough with the insanely long intro to what I want to do, and so... If buying a prebuilt system would be cheaper than building one (which somehow I doubt...) then sure, suggest them, but if building this hypothetical rig would be better, then here are the actual suggested points:

1. Budget & Location

My budget is $1500 USD but if bumping that up to $2000 will get me a huge jump in performance, that would be okay.

2. Aim

Depends on how focused on one thing or another it is, and I kind of went over this already, but I would mostly be using it for simulating many objects in Universe Sandbox, doing renders with Terragen, doing some video editing, playing Space Engine, and if I eventually got to a point where it would be necessary to work with more computing power for it, maybe some more "normal" 3D modeling programs like blender or something....

3. Monitors

I currently only have one "monitor", that being a TV I can hook up to a computer via HDMI, which would work fairly well at least for awhile, I'd imagine, though I might be wrong, and if so, what are some monitors with good color space/color quality?

4. Peripherals

I already need a keyboard and would like to get a new mouse, preferably both USB based and have RGB lights on them. The keyboard I would prefer to have flat keys because 99% of keyboards have bricks for keys that sound like a machine gun when you type too fast and I don't want to wake everyone for 50 miles by typing one sentence at 1 a.m. ;-; But in all seriousness, flat, silent keys please...

5. Why are you upgrading?

From the experience I had just trying to replace a malfunctioning fan, my laptop was definitely NOT made to be upgraded hardware-side, and although I could probably make it happen, I'd rather spend a bit more money and get an entirely new system that I can let run things that would completely annihilate my ability to use my laptop whatsoever for long periods of time which is just not acceptable.

If there's any specific specs I would want it would probably be for a hard drive of at least 1 TB (Would a HDD or SSD be better?) and preferably the largest amount of ram I can possibly cram into this thing and still be on budget .-.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any and all help :-)

Brett_Bst · May 16, 2018

I would probley go a Ryzen system, 1700x or some think with say a 1070 maybe a 1080 depending how graphic intencive you loads would be, is 2000 just for the pc or the other bits aswell ? is there any resultion you would like to run ?