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My desktop computer is finally in need of replacement, i've been putting it off for ages and the cat chewed some wires at the weekend and nuked the usb ports. It's pretty old in the tooth now anyway (2010 i7 with 32gig of ram). It's got a fairly new graphics card in is 1060ti (i think!). The case is probably a bit tired now as well....
Basically i need a new computer! I'm inclined to build my own rather than get something from dell etc. Spec wise I want something fairly beefy - I don't play games, but rather not have to update signficantly for another 10 years! At the moment i'm thinking something like:
- AMD Rayzen rather than intel - they seem better value. Lots of different types tho! What is the equivalent on a i7?
- 32gig of ram
- Reuse the graphics card from my old computer
- new 1TB SSD
- move my other hard drives over from my old computer
- built in wifi etc
- Decent case and cooler - can't stand a noisy PC!
I vaguely recall hearing that there was a new socket coming out for AMD? is this a thing? I also vaguely remember seeing a site on here that offered good advice for speccing a pc up. I can't find the link though.
Mainly i'd use it for surfing the web, photo editing, a bit of video editing (4k i guess), acting as a plex server, maybe a bit of machine learning playing around. Don't play games.
Edit: budgetwise, i guess less than a grand.
Just built a Ryzen 5 3600 for my daughter's birthday. My son upgraded to a RTX2070 8gb so gave her the GTX970 4gb. 16GB ram was £65, 500GB M2 SSD another £60, 2TB hard driveand then a load of fancy ARGB fans. You'll probably want water cooling for low noise - son has a off the shelf Corsair water cooling solution - doesn't half throw out the heat from the rear of the machine.
PC Part Picker is good
You don't need water cooling for low noise, as the radiators still have fans attached to them and you have the extra complication and noise of a pump.
A good mid range air cooler is fine, and the standard ryzen coolers arent too bad to be honest.
If serious about 4k video editing you'll want to use M.2 PCIe 4.0 nvme drives, but these are still quite new/not yet to market.
You don't really need a beefy graphics card, you want lots of RAM and fast storage drives.
A mid range ryzen 3 should be fine for CPU
Ryzen 5 3600 is the best bang for buck although the Ryzen 3’s are solid. A nice big Noctua air cooler is pretty much silent and keeps CPU’s nearly as cool as liquid cooling at anything remotely normal overclocking but without the faff.
Whichever Nvidia graphics card you can afford.
Ryzen 5 3600 is the best bang for buck although the Ryzen 3’s are solid.
That confused me as the ryzen 5 3600 is a ryzen 3rd generation '3600'
I guess it's bit like intel with i3, i5, i7, but you have to look at the model name i.e.
i5 6600 the equivalent i7 would be an 6700
or
i5 7600 etc. the equivalent i7 would be an i7 7700
You don’t really need a beefy graphics card, you want lots of RAM and fast storage drives
It's software specific. Davinci just runs on the graphicc card. It took ome look at my PC and died
No new socket for current or next AMD CPUs but some 4 series motherboards may not get bios update to support Ryzen 4xxx.
I'd suggest a B550 mobo with as fast RAM (AMD CPUs benefit massively from faster ram) and CPU as you can afford. Ryzen7 would be mostly i7 equivalent but it depends on the software as in some heavy apps the Ryzen5 will outperform.
If your software is heavily multithreaded then go for higher core count over clock speed.
PC Partpicker for compatibility.
Definitely an nvme SSD.
Just remember that you don't have to edit in 4k, davinci will generate proxies (it's something really simple like checking a box labeled "use optimized media" IIRC), you don't need the PC trying to playback multiple 4k files simultaneously when all you can see is a 240line thumbnail of each.
No new socket for current or next AMD CPUs but some 4 series motherboards may not get bios update to support Ryzen 4xxx.
I'm sure there was something announced that the AM4 was going to be superseded next time round, but really that's not worth worrying about, you can always upgrade to a better sh/nos processor if you really need to.
Cheers all, from a look at some benchmarks, the Ryzen 7 3700X seems to be a good compramise between speed and price (300 quid). Or is there a cheaper model I should consider?
I think pc part picker was the one I was thinking of - thanks for all who suggested it!
nvme SSD - is that just a new version of an SSD that doesn't use a SATA interface?
Kamakazie - how would the 5 out perform the 7? Does the 5 have more cores? The type of stuff I might run (other than web extra) is going to be Python in Juypter Notebooks (not multithreaded i think?), maybe divinichi resolve for video editing, lightroom (not a particularly up to date version), and a bit of 3d modelling in Fusion 360.
nvme SSD – is that just a new version of an SSD that doesn’t use a SATA interface?
Kind of, they use the M.2 form factor and attach directly to the motherboard.
'Regular' M.2 drives, for arguments sake perform the same as a regular SATA SSD.
The NVME variants of these are faster.
Cool - do all modern mother boards support them or do i need to look out for something?
B550 mobo with as fast RAM (AMD CPUs benefit massively from faster ram)
Any suggestions? I've googled a few and they all look slightly ridiculous. I'm not keen on paying extra for mobo board that looks like a gamers thing, when i'm going to lock it up in as quiet and normal a case as i can find!
I don't think they really do non-gaming motherboards, the productivity ones are frequently even more £££ anyway as they'll have more features not needed for gaming (more drives, ECC memory, etc). I doubt the graphics and LED's really add to the cost anyway.
Most boards have m.2 slots, they kinda look like a flat PCIE x1, or half a laptop RAM slot, usually between the PCI slots or sometimes on the back. Check the motherboard supports nvme, most higher end ones will but m.2 is a form factor, some are just SATA ports (or some other variation) whereas NVME uses the pci lanes so is faster again (too fast to affect things like loading times, but will help when editing video).
Firstly what software do you use for editing. ryzen and intel cpus work better on various programs.
I would put off building right now as AMD are going to release an 3000XT series and then the 4000 series later in the year. That should reduce prices on the current 3000 line up unless you really really need a faster computer.
you don't need an NVMe drive. current top spec SSD's are more than fast enough for video editing.
Ram - again depends what software you use. Devinci resolve works better with 32gb if you are editing in 4k but others don't see a benefit.
Graphics cards - software dependant again. resolve has a list of what is good
What is your actual budget.
Most boards have m.2 slots, they kinda look like a flat PCIE x1, or half a laptop RAM slot, usually between the PCI slots or sometimes on the back. Check the motherboard supports nvme, most higher end ones will but m.2 is a form factor, some are just SATA ports (or some other variation) whereas NVME uses the pci lanes so is faster again (too fast to affect things like loading times, but will help when editing video).
Yeah. It's easy to confuse this.
SATA and M.2 are the interfaces, the physical form factors if you like. NVMe is a protocol.
Both SATA and M.2 interfaces can support AHCI which is the protocol used by traditional SATA drives since before SSDs existed.
NMVe requires the M.2 interface. NVMe connects to the PCIe bus rather than the SATA bus and thus has the capacity to support considerably faster drives. SATA/AHCI craps out at 600MB/s, NVMe is in the order of gigabytes/sec.
The gotcha here though is that not all M.2 interfaces are equal. It's possible for an M.2 slot to only support SATA (and indeed, it's possible for one not to support storage at all). So if you're going down this road you need to check that your chosen motherboard actually supports NVMe (officially named "socket 3"), the mere presence of the slot isn't enough to go on.
Firstly what software do you use for editing. ryzen and intel cpus work better on various programs.
I would guess, either the go-pro one, resolve, or premiere. Haven't done it for ages mind.
I would put off building right now as AMD are going to release an 3000XT series and then the 4000 series later in the year. That should reduce prices on the current 3000 line up unless you really really need a faster computer.
Interesting. I can wait a bit, but my current computer is a bit broken - the cat chewing USB cables (they shorted, bits got very hot and melted) appears to have nuked various bits - it's made it a bit unstable.
Ram – again depends what software you use. Devinci resolve works better with 32gb if you are editing in 4k but others don’t see a benefit.
I thought i've got 32 gig in my current computer, so figured i'd do the same again. I've never run out!
Graphics cards – software dependant again. resolve has a list of what is good
Was planning to use my current card which is a 1050ti. Can't find it on resolves list. I'm not wedded to resolve, haven't done video editing for ages - realistically, it'd just be simple editing action cam / maybe drone footage. I used to use premiere.
What is your actual budget.
Grand or less as that's what i spent last time to get something that was fairly quick. But could go a bit over. I plucked the budget from the air.
Was planning to use my current card which is a 1050ti
Not suitable for 4K resolve rendering.
I can wait a bit
I think perhaps this is a bit of a minefield. Tomorrow never comes, there will always be something new around the corner as next-gen becomes current-gen becomes last-gen. AMD aren't going to release their next batch of products and then go "that's it, we're done."
If you think a price is going to plummet imminently then there's merit to waiting, but you can end up waiting for ever if you're not careful.
This any good:
I was looking at those AWD kits and they never seemed great VFM and there weren't a lot of choices. I'd wait a few weeks untill B550 boards come into the shops, especially if you might need to upgrade the graphics card at any point as it has pcie 4.0.
Tomorrow never comes, there will always be something new around the corner as next-gen becomes current-gen becomes last-gen
NDA for the XT series CPUs lifts on the 16th.
This any good
no, mobo is shit.
as it has pcie 4.0
Graphics cards are not bound by PCIe 3.0 yet.
I pulled my old shuttle xpc out yesterday and got to thinking if I could somehow use it for a passive fortnite PC.... Then came across these... Might have to look behind the sofa for some pennies
