New build PC

I started learning Blender with 2.79 but rapidly moved to 2.8. I am still very much a beginner and I blame my hardware. I am using a I3 notebook, so have decided to invest in something better. I am thinking AMD RYZEN 7 2700X on an AMD A320 motherboard with 16GB Ram and 480GB SSD . I am not a gamer so that is not one of my concerns. I am looking to build animations and rendering was the big issue on my notebook.

I am conflicted between the Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition GDDR5 Graphics Card and the GeForce GTX 1660 OVERCLOCKED Ed. 6GB GDDR5 Card the price difference is big here in Africa, either would be a vast improvement on what I now have. From benchmarks, I have seen the GTX is slightly faster but is the difference worth spending an extra grand and a half of money I can’t really afford?

I’ll be running Blender on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

How do I justify the GTX to my missus or do I settle for the RX580? Is it really settling?

Power Supply: 500W 80+ High Performance Power Supply
Processor: RYZEN 5 3600 (3.6GHz, 35MB GameCache, 6x Cores, 4.2GHz+ Turbo) - Included
Heatsink & CPU Fan: Standard Heatsink & CPU Fan - Included
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK DDR4 AMD RYZEN MB - Included
Memory: 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz High Performance Gaming RAM - Included
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition GDDR5 Graphics Card
Sound Card: Integrated High Quality HD Sound Card - Included
Primary Hard Drive: 480GB Ultra-Fast SSD Upto 500MB/s+ Speed - Included

Does this qualify as a dream machine?

As an owner of Ryzen1700 + A320, i’d say do not go with this mobo. It’s cheap but incompatible with 3000 series CPU (who knows if someday you’ll grab Zen2 processor).

As for performance I don’t know how much viewport things are CPU dependent, but I didn’t noticed super boost after switching from Radeon 4470hd / Athlon 64 3000+ to GTX1050Ti / Ryzen 1700. I do not have SSD though…

Of course everything related to rendering is way better, but other sides are not that bright

Those motherboards are only really meant for systems integrators to use for really cheap low end systems. Do yourself a favor and go at the very least with a b350 motherboard, better yet, b450 so you can just install that 2700x without
having to get an older cpu to update the boards bios first.

Slightly off topic and just throwing out a suggestion as I’m upgrading as well, might be wise to hold off just for a few more weeks for the dust to settle on the new cards / processors as i reckon there might be a few more price cuts what with the Nvidia / Intel/ AMD fight fest going on also a few more weeks might give amd and third party partners time to iron out any bios/ driver problems

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK DDR4 AMD RYZEN MB with Ryzen 5 3600? Is that a better combo? just found a deal that I can afford if I settle for the RX 580

Thanks just got told the Rizen 5 3600 is landing here next week.

Just found a Ryzen 5 3600 in my budget (just)

No worries, bud, great time to upgrade…Ton hinted in a recent interview with Pablo on Blender today that there might be some kind of partnership deal with nvidia, reckon it might be card related so keep a eye out for announcements on that subject might influence your final decision

AMD cards are still undersupported by applications. If some app can utilize GPU, 9 of 10 times it supports only CUDA, so better go with Nvidia. Ryzen 5 3600 should be good.

I am more concerned about Blender than anything else.

Can you provide actual numbers, including currency units? I’m not seeing that big of a difference here, they’re very much on par with each other for cost.

Yes, much better.

Edit: if you can though, try to make sure that the motherboard comes with an updated bios. Since if you go with the 3rd gen ryzen cpu the mobo wont work with it without an updated bios. Hopefully most boards should be factory updated, but worth double checking.

TL;DR: If the box has a sticker that states it’s AMD Ryzen 3000 compatible you are good to go.

Blender have better CUDA support.

I would say that GPU performance varies… as it stands, Vega 64 is equal and in Koro benchmark is 2x faster then GTX 1080TI. which is on par to GTX 2080.

RX 580 is about 1/2 the perofrmance of Vega64. Currently Vega56 is on disscounts across the web, so if you can budget that in it would be a better alternative.

and latest. AMD on Cycles is quite good, at LookDev not so much. Still a good overview on 2.8 across various GPUs.