New PC advice - guidance welcomed

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Hi All,
I’ve been wanting a new PC for a while - my 3gb GTX1060 is struggling with my unoptimized ways! I’ve had it about 7.5 years though so its not been a bad investment. However, as I get older my understanding of PC architecture has deteriorated to a terrible degree and all these different numbers and choices are addling my nearly 50 year old brain. So - I’d be really grateful if somebody could look at this spec that I’ve cobbled together on the PCSpecialist website and tell me whether or not it would be any good for what I do (please see my portfolio here: https://blenderartists.org/u/lazlowoodbine/activity/portfolio).

Case: CORSAIR 3000D AIRFLOW MID TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU) : AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-5.3GHz/40MB CACHE/AM5)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE B650 AORUS ELITE AX (AM5, DDR5, PCIe 4.0, Wi-Fi 6E)

Memory (RAM): 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 4800MHz (2 x 16GB) KIT

Graphics Card: 16GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4060 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR

1st M.2 SSD Drive: 2TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (3500 MB/R, 3100 MB/W)

1st Storage Drive: 4TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 5400RPM, 256MB CACHE

Power Supply: CORSAIR 650W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET

Processor Cooling: PCS FrostFlow 120 Series ARGB High Performance Liquid Cooler

Thermal Paste: ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND

Sound Card: ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

This comes out at about £1600 - which is a bit more than I’d want to spend - but I really don’t know what compromises are worth making (eg I’ve gone for a 16gb graphics card for maximum VRAM, but not the highest 40xx number because of price - if I went for a 12gb 3060 - brings price down quite a bit, still 3x the GB I’ve got now etc). Am I better off with sticking with the 4060 TI - and compromising elsewhere - if so, where, RAM, hard drive? Is the motherboard and CPU sensible and appropriate (I don’t get these at all - advice on these most welcome).

If I were to push the boat out and buy this, would it “do the job”, could I do the job just as well with a different spec? Basically, any advice any of the technically minded could give would make this aging ‘Blender-head’ very grateful.

I realise my budget isn’t going to get me a top of the line 3D artist PC, but I want to make sure I get the best deal I can get for what is after all, a hobby.

Many thanks

Laz.

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If you want to lower your budget, I have a couple suggestions. First up- get DDR4, not DDR5, RAM. The difference is not noticeable, but you’ll save a fair bit.

Looking at your portfolio, it looks like you use Cycles, so a 4060 Ti is a good idea. If you need to lower your budget, a 3070 Ti or 3060 Ti would work leaps and bounds better than your current GPU

Also, get the 7700X, not the 7700. It’s only ~50 more and it’s a much better CPU

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Yeah, not sure I’d agree with that advice now. The price difference is pretty much nothing and for that same money, you’d actually get better performance now. Besides, going with DDR4, means a different motherboard and CPU (ie Intel), as the latest AMD Ryzen’s are only DDR5. DDR5 also has part built in ECC, which is good, so today I’d go with current tech.

On the subject of RAM, get something faster, ideally 6000MHz at around CL32. Anything higher is largely pointless, unless it costs basically the same.

I would get the 7700X, even tho it does cost a bit more.

With the theory that you likely won’t update the GPU or anything else any time soon, then 650W PSU should be fine.

You could get a lower spec GPU and save some money, but the 3070 Ti and 3060 Ti are only 8GB, based on the likelihood you will keep and use this GPU for years to come, I’d get the 4060 Ti 16GB and leave it at that.

For the SSD, I’ve never heard of PCS, so not so sure about that.

As for the CPU cooler the PCS FrostFlow 120 would be a be no thanks for me. Few reasons, it’s only a 120mm rad, so it will either be half pointless of super loud. Any pretty good air cooler will do a better job, at lower noise and you never have to worry about a leak or the pump dying, etc. General rule with AIO’s is something will likely break and need to be replaced after 5 years.

Now sure, it could go for 10, or it could die in 3. On the other hand, a good air cooler, worse that can happen is the fan dies, easy replacement.

Generally, performance wise, unless the AIO is 280mm+, a good air cooler will beat it, with less things that can go wrong.

For a good idea of what to get, check this out: https://gamersnexus.net/coolers/best-air-coolers-cpus-2023-thermals-noise-value
Only issue to keep in mind is that they will fit in the case, height wise, the 3000D has 170mm clearance, so that’s not bad, but double check.

You don’t need the extra thermal paste, the CPU cooler will come with some that should be pretty good.

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@joseph @thetony20 Thanks both - good advice to think about. One thing - I’ve selected an AMD CPU because the last two PCs I’ve had have been AMD and they’ve been quite good. However, would Intel be any better - or is there nothing between them.

Sorry for what might be the start of a few questions!

Thanks

Laz

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AMD CPUs are awesome. I highly recommend them over Intel

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Thanks Joseph - good to know!

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From one aging ‘Blender-head’ to another, good luck!

I was hoping to do a similar upgrade for about $1,000 (~ £800), so… we’ll see how that goes :rofl:

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Thanks! Good luck too :smile: I’ve plugged in the good advice so far, and the spec’s already gone up to £1700!! I just keep thinking that that 16GB of VRAM would be so lovely to have… even if can’t really afford it :sob:

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I think you are right on that especially as you do environments with loads of elements.

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Picking between Intel and AMD at the moment can really come down to a huge list of factors that can get very specific to budget, exact workloads and just personal preference.

As someone that currently uses a AMD 5900X and a Intel 6700K before that, I have no general reason to point you in either direction. So if you are happy to go with AMD then all that does is help to reduce some of the choices, like DDR5 for RAM.

I mean given you currently have a (very old) 1060 3GB, just about any RTX based card from current and last generation is going to be a massive update, even an 8GB one.

Having said that, outside of very limited specific use cases and/or a very tight budget, my advice would be to go no lower then 12GB VRAM. That alone limits the options a lot and limits the ‘cheaper’ options even more, given how ‘money grabbing’ Nvidia is when it comes to VRAM.

Now you can get more VRAM for around the same money with AMD GPU’s, but I’d personally stick with Nvidia when it comes to Blender.

As such, the 4060 Ti 16GB is a good amount of performance with a VRAM buffer that should serve you well for many years to come.

If you really need to save a bit of money, you could drop the CPU down to the Ryzen 7600X, it’s possible that depending on local deals at the time and where you are, that could save a nice amount. Overall I doubt you would notice much if any real day to day difference in Blender, etc between the 7700X and the 7600X.

While dropping the GPU down is likely to be more noticeable, especially a drop form 16GB to 8GB in the longer term.

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Thanks @thetony20 - that’s very helpful. Just had a look and the 7600x drops it all to below £1500 - so maybe the way to go!
Thanks again
Laz

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Yeah, if all you do is generally run one program at a time (and have a fairly clean system/setup without a mass of half useless cough RGB lighting cough applications) running in the background, then there is basically no difference between the 7600X and the 7700X.

So much of the time, Blender will just be using 1-2 cores and as such, performance will be basically the same between those CPU’s.

Now that’s not to say that in the future Blender will make use of more and more cores or that you happen to do something in Blender a fair amount of time that already uses multiple cores and as such the 7700X would be a good longer term option.

But again, given what you are likely updating from, either CPU is going to be super fast and it’s possible by the time you really start to feel that the 7600X is getting too slow, then chances are the 7700X would also feel slow and it’s time for a whole new upgrade anyway.

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Re ageing: Got nothing on me. I’m 74 and going through a similar decision-making process.

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So - bullet bit… decided to spend that little bit more to future proof myself a bit and the differential between choices wasn’t that much - so went for 7700x, 32gb DDR5 Ram and the 16GB 4060. Should arrive in a 7-10 days, so looking forward to that. Not going to improve my art, and there’ll still be lots of renders of the same railway station :smile:, but hopefully at least no more faffing about actually getting anything to render.
Many thanks to all the advice!
Cheers
Laz

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Congrats, it should work and last for a fairly long time, long after you forgot how much it costs.

Actually I wouldn’t be so sure about that. It may just be me, but I do tend to do a lot of little test renders using Cycles. Mostly while texturing, etc but even later modelling and the like, just to see and make sure it is looking how I expect/want.

When I updated from my 1070Ti to my current 3080Ti, well of course Cycles renders much faster, like 10x faster. Hence, it did improve the art (at least I think it did), as I could now do all those little test renders so much faster, and hence play around testing changes and see the results much faster. So could keep tweaking and testing till I got even better results in the same time it would have taken before to get much poorer, lessor results.

I also it actually helps the creative flow, you can be thinking/feeling something, do a quick change/render and then go right back to playing around with settings based on that render. All within a few seconds.

It’s just not the same compared to making a change, pressing render and then waiting 60s to see the result. It’s a much more stop/go type of feel, compared to a more constant flow when the hardware more or less keeps up with what you want to do.

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