Computer Build - Help with specs
polycounter lvl 7
Hi,
I'm not sure if this is the right forum...but it is pretty technical!
I have been researching into buying a new computer and think I have a fairly okay combo of parts at a goodish price. But this is my first time building my own and I don't want to make any major mistakes and waste a lot of money!
Advice on changes I can make, or if you think specs seem legit, would be awesome. This is from pcspecialist in the UK. Price was about £1500
Specs:
CPU - Intel i7 - 5960x
Motherboard - Asus X99A
Memory - 32g Hyper X Fury DDR4
Graphics - Geforce 4gb GTX 960
Storage - 1TB Corsair SSD
I will be using it for:
3DS Max
Zbrush
UE4
Substance Designer
Marmoset
Photoshop etc
and some games
Thanks for looking
I'm not sure if this is the right forum...but it is pretty technical!
I have been researching into buying a new computer and think I have a fairly okay combo of parts at a goodish price. But this is my first time building my own and I don't want to make any major mistakes and waste a lot of money!
Advice on changes I can make, or if you think specs seem legit, would be awesome. This is from pcspecialist in the UK. Price was about £1500
Specs:
CPU - Intel i7 - 5960x
Motherboard - Asus X99A
Memory - 32g Hyper X Fury DDR4
Graphics - Geforce 4gb GTX 960
Storage - 1TB Corsair SSD
I will be using it for:
3DS Max
Zbrush
UE4
Substance Designer
Marmoset
Photoshop etc
and some games
Thanks for looking
Replies
Corsair SSDs tend to have rather poor reliability long term, I'd go with a Samsung PRO line (not EVO) to have a better chance of the drive lasting a long time. 1TB is overkill too, you just need enough space for your OS and programs (256gb should be fine, 512gb if you want to install a bunch of games), and get yourself something cheap for regular file storage.
Also, the Geforce 960 is a good card overall, but its also a mid-range card. If you have the budget I'd get a Geforce 970, 980, or 980ti (best card currently on the market) instead.
Nice topic and answer.
I have a 5920K do you think this one is only good for rendering too? :poly122:
Do you know or have any articles about this? Im feeling a bit frustrated with your answer hehehe.
You can pocket that money, or put some of it into a better GPU like a 970 or 980, which will help with GPU heavy apps like Marmoset Toolbag, and UE4.
5820K (I assume that's what you mean, I don't think there is a 5920k, maybe you mean 5930K? That one isn't a great value.) is a reasonable choice, you'll pay more for the motherboard and DDR4 ram but it's not insanely more expensive than the 4790K is.
The 5690x on the other hand is roughly 3x more expensive than the 4790k, while only being 30% faster.
When picking CPUs, usually I just pick the fastest one below $350 or so on this list: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html - this tends to be the sweet spot, when you pay more than that, the price curve/value gets a lot worse.
I have looked at some new specs:
Would you mind helping me choose between different versions though, again, I am just assuming the higher priced one if better, without having much knowledge.
CPU - Intel i7 - 4790 (not sure if there is a major difference between the 3.6GHz and the 4GHz??)
Motherboard - Asus Z97-E (again, not sure if there is much difference between the P and E version??)
Memory - 32g Kingston Hyper X Fury DDR3 (I assumed this was a better choice over the regular Kingston Dual)
Graphics - Geforce 4gb GTX 980 Ti (took your advice to upgrade the graphics card!)
Storage - 480GB Kingston SSD (no Samsung Pro Option)
This comes to £1400, so about the same price, but hopefully with the correct hardware this time
Thanks again for your time.
If you want to save some more money you could go with the AMD R9 390. It has 8GB of video memory if you ever do 3d painting.
It's about half of the price of the 980ti, so you could buy the 390 now, and then upgrade in another year and a half / two years when cards are quicker.
The 4790k would be preferable to the 4790 due to the difference in core cpu frequency. Definitely get that if you can.
If you can't get the PRO line of Samsung drives, I would recommend the EVO over Corsair. Its certainly not as good as the PRO series, but Corsair just isn't a well respected brand when it comes to SSD reliability.
Took a look at the two motherboards too. They're basically the same thing with just very minor changes. Different expansion ports, usb layout, and minor audio hardware improvements for the Z97-E (and something about sli, you'll never use sli as a game artist though so don't worry about it). Honestly either one is fine, I would go with which ever is cheaper.
Regarding 'beefaroni's comment the AMD 390X;
Performance wise its a good card, but most people wont touch AMD these days due to their poor reputation regarding game compatibility at launch. I also tend to see way more AMD-specific bugs needing/getting fixed in patch notes for most software.
Specs:
CPU - Intel i7 - 5960x This can give you a great advantage while using Substance Designer, it's about 120% faster than my 3770k, I suggest 4960 or something use X97 instead of X99, cuz X99 is just luxury.
Motherboard - Asus X99A - no comment, to use 5xxx i7, you gotta have this.
Memory - 32g Hyper X Fury DDR4 - kinda waste of money, but for 5xxx i7, gotta have
Graphics - Geforce 4gb GTX 960 - should really upgrade to 970 or 980 for the best.
Storage - 1TB Corsair SSD - no comment.
I will be using it for:
3DS Max Check
Zbrush Check
UE4 Check, maybe a bit slow on 960
Substance Designer Check, will calculate super fast
Marmoset Check, maybe a bit slow on 960
Photoshop etc Check, will become somewhat laggy at huge resolution like 15000 x 9000 with large brushes or huge amount of layers
and some games Check, medium to high setting at 30FPS guranteed for most of game. Witcher 3 on ultra? better get 980 or titan.
Hey Man! you´re right, its the 5820k i was talking hehe.
I actually choose the x99 ddr4 system because it was a newer system then ddr3. Since i live in Brazil and i was in the US at the time i bought my actual system i had to made the choice because the prices here are insanely expensive then in the US.
My motherboard for instance, i paid like USD475 in BRL now its like 3000+
That´s just too much.
My System is
Rampage V x99
5820k
GTX970
SamSung 840PRO 256GB
16gb corsair
Corsair 860AX
And so far so good, the only thing ill do later is to add more 16gb.
And my older system was like Q6600 quad core with 6GB of ddr2 ram so in my case i found okay to spend a bit more on the X99 plataform.
So I have tweaked my specs a bit. I was talking to some guys at work and they were saying I won't need more then 16gb ram... they were also saying that it would be better to get a smaller SSD for softwares and then a regular harddrive for storage, as an SSD gets slower the more you use it.
@beefaroni Going to stick to Intel, as I have had always used Geforce cards and have had no complaints.
Processor - Intel® Corei7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard - ASUS® Z97-P: ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory - 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (4 x 8GB)
Graphics Card - 6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 DP
Hard Disk 1 - 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Hard Disk 2 - Thinking about a 1TB SATA HD
Any advice on the RAM and HD would be awesome.
Yep that's the way to go, have two hard drives. One SSD for programs, and one regular hard drive for file storage.
For ram, 16gb is what most game artists use these days, some do need more then that though. If you decide to go with 16gb, I would get 2x8gb instead of 4x4gb so as to leave yourself some room for expansion just in case.
I already bought Samsung EVO 500GB after reading some reviews. PRO didn't convince me. Except that I will most likely buy Ultrastar 3TB (hitachi).
Right now I wonder which VGA to choose for substance painter.