PC For Design Work- recommendations?

Diceicle

Hello,

I am looking to get/build a PC to be used for design-realted work.
Ideally, it would be capabale of running more than one RAM-heavy program at once - Photoshop / AutoCad / InDesign etc
I have a budget of around €1500 so im not expecting miracles but would like to get the most bang for my buck and would appreciate your input.

Thanks.

1. What is your budget? €1500

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Modelling, Photoshop, AutoCad, Google Sketup, VRay Rendering

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5a. If yes, what size do you need. [19'/20'/22'/24'/etc.] N/A

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 1920x1080 & No

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes

8. How can you pay?Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser

9. When are you purchasing? [In the next 60 days]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? South Dublin City

Extras Info:

I would need a minimum of 8 Gb of RAM and a 480 - 500Gb SSD Hard Drive. I have a 24" Lenovo Monitor so would use that in order to put that cost into the other aspects of the build.

minitrue

Think you better fill in the template from http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74542374 to get some good answers, the monitor question in particular is a big deal here but most of the rest of it also will help. Would also be worth you making a guess at how much ram and storage you think you need. The more info you can give the better chance of you getting some well targeted suggestions for the best bang for you for your buck.

Diceicle

minitrue wrote: »

Think you better fill in the template from http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74542374 to get some good answers, the monitor question in particular is a big deal here but most of the rest of it also will help. Would also be worth you making a guess at how much ram and storage you think you need. The more info you can give the better chance of you getting some well targeted suggestions for the best bang for you for your buck.

Very much appreciated - I will fill out the template over behind the link.

re: the RAM and Storage question - I would say 8Gb minimum and 500Gb of storage.

minitrue

I think VRay loves gpu power which means I've maxed out your budget in the below without including a keyboard and mouse. Other tools might use the gpu also a bit but without the VRay I'd probably say the gtx1080 was gross overkill here. I'm still a little dodgy on the best Ryzen board/ram choices though, so while I think I've chosen wisely you should really look for some confirmation!

I will also say that the recommendation is always if possible to use a wired connection, even powerline rather then wireless.

Main thing though is you have a lot of choice with your demands and budget so this is just one option of how you could go. You could take money from the gpu and add more ram and/or ssd, or a cooler and X processor (tbh best I can tell it's marginal gains and bang for buck says the 1700 is sanest).

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor (€322.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: MSI - B350 GAMING PRO CARBON ATX AM4 Motherboard (sigh, see later post)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (€146.95 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Crucial - MX300 525GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€149.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB AMP! Extreme Video Card (€506.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Fractal Design - Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case (€50.98 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (€90.41 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro Full - USB 32/64-bit (€100.07 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Wireless Network Adapter: Gigabyte - GC-WB867D-I PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (€32.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: € (see later post)

Anyway that should give you a pretty decent idea of roughly what area you are in and it would be screaming fast with plenty of scope for future upgrades (32GB ram, an m.2 pci-e ssd, future cpu). Hopefully now a few others might chip in with their thoughts.

K.O.Kiki

minitrue wrote: »

'm still a little dodgy on the best Ryzen board/ram choices though, so while I think I've chosen wisely you should really look for some confirmation!

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/69p7h4/all_the_b350_vrms_crash_course/

You recommended good choices, MSI Gaming Pro Carbon & MSI Krait Gaming (ATX) are probably the best VRM designs in B350.

It's the MSI B350M Gaming Pro you want to avoid if considering an 8-core, or overclocking.

BloodBath

In fairness you don't exactly need crazy VRM's. It's a 65w CPU. Maybe 95w once overclocked. I'd be choosing a board based on features rather than VRM's.

minitrue

I picked the board based on price with 4 dimm slots which should run the ram at 3200MHz My instincts say there's nothing much else worth caring about from the motherboard for a machine like this?

However I've just noticed a problem clicking through to amazon.de from the pcpartpicker link, it looks like that isn't the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon ATX at all (despite what pcpartpicker says) and is the B350M Gaming Pro M-Atx ... the exact one KOKiki suggests to avoid :-( So need to find a different board for this, extend the budget a little or cut back a bit somewhere else. The board is €132 from mindfactory though not listed on pcpartpicker (and getting some other parts from mindfactory then means it doesn't add very much more, if anything, in shipping). Maybe someone else can suggest a sane cheaper board option?

If nobody jumps in with another sane board suggestion to get you into budget with the board from mindfactory I dropped to a bronze psu and juggled in some other parts from mindfactory as you’d be paying their shipping anyway (gpu is also out of stock on amazon now) to end up with the following:

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor (€320.54 @ Mindfactory)
Motherboard: MSI - B350 GAMING PRO CARBON ATX AM4 Motherboard (€131.88 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (€149.52 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Crucial - MX300 525GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€149.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB AMP! Edition Video Card (€506.99 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Fractal Design - Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case (€50.98 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€66.03 @ Mindfactory)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro Full - USB 32/64-bit (€100.07 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Wireless Network Adapter: Gigabyte - GC-WB867D-I PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (€35.84 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €1500 give or take a euro or three

minitrue

In a tandem thread Xenoronin suggested the Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3 board http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=103621188&postcount=6 which would get you €20 back and probably let you squeeze the gold PSU back in

Diceicle

Thank you to everyone contributing to this thread - I appreciate your time and input.
What has been speced out above looks (to my novice eyes) a great value machine.