Performance PC build help

Paulw

I need a new PC, any advice is really appreciated.

1. What is your budget? Up to approx €2,000

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Video processing and rendering, Photo processing (bulk) Lightroom and Photoshop, a bit of gaming

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Yes.

What I currently have -
Intel Core i7-3930K 3.20GHz S2011 12MB
MSI X79A-GD65 (8D), Intel X79, LGA2011, ATX, DDR3
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 4GB (x4)
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 8GB (x4)
Corsair Hydro Series H100 CPU cooler
Corsair Carbide Series 500R, Black, ATX
Corsair Enthusiast Series Modular TX750M, 750Watt
Samsung EVO 840 1TB SSD
4 other HDD drives
1 DVD+RW drive
1 Multicard reader
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
Windows 10 Pro

5. Do you need a monitor? No, already have 3 connected. I want to keep that configuration.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yep

8. How can you pay? Card, PayPal, EFT, any means necessary

9. When are you purchasing? In January/February

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Don't need help, just advice/recommendations. I've built machines before.

I would like to get the following in the build -
4 RAM slots on motherboard
2 M.2 slots
6 SATA slots
32GB RAM (2x16GB)
Intel i9-9900K Processor
Nvidia GTX 1080
500GB M.2 drive

K.O.Kiki

That's pretty high-end.

Watch this video:

So you can choose whether a motherboard with PLX chip suits your workloads.PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£558.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100 92 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For £0.00)
Motherboard: Asus - WS Z390 PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£229.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£105.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card (£471.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Corsair - Carbide 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For £0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair - TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £0.00)
Other: motherboard (£360.00)
Total: £1726.04
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-14 00:55 GMT+0000


However, you MIGHT be better served by AMD Threadripper.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor (£569.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U14S TR4-SP3 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£71.88 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - X399 AORUS PRO ATX TR4 Motherboard (£294.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws 4 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£235.15 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£105.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card (£471.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Corsair - Carbide 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For £0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair - TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £0.00)
Total: £1748.56
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-14 01:22 GMT+0000

With Threadripper, you sacrifice clock speed for core count (from 8c/16t to 16c/32t).
In addition, you also gain quad-channel RAM support and more PCI-e lanes.

Paulw

I've never been a major fan of AMD. And when using Adobe products, they seem to perform better on Intel over AMD.

An example of comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1hbMU5DYo

Thanks for those options though. I'll dig more in to that stuff.

Appreciate your input.

smacl

Paulw wrote: »

I've never been a major fan of AMD. And when using Adobe products, they seem to perform better on Intel over AMD.

An example of comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1hbMU5DYo

Thanks for those options though. I'll dig more in to that stuff.

Appreciate your input.

Before deciding on CPU based on generic benchmarks, you might do well to profile the main apps you're using, and specifically where the bottlenecks lie. If task manager, perfmon or similar shows that your maxing out all cores on your CPU, a CPU with higher core count makes sense (i.e. threadripper). If it is maxing out on a single core only, a CPU with highest single thread performance will do better, probably Intel. If the GPU is at full tilt without the CPU being maxed out, you might want to spend your money there.

Worth noting that some photography apps use additional memory for each core in play, so you may want to check total memory usage during a bottleneck as well.

K.O.Kiki

Paulw wrote: »

I've never been a major fan of AMD. And when using Adobe products, they seem to perform better on Intel over AMD.

An example of comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1hbMU5DYo

Thanks for those options though. I'll dig more in to that stuff.

Appreciate your input.

That reminds me, double-check if your applications SUPPORT the new RTX series - while the RTX 2070 is equivalent to GTX 1080 (but cheaper right now), I do remember there are some professional applications that don't support it yet, AT ALL.

As for benchmarking, you can probably forget about all the "tech youtubers" - your go-to site should be Puget Systems.

AMD are really good now - the "Zen" architecture isn't even fully mature and it's already kicking Intel's ass.

Paulw

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

That reminds me, double-check if your applications SUPPORT the new RTX series - while the RTX 2070 is equivalent to GTX 1080 (but cheaper right now), I do remember there are some professional applications that don't support it yet, AT ALL.

smacl wrote: »

Before deciding on CPU based on generic benchmarks, you might do well to profile the main apps you're using, and specifically where the bottlenecks lie.

Worth noting that some photography apps use additional memory for each core in play, so you may want to check total memory usage during a bottleneck as well.

Yeah, thanks for the comments. The Adobe suite (Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier Pro, etc) all seem to perform better on the Intel based chips, even with less cores.

From PugetSystems, I'd need to move to an AMD TR2950 before I'd surpass the processing of the i9-9900 for video rendering, but for Photoshop and Lightroom, the i9-9900 is better than the AMD TR2990.

Currently, when doing a large import or video render, my CPU (all cores) is at 100%, and my RAM is high, but not nearly using the 48GB I have. So, with an increased CPU performance and M.2 disk, I can see my RAM usage decrease a bit. I think 32GB should be fine, but I do want the option to move to 64GB if needed.

Adobe products also fully support the RTX series cards, and run well on them, but currently they don't benefit from the RTX GPU acceleration, no more than a GTX card.

K.O.Kiki

Paulw wrote: »

Yeah, thanks for the comments. The Adobe suite (Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier Pro, etc) all seem to perform better on the Intel based chips, even with less cores.

From PugetSystems, I'd need to move to an AMD TR2950 before I'd surpass the processing of the i9-9900 for video rendering, but for Photoshop and Lightroom, the i9-9900 is better than the AMD TR2990.

Currently, when doing a large import or video render, my CPU (all cores) is at 100%, and my RAM is high, but not nearly using the 48GB I have. So, with an increased CPU performance and M.2 disk, I can see my RAM usage decrease a bit. I think 32GB should be fine, but I do want the option to move to 64GB if needed.

Adobe products also fully support the RTX series cards, and run well on them, but currently they don't benefit from the RTX GPU acceleration, no more than a GTX card.

I think you might be mistaking the TR-1920X in the results against i9-9900K
1950X benchmarks / i9-9900K benchmarks

because 1950X consistently comes out on top here.

You are correct however in that the 9900K is appreciably faster than Threadripper in Photoshop (e.g. huge lead vs 1920X)

Paulw

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I think you might be mistaking the TR-1920X in the results against i9-9900K
1950X benchmarks / i9-9900K benchmarks

because 1950X consistently comes out on top here.

I was looking at - https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2018-Core-i7-9700K-i9-9900K-Performance-1254/

You could be right though.

Paulw

Ok, been mixing and matching a bit. Might go with this -


Component Selection
CPU Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler Corsair - H100i PRO 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard Asus - ROG MAXIMUS XI CODE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage Samsung - 960 EVO 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card MSI - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card
Case NZXT - Phantom 630 (Gunmetal) ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply Corsair - HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply


Thoughts?

K.O.Kiki

Paulw wrote: »

Ok, been mixing and matching a bit. Might go with this -


Component Selection
CPU Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler Corsair - H100i PRO 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard Asus - ROG MAXIMUS XI CODE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage Samsung - 960 EVO 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card MSI - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card
Case NZXT - Phantom 630 (Gunmetal) ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply Corsair - HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply


Thoughts?

I think I disagree with pretty much everything here LOL

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£534.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H115i PRO 55.4 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£114.89 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£259.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair - Dominator Platinum 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£276.49 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Kingston - HyperX Fury 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3466 Memory (£239.07 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£106.05 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£156.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card (£471.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: be quiet! - SILENT BASE 601 | WINDOW SILVER ATX Mid Tower Case (£108.02 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Corsair - HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£120.46 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £2387.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-15 15:03 GMT+0000
(ignore total price - see RAM notes)

CPU cooler: if getting a new one, get 280mm instead of 240mm - better performance overall, and better performance at low RPM
Motherboard: Gigabyte motherboards have the best VRMs on Z390, period. Do not buy that overpriced Asus.
RAM: found faster RAM for less, although it is CAS19. So I've added DDR4-3200 CAS15 into the list too.
SSD: 970 Evo is 24% faster than 960 Evo. Same price. No contest.
GPU: Buy EVGA! Their after-sales support is the best in Europe, and possibly the world. Their coolers are pretty good too.
Case: Personal preference, but the NZXT Phantom 630 is a 2013 model. I'd rather get a nice, new model if upgrading, so be quiet! 601 or 801 would be my recommendation here.
PSU: No complaints here. Although the HX850 is only £7 more.

Paulw

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I think I disagree with pretty much everything here LOL

:D

That's allowed. You're more in tune with the spec and pricing than I am. Been a few years since I built, so I'm out of the loop a bit.

I'll go over all those bits and see how they go.

With a case, it's going under a desk and won't be seen at all, so I could buy a €50 case and still be happy.

I don't want to go mad with the money, so will review again and narrow down my spec.

Appreciate the advice.

Paulw

Ok, I think I'll go with the following -

Component Selection
CPU Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler Corsair - H115i PRO 55.4 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER ATX LGA1151
Memory Corsair - Dominator Platinum 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Samsung - 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card
Case Cooler Master - MasterCase MC500M ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply Corsair - HX Platinum 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

K.O.Kiki

Yeah the MasterCase lineup is solid - I have the smaller MasterCase Pro 3 and it's a pleasure to build in & move around.

Paulw

Parts now all ordered. Never easy ordering from multiple suppliers, but should have them all by end of the month, or 1st week in Jan. Some parts arrive this week, and most next.

Thanks for the help. I'm looking forward to building it now, and then doing some benchmarks. :D

Paulw

Final kit, and total price. Due to a work Christmas bonus, I had more money to spend.

Everything has been shipped, so should have just about everything next week (hopefully), but with Christmas deliveries all over the place, it might be the first week in Jan before I can build it all.

Component Selection
Case Cooler Master - MasterCase MC500M ATX Mid Tower Case
CPU Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler Corsair - H115i PRO 55.4 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Expansion CALISTOUK PCI Express to Dual 20 Pin USB 3.0 PCI-e X1 to 2 ports 19pin USB3.0
Memory Corsair - Dominator Platinum 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Motherboard Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Multi-card reader DeLOCK Card Reader 3.5? USB 3.0 > All in 1 + 4 x USB 3.0 Port
Power Supply Corsair - HX Platinum 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Storage Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Storage Samsung - 970 Evo 2 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Storage Samsung - 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage Seagate - BarraCuda Pro 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card

Total £2,996.97

ED E

Be aware of the M.2 limits of that board (and most). Buying a super fast NVME drive to have it work at half speed due to being 2x is a bit disappointing.

Also you're gonna lose SATA ports, 3 I think. Thats a hit if you're planning to migrate your current drives.

Paulw

Yeah, can't have everything, but it will still be good and fast.

It is annoying about the SATA drive slots being disabled by using the M.2 slots, but I should be fine.

I only need 3 SATA ports - SSD, HDD and probably a DVD.

Paulw

Kinda happy with the performance.

UserBenchmarks: Game 133%, Desk 165%, Work 153%
CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K - 121.4%
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 - 139.4%
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 500GB - 296%
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 2TB - 352.3%
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 2TB - 130.8%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB (2016) - 133%
RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR4 3200 C16 2x16GB - 101.5%
MBD: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS MASTER