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Recommend me a PC build

3K views 27 replies 8 participants last post by  HamBungler 
#1 ·
I havent built a PC in years and I need some help.

I am a Cad operator so this will need decent graphics and be able to handle 32GB of ram.

Where do I even start these days?
 
#2 ·
#4 ·
I am looking to spend under $1k and I do not need an OS. I also have no idea what kind of mother board to get and I would like to get a video card with a fee GB on it. The 20xx series stuff seems too much but I have no idea what the ati equivalent is or what might be the old 10xx equivalents.

I have been a Mac guy for a decade only using work supplied Windows machines so I am lost :lol:
 
#5 ·
Use PC Part Picker. You start with your processor, and then everything else, as you go down the list, is compatible.

At the time, my build cost me about $950. Get one started with the things you need (processor speed, video card connectors, etc), and we can help you decide from there.
 
#6 ·
What sort of CAD software do you use? I read up quick and it seems they work off of single-threaded loads (i.e. multi-thread won't improve performance much) in which case you might want to look at some Intel stuff as they are still some of the better processors when it comes to single-thread. That said the Ryzen stuff isn't too far behind in single thread and will excel for other multi-threaded workloads. I'd check out either sides' 8-core lineups: AMD would be 3700X or 2700X if you don't mind going back a generation to save money (I got a 2700X and use it for rendering video which it handles really well)which use B450/X470/X570 motherboards and on Intel's front you have the i7 9700K on the Z-390 boards. Lately processors haven't been getting sales as often but usually mid-summer and around Black Friday you'll find some of the better deals. Basically it will go: AMD for better price and multi-thread performance and Intel will typically clock higher and work better for single-thread loads.

As for GPUs depending on what you have left over after getting your processor I'd get the best card you can afford, within reason of course. I'm not sure if you'd benefit from the RTX's Turing architecture for rendering but it would be worth looking into if you can take advantage of that. If not, GTX1060 6GB cards go for cheap and typically perform better than the Radeon stuff up to the RX580 which has more memory but doesn't perform noticeably better. That covers the mid-tier of the spectrum until you hit the GTX1070 onward with Radeon just coming out with the 5600 and 5700 and their XT variants which are still relatively new and still on the pricey side for performance compared to something like a used 1070Ti that you can find for the same price or lower and outperform the Radeon cards in every way.

As for being within budget I'd see what you would be comfortable spending on those and then set aside around $150 for 32GB of RAM and then at least a 500w power supply which will run around $80-100 depending on rating or if you need a modular one. SSDs have been fluctuating in price and you can find some deals but the better-performance drives are still on the expensive side for over 1TB but pretty reasonable if you just want a smaller-capacity for a boot drive and use a HDD for storage. Case should be up to you but most cases above the $60 mark should be easy enough to build in, though for a mid-tier case the Fractal stuff is great for airflow and look nice to boot. For budget fans Arctic make great no-frills fans for the price.

Lastly, besides PC Part Picker I use https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/ to find deals on parts and I've seen some really good ones on there, though some of the stuff is time sensitive and will get snatched up pretty quick, especially NVME SSDs lately.
 
#7 ·
I havent built a PC in years and I need some help.

I am a Cad operator so this will need decent graphics and be able to handle 32GB of ram.

Where do I even start these days?
$1k price range could easily get 64. You want as much RAM as possible.

Do you need to get case/power supply/hard drives too?

$1k for the big 3 + RAM and $1k for a whole build are slightly different price points.

Mobo/CPU/GPU are the only ones where you really have to search around. You can either go with motherboard first or CPU. I went with Motherboard first on my most recent build, but that was specifically because I wanted Thunderbolt compliant stuff.
 
#8 ·
If you need hard drives, the "standard high performance" config is one SSD and one traditional hard drive for storage.

I have two 500 GB SSDs and a 2 TB drive for storage.

You are going to need at least 1 TB is you are doing anything involving gaming or sample libraries. 1 TB is actually cutting it too close. The average game these days is 50-75 GB. Sample libraries are fucking huge. You need a high capacity backup for the stuff that doesn't need high speeds. Like the less performance intensive games in a Steam library and sample libraries and shit like that. Unless you have the funds to get at least 3 TBs of SSD, don't store stuff that doesn't need to be stored on an SSD on an SSD. You will blow through 1 TB way before you know it.

RAM is like, get as much as possible. RAM isn't particularly expensive, depending on what you use it for it can be a real bottleneck too if you underspec. 32 would be the minimum for high performance IMO.
 
#9 ·
Garrett makes good points. Per harddrives, I've got a 250GB SSD for my OS and program files, and then a 2TB HDD for files. That allows the OS to quickly run programs, while larger files have another place to sit around.

I found this build guide, it might give you some places to start, albeit 3 years old :)
https://www.scan2cad.com/tips/how-to-build-the-ultimate-cad-pc/
 
#10 ·
I need an SSD for boot but I have a few HDD's around that will work for storage.

I will need a case/power supply tho.

I will look at the 1060 cards and some of the AMD stuff. While this will be for cad during the day, I will also use it to render with blender at night. I also have had good luck with AMD in the past.

I use autocad and fusion 360 mostly. There is also a lighting calcualtion program that seems to crash out on larger project with my 16GB i5 loaded eliter book from about 3 years ago.
 
#12 ·
It's a more powerful upgrade on the 1060. There's also a load of different subcategories (TI, Super etc) that just add to the confusion. At least the 1660TI model (possibly the others as well) is also more powerful than the 1070 for most uses.

I've seen the Radeon 590 for quite cheap (200€ish while the 1660 is 260€ish) in some places, so that might also be an option. It's apparently less powerful than the 1660 but probably better than the 1060.

I'm also considering an upgrade since my GTX770 is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I've been doing some research. Was quite shocked at some point how high GPU prices, even midrange and entry level, had gone because of bitcoin miners.
 
#13 ·
Yeah GPUs are finally coming down to sane price points again. I figured the 10XX series would still be in stock on at least Newegg, granted I haven't looked much since I picked up a used 1070Ti plus there were a ton of sales on GTX1060s and RX580s for around $100-120 earlier in the winter. The 16XX series is basically a slightly beefier take on the 10XX cards, they're able to take advantage of some of Turing's rendering capabilities without the Ray Tracing features. If you can find a good deal on that or a 2060 variant you can't go wrong, though you'll start finding used 1070/1080 cards at that price point and those are still some of the best cards money can buy. Really depends if you can take advantage of the new chipset but if you don't absolutely need new you can save a couple bucks and still get an awesome card. Unfortunately the AMD cards aren't as impressive as they don't have very strong cards outside of the budget spectrum and there's been some software issues on the newer cards (RX5600/5700) that are just now getting ironed out. RX580s are typically pretty good deals but won't outclass most of Nvidia's stuff for just a little bit more dough, and the 590 does sound better on paper but its really just a slightly better RX580 and if you know how to use MSI Afterburner to overclock I'd just go that route honestly. Granted the Vega 56/64 cards start to get most of the way to a 1070's performance but they get hot as everlovin' heck.

You'll probably be able to save a bit on storage since you can find low-capacity NVME drives for relatively cheap, the Teamgroup stuff has a decent warranty for how cheap they tend to go for. Honestly if you can spring for 2 small NVMEs for under $90 you could use one of the NVMEs as a cache drive and speed up your HDD performance by quite a bit if you want to go that route.
 
#15 · (Edited)
^ That's not a bad build, but I'd honestly spend less on the mobo and SSD for a better GPU and potentially better processor/memory. B450 boards are solid and tend to go for way less than the X570 boards right now with comparable feature sets and can still use the newest AMD processors. If you don't need PCI-E 4.0 quite yet I can guarantee you by later this year you'll be seeing the X570 boards for almost half price when the next wave of AMD processors hit.

*edit* one more thing to note on that build is that the stock Wraith cooler that will come with the 3600 will probably be better than the one you listed there, and better still if you opt for the X variant that comes with the Wraith Prism. AMD's stock coolers have been awesome lately, though if you're going to be overclocking a decent bit you might want to upgrade to something like an Arctic Freezer 34 (I got one for my 2700X and I idle around 40C at a 4.2ghz overclock) or Scythe Mugen which should be around the $40 mark.
 
#17 ·
That looks pretty solid :yesway: Not sure if that's the exact memory you're gonna end up going for but keep in mind you can find some faster 32gb kits for around $130 when you end up doing your shopping. The Ryzen CPUs get a decent performance boost from faster memory and most of the AMD BIOS that I've worked with make memory overclocking pretty easy as well. Also, I haven't seen reviews for that 1660 in particular but unless you need a small card I'd go for a card with 2 fans as they tend to run a bit quieter and cooler.
 
#19 ·
If you swap out that board with a msi b450 tomahawk max and ditch the cooler you could upgrade to a 3700x which is 8-core and comes with the better cooler. 3200-3600MHz memory helps a bunch with perfomance too. If you can spend a little more the EVGA RTX 2060 KO is a million times better than the 16 series for $300 especially for compute and rendering where some applications can get like double the performance over a regular RTX 2060.



it'll completely destroy that one you have in your list. These additions will bump the price a bunch but the difference will be pretty big if your application can use it.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/tJ9QBZ
 
#21 ·
That should work out pretty awesome, the 3600X is a pretty sweet little processor. I will say if you want to get the most out of it RAM-wise the sweet spot for speed sits around 3600mhz but you should be able to OC the memory you got to at least 3000 I'd think with some tweaks. AMD Zen processors use Infinity Fabric to interface with the ram and works well with OC'd and high-speed ram kits to reduce GPU bottlenecking and whatnot. Also something to note are that current-gen GPU prices will be going down in a couple months when Ampere and Big Navi GPUs launch later this year so if you need something right now I'd go for a used budget/midrange card and maybe upgrade later. I know you said you have storage covered but if NVME storage starts to become cheaper again, AMD is in the process of updating their SSD drive-caching software sometime this quarter. I think I mentioned it in an earlier post but this will allow you to put a HDD and SDD in a RAID and allow your HDD to use the SSD as a cache drive giving you way better speed from your mechanical drives especially if you use a NVME drive but a SATA SSD would work too though wouldn't get as good of read/write speed.

Sorry for the rant, I'm hopped up on caffeine at the moment haha but regardless I hope you enjoy your new build!
 
#24 ·
I have a brand new crucial 500GB SSD and some older spinning drives for storage. I am ok with not needing to do a caching thing yet.

Thanks for the tips on the new graphics cards coming. Is there something under $200 that is available or will likely be available? I havent looked at this stuff in years. I dont need the NVidia 20xx series stuff but all the 10xx series stuff seems to be sold out.

I was looking at the RX570 but I have no idea if that is good.
 
#27 ·
I have a brand new crucial 500GB SSD and some older spinning drives for storage. I am ok with not needing to do a caching thing yet.

Thanks for the tips on the new graphics cards coming. Is there something under $200 that is available or will likely be available? I havent looked at this stuff in years. I dont need the NVidia 20xx series stuff but all the 10xx series stuff seems to be sold out.

I was looking at the RX570 but I have no idea if that is good.
RX570 and RX580 are both solid (usually like $150 or closer to $100 used).
 
#25 · (Edited)
Yeah the caching thing is totally not necessary, its just one of those lesser-known options you don't hear about often and I just thought it was cool to note that in case you could make use of it :yesway:

As for GPUs if you absolutely need new you can find RX580s all day for around $180 or sometimes you can find them on sale for a bit less. I'm not sure if they're gonna be around much longer as the 5600/5700 are beginning to take the spot as their new mid-range offering before Big Navi GPUs hit. As for Nvida you can sometimes find 1660 variants for right about $240 and sometimes less depending on how its clocked, but if you're okay with used you can find 1060 6gb models for around the same price as RX580s with a little better performance in some cases. All of those cards listed will work just fine for Med-High 1080p games at a stable framerate.
 
#26 ·
All of those cards listed will work just fine for Med-High 1080p games at a stable framerate.
Yeah, my pretty much ancient Geforce GTX 770 still works just fine for the new games I've tried. I run Jedi Fallen Order on it on medium settings 1440p - it has some problems with low RAM in some games leading to unloaded textures but otherwise I can't complain too much. So I bet the cards you mention will run everything for the next 4-5 years at least.
 
#28 · (Edited)
Yeah as far as availability its gonna be easier to find cheaper RX580/570 cards right now. One thing to note on the RX cards would be power consumption since some of the OC'd varieties can draw a lot of power and also put out a decent amount of heat. Nowhere near as bad as Vega cards but that's one of the main reasons I wouldn't recommend the newer RX590 which compared to the 580 is more or less a clockspeed refresh of the previous model and to support the higher voltage it draws more power and puts out more heat to compensate. You can also overclock most 580s to similar specs if you so choose which also makes it not as good of a deal. Out of the RX580 cards you can get the Red Devil from Powercolor are probably the best-clocked of the bunch but require a good bit of power delivery (needs both 8 and 6 pin connectors to PSU) but the MSI cards I've seen decent reviews on would be a good alternative if you got a 450-500 watt power supply and probably won't be doing much overclocking.

I did do a search on the 10xx series cards and it seems like everyone snatched up most of the cheaper 1060s and you're looking at closer to $170 used on the low end for those cards. That's a shame since they tend to run better/cooler than the RX series cards and were running at a near identical price point just 5 months ago. You can check FB marketplace and find them used for cheaper perhaps but I think waiting on a sale for a 1660 if you want Nvidia would be a better option at this point.

*Edit* One more card to consider if you're looking for new would be a 1650 Super. Seems to have slightly better performance than the 580/1060 in most cases and should be under the $200 mark.
 
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