New build for housemate who is a 3D Game Artist

Sampsy · 8 Dec 2022 at 20:55

Hi there, my housemate needs some more horsepower than what is available in their Surface Book so is looking to build a desktop. They are a 3D game artist so are using applications such as Autodesk Maya, Adobe Substance Painter, ZBrush & Unreal Engine Editor. I've been told they probably need ~32GB of RAM & from the little bit of research I could do these programs do like more cores & can make use of a hefty GPU as well. But I'm not that familiar with them and I'm not aware of any relevant benchmarks so I don't know what's best myself. Their max budget is ~€2000.

Any suggestions?

Tetras · 8 Dec 2022 at 21:29

Here's an AM4 option:

Phanteks Eclipse P600S Glass Silent Midi Tower Case - Gunmetal Grey - £152.99
Phanteks AMP 750W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - £109.99
NZXT Kraken X63 AIO CPU Water Cooler - 280mm - £139.99
Gainward GeForce RTX 3060 Ghost LHR 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £338.99

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Sixteen Core 4.9GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail - £530.00
Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WIFI II (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard - £179.99
Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey - £169.99

WD Blue SN570 2TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3B0C) - £139.99
WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2X0E) - £229.99

Grand Total: £2,006.62

AM5 option:

Lian Li Lancool 205 Midi-Tower Case - Black Window - £64.99
Phanteks AMP 750W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - £109.99
NZXT Kraken X63 AIO CPU Water Cooler - 280mm - £139.99
Gainward GeForce RTX 3060 Ghost LHR 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £338.99

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Twelve Core 5.60GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £449.99
MSI Pro B650-P WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £249.95
Kingston FURY Beast 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C40 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - £229.99

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £159.95
WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2X0E) - £229.99

Grand Total: £1,987.03

I went with the 3060 because in the productivity benches I've seen, the class of card doesn't seem to make a huge difference to performance, but running out of VRAM can sometimes just stop things dead, though the scene may have changed since then (there's been a lot of patches/updates in the last few years). If what they do uses the graphics card a lot, then I expect dumping everything into the CPU is not wise.

The 5950X and 7900X seem fairly evenly matched for many productivity apps, but in TPU's review (of the 7900X) and Puget's content creation article (for the Ryzen 7000 launch), the newer CPU was pretty consistently faster, including in rendering, UE5 and Adobe.

If there's a big need for storage, there's no spare M.2 slots left with either of those boards (after the 2 M.2 drives in the spec are installed).

Sampsy · 9 Dec 2022 at 21:16

Thanks for the suggestions - what might you recommend motherboard wise if she wanted 3 m.2 slots?

FredFlint · 10 Dec 2022 at 16:47

Sampsy said:
Thanks for the suggestions - what might you recommend motherboard wise if she wanted 3 m.2 slots?

The AM5 B650E motherboards can have more m.2 gen 5/4/3 drives, The ASUS B650E-E has 4 slots. Think 2 gen 5, the rest gen 4 but one of the gen 5's is off the chipset. You will need to look at the motherboard spec to find out how many slots and what gen they support. Think the MSI Pro B650-P has 2 gen 4 slots but you may be able to use a PCIe Adapter card for a third.

Tetras · 10 Dec 2022 at 17:26

Sampsy said:
Thanks for the suggestions - what might you recommend motherboard wise if she wanted 3 m.2 slots?

AM4: I can only see one X570 board in stock and that's the Gigabyte X570S UD (£160, no wifi), with 3 M.2.
AM5: Asus TUF B650-PLUS has 3 M.2, though I think one is shared with a PCI-E slot (£230 without wifi, £243 with).

TOW · 11 Dec 2022 at 07:22

I would go Intel over AMD right now - the 13xxx series Raptop lake have a nice boost over AMD options.

For those apps specifically - the single core performance will be a nice boost in user experience - when actively working in the software.

When rendering (for the bits that aren't GPU accelerated) the difference won't be so noticeable... but while actively working within the software - which I'd expect is your friend's key factor - Intel really has the edge.

So I'd aim for a 13700k/kf & relevant mobo - other bits can stay the same. Price wise, will be roughly the same.

Sampsy · 11 Dec 2022 at 13:40

I actually found Puget's article after the suggestion from @Tetras and they have an updated one for the intel 13th gen. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...369/#Game_DevVirtual_Production_Unreal_Engine

We were actually looking to reduce the cost a bit so were considering a 5900x rather than the 5950x, which seems to be roughly as performant in Unreal as the 13600k (according to the article).

The issue is though we don't have an LGA1700 CPU so unless I'm mistaken we wouldn't be able to flash the bios in a cheaper Z6xx board to update it for 13th gen. We'd also have to go for more expensive DDR5 unless we want to buy an LGA1700 board that only supports DDR4 which seems a bit silly, but again maybe I'm mistaken there.

So we'd need DDR5 & a Z790 board which seems to make it a fair bit more expensive than a Zen 4 option with similar performance.

TOW · 12 Dec 2022 at 00:16

While render times between 13600k & 5900x look to be quite similar - that's not the reasoning behind my suggestion.

It's the in-app / while actively working user experience - Intel is noticeably ahead here, especially 13xxx vs 5xxx.

When drawing / designing / navigating - all of those interactions will be quicker. While rendering/exporting, it tends to be done in the background or while AFK.

The lower end Z790 motherboards are only very slightly more expensive than the X570 motherboards (and note most X570 motherboard are out of stock at OcUK - there are a few B550 though)
You also mentioned she might like 3+ m.2 slots... Z790 motherboards come with more of those natively, even the cheapest Z790, the ASRock - has 4 m.2 slots. The slightly more expensive PG Riptide has 5.

The 5900X is only £60 cheaper than the 13700k, or £40 more than 13600kf.

32GB Kingston or TeamGroup DDR5 is £150, 32GB Corsair DDR4 is £100.

So overall, the cost difference is really quite small - even if wanting to stretch to the 13700.

It's worth it IMO, if the budget's there.

mickyflinn · 12 Dec 2022 at 09:52

Sampsy said:
I actually found Puget's article after the suggestion from @Tetras and they have an updated one for the intel 13th gen. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...369/#Game_DevVirtual_Production_Unreal_Engine

We were actually looking to reduce the cost a bit so were considering a 5900x rather than the 5950x, which seems to be roughly as performant in Unreal as the 13600k (according to the article).

The issue is though we don't have an LGA1700 CPU so unless I'm mistaken we wouldn't be able to flash the bios in a cheaper Z6xx board to update it for 13th gen. We'd also have to go for more expensive DDR5 unless we want to buy an LGA1700 board that only supports DDR4 which seems a bit silly, but again maybe I'm mistaken there.

So we'd need DDR5 & a Z790 board which seems to make it a fair bit more expensive than a Zen 4 option with similar performance.

Some MSI Motherboards have bios flash button which you can update the bios without another cpu .

Z690 does DDR4 like this board with bios flashback.

MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4

PRO Z690-A DDR4

PRO series motherboards, tuned for better performance by Core Boost, Memory Boost, Extended Heatsink Design, M.2 Shield Frozr, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, Lightning Gen5, Front Type-C, 2.5G LAN

www.msi.com

White_Widow · 16 Dec 2022 at 18:37

Sampsy said:
Hi there, my housemate needs some more horsepower than what is available in their Surface Book so is looking to build a desktop. They are a 3D game artist so are using applications such as Autodesk Maya, Adobe Substance Painter, ZBrush & Unreal Engine Editor. I've been told they probably need ~32GB of RAM & from the little bit of research I could do these programs do like more cores & can make use of a hefty GPU as well. But I'm not that familiar with them and I'm not aware of any relevant benchmarks so I don't know what's best myself. Their max budget is ~€2000.

Any suggestions?

With a budget of €2000, you can certainly put together a powerful desktop that can meet your housemate's needs. Here's an example of what you can build: CPU: Intel Core i7-10700KF 8-Core Processor GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super 8GB Video Card RAM: 32GB DDR4 RAM Motherboard: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Elite AC ATX Motherboard Storage: 1TB SSD PSU: 650W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply Case: Mid-Tower ATX Case This should provide plenty of power for running Autodesk Maya, Adobe Substance Painter, ZBrush, and Unreal Engine Editor. The Intel i7 processor has 8 cores and 16 threads, the RTX 2070 Super has 8GB of VRAM, and 32GB of RAM should be more than enough for your housemate's needs.