New build decisions or upgrade... Budget Limited - 3D & Rendering

Benoit panissie · 12 Dec 2019 at 21:42

Hello all,
Firstly i know my title is an oxymoron limited budget and rendering

However, I seeing that these PCs existed a year and two years ago and worked pretty well, and maybe today the same spec in hardware is much cheaper...

I have an old PC with the following specs:

Fractal Design Define R4 Low Noise Case - Black Pearl
Intel Core i5 4570 Haswell Processor 3.20 GHz (No Overclocking)
Asus B85M-G Basic Micro ATX Motherboard - Haswell CPU only
8GB Corsair PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory (2 x 4GB sticks)
Integrated Intel Graphics
1000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk - 6Gbps
FSP Premium Grade 80+ Certified 500W PSU

Now should i upgrade the above? I will need a GPU for my main purpose will be Vray and/or Lumien rendering and Sketchup Pro use.
Looking at reqs I see that i do need good benchmarks for this for both the CPU and GPU mix
CPUMark at 2,000+ single thread
3DMark between 10,000 & 16,000
Min 6gb to 12gb Vram
M.2 SSD recommended.
16GB+ RAM at cl14 or Cl16

Would adding a good GPU (old) one help for the above config?

if not - I was looking at this today comparing benchmarks, prices and where to cut corners with today's availability.. and has not been easy... as hoping for help maybe with good hardware from a year ago to buy today?

Research gave me this so far:

Ryzen 2700X - 185€ (32Gb ram recommended on this CPU) - single thread rating 2,200
AMD RX 590 8GB - 180€ (bottleneck warning that GPU not good enough for CPU?) 3DMark 9,500
Question - would the bottleneck be a problem there? I am guessing no just by common sense as the cpu will be ok to handle the GPU?

MSI B450 Tomahawk Max - 114€
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 PC4-25600 2x16GB CL16 - 160€
HP EX900 1TB NVMe 2280 M.2 - 120€
Corsair TX550M 550W 80 Plus Gold Semi Modular - 75€
Fractal Design Focus G - 56€

This would bring me to 890€ (unfortunately still too steep for me and the question - how about a good similar set up with last year cheaper components? trying to stay under 500€...

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i5-9400F (40€ cheaper)
GPU - Cannot seem to find a better compute GPU for the price...

Any advice, help will be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

ben

sideways14a · 12 Dec 2019 at 21:46

The i5 is utter garbage so stay away from it.
The 2600 is decent though, do you need a 590 as a video card? Cant you use something a bit cheaper and get the 3600 instead.

Benoit panissie · 12 Dec 2019 at 21:57

Hi thanks for the speedy reply.
Looking at specs and benchmarks - seems this is the cheapest GPU I could find as close to 10,000 min requirements and with 8gb this one.
I am looking solely at compute speeds, not interested in gaming results... and seems this makes a difference in choices. eg the rx 590 is better than some more recent GTX 1060 ones for example, however loses badly on fps gaming..
its a tough one...
Maybe i can shave more on the M/b & Ram start at 16gb instead of 32Gb - thats 60€ saved more just in this config

Benoit panissie · 15 Dec 2019 at 10:17

Last few days I have been reading a lot about Workstations - and also found a video on youtube actually testing vid cards and CPU with same rendering files and speed. Seems ALL Nvidia cards are so much quicker than AMDs mid level ones by far!! SO i made a new config below - however again seems ALL configs I make come to 750€ to 850€ regardless of the set-up and seems this may be the cheapest option i have to get what i need as bare minimum specs for my needs.

AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (102€) - to save on money and also benchmark very similar to the 2600X and also seems to work well with the GPU chosen after looking at compatibility tests too.
MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X (250€) - I can get one for 250€ (the extra 70€ will nearly save me 40% of time in rendering over the RX 590.
Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB DDR4-3000 (62€) - seems to be the most popular RAM price/value
HP EX920 1TB NVME (120€) - Best buck m.2 i think.
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro WiFi (130€) - Not many options here but was told and read to stay away from the X470 one if the B450 was good value
SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 650W (80€)
Case 50€ ish

TOTAL: 794€

Danny75 · 15 Dec 2019 at 10:57

Ryzen 3600 £169
Riotoro Enigma Gold 650W £60
MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX £90
Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2x8GB) 3200 C16 £59
Crucial P1 NVME SSD 1TB £96

£474

You're paying too much for a second-hand(?) GTX 1070. Pay around £150 max.

£624 + a case. BitFenix Neos or something for £26.

£650 / 778 euros

Quixote · 15 Dec 2019 at 11:20

Lumion themselves say the GPU is the most important part for performance & prefer NVidia:
https://lumion.com/blog/lumion-hardware-101-minimum-and-recommended.html
If you're using V-Ray though, you are probably using CPU rendering for that (VRay has GPU rendering but the CPU engine is more fully-featured & most people seem to use it more than the GPU engine) - for that, you'd want as many cores as possible & as fast as possible.
I really don't think it's worth dropping back to 1st gen Ryzen to save money. Each core is so much faster in 3rd Gen Ryzen that not only will it perform a lot better in VRay but your more single-threaded modelling tasks should perform better. Don't under-estimate how much quicker a 3600 is over a 1600, despite having the same number of cores.
If you make big/ heavy scenes, you might benefit from 32gb of RAM over 16gb - but RAM is easy to add at a later date, so you could go with 16gb for now.

Benoit panissie · 17 Dec 2019 at 17:14

Thanks to both of you for replying and helping.. seems I will try and keep the 3600 set up. All prices are from Spain considering postage too.

Ryzen 5 3600 - best price i could find on aliexpress reliable seller is 168€ inc slow P&P 5 weeks. - (here in Spain the best offer is 210€)
MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX - 115€
Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2x8GB) 3400 - 85€ (cheapest i could find and 3400 same price as 3200) used your recommendation and went for the 3400
HP EX920 1TB NVME (120€) - Best buck m.2 i think - compared more and seems to quickest and reliable from research.
SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 650W - 80€ - again seems best price from reliable company. Heard this is important here.

TOTAL w/out case and GPU: 568€

Need to now be patient and look around for a good priced GPU...
I am going to look at the following cards when and if they come into budget ans just get aware that i will have to spend at least 700€ for this as impossible cheaper....
GTX 1070 - 1660 SUPER or Ti