Pimp my £1k lightroom build?

scoop

scoop

scoop

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Hi all,

Considering the following spec for a Lightroom PC and odd bits of video editing, for a possible future Mavic Air purchase. No gaming intended and roughly £1k budget, plus a copy of Win10. Will be linked up to a 4K Dell IPS monitor and 6TB NAS backup I already have. Current thoughts are as below for these reasons:

- Best value of Ryzen CPU and GPU vs performance
- Not sure the X570 or B550 boards gives me anything more at the moment (assuming there's an upgrade path on the chosen board to a Ryzen 4th gen at some point in a few years...) - PCI3.0 M.2 drive should be more than fast enough for intended use
- OS etc would sit on the M2, with images etc on the 1TB SSD as the working disk. I also have a 128GB EVO840 that'll hold the LR catalogue and cache.
- Case tbc


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £973.90 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​

Question though - if I could throw, say, an extra £150 at the build what would be best benefit for intended use?

- Ryzen 3700x with 2 extra cores?
- Extra 16GB RAM?
- GPU upgrade to 5700x? (Plus higher wattage PSU)

I can see pros and cons to all the above options - there's a law of diminishing returns on each one - LR generally plays better with NVidea vs AMD GPUs but the 5700x is about 25-30% faster on straight benchmarks, the extra 2 CPU cores may be of benefit, and my current i5-3470k/R7 250/16GB system does top out on RAM on occasion at 16GB so 32GB might help out there.

Any LR users out there with any helpful advice on which would give most return on the extra outlay, and if the difference would really be that noticeable for any of the three options?
 
RAM is a waste of money 3200MHz kit, and get 32GB instead, same price.

I'd do this build.


CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900 3.1/4.3 GHz 12-Core OEM CPU
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Storage: Sabrent Rocket 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC Video Card
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

Total: ~£1120

More expensive, but with a 12c/24t CPU and a single 2TB NVMe SSD, that I would partition off, and 32GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM, same GPU and 650w Seasonic PSU. Note that the CPU is a non 'X' version.
 
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That's some interesting thoughts - One of the ideas for the 2 drives in LR seems to like having cache/catalogue and images on different drives, but given the speed of the M2 that's worth a think.

I was also pondering RAM speed - I see a lot of chatter around DDR4 3600 CAS18 for anything above the Ryzen 5s and wondered if it really would make that much difference.

The non-X 3900 seems to be a bit scarce - need to look into that one. And i'll go look at the Sabrent drive - again, not one I'd heard of, but reviews look attractive.
 
scoop said:
That's some interesting thoughts - One of the ideas for the 2 drives in LR seems to like having cache/catalogue and images on different drives, but given the speed of the M2 that's worth a think.

I was also pondering RAM speed - I see a lot of chatter around DDR4 3600 CAS18 for anything above the Ryzen 5s and wondered if it really would make that much difference.

The non-X 3900 seems to be a bit scarce - need to look into that one. And i'll go look at the Sabrent drive - again, not one I'd heard of, but reviews look attractive.
Click to expand...

Just completed the exact build except it was a B450 Pro Carbon board, and only a 1650 Super GPU. End user is using it for Lightroom/Photoshop and After Effects work and some audio stuff. The 3900/B450 motherboard was in a bundle deal.

The RAM latencies do make a difference but 3200MHz C16 vs £60 more to get 3600MHz C16 makes no sense at all, when you can get 32GB kits for the same price. Sabrent drives are great, good warranty and use decent controllers and NAND flash chips, they are also fast and well priced.

A 12c/24t machine with 32GB RAM is going to be much better, and the single core speed of the 3900 boosts to that of the 3600 or greater, it's also a 65w chip so the chiplets are usually better binned and they run cooler/over clock better.
 
Guessing that bundle was about £500 including stock cooler, if I’m seeing the right thing? Looks appealing, as the MSI carbon board is worth the extra £10 - the 5v headers on that board would be useful as I may get persuaded to put ARGB in the case....
 
scoop said:
Guessing that bundle was about £500 including stock cooler, if I’m seeing the right thing? Looks appealing, as the MSI carbon board is worth the extra £10 - the 5v headers on that board would be useful as I may get persuaded to put ARGB in the case....
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about the costs difference presently, but it wasn't any where near £500 at the time. R9 3900 (non-X) and the standard Tomahawk MAX is a great combo and should be slightly more than the 3900X on its own.
 
OK, I'll look a little harder, unless you could PM me with some thoughts on where to look?
 
Journey said:
That's not true though.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...ntel-Core-10th-Gen-vs-AMD-Ryzen-3rd-Gen-1761/
Click to expand...

aye, sorry. got mixed up with adobe. and im normally the one pushing Pugetsystem on here and being th eonly one getting banned for it haha


aftereffects in one i got mixed up with but seems latest update, AMD jumped greatly as 9700k used to easily beat 3900x... :D

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...ntel-Core-10th-Gen-vs-AMD-Ryzen-3rd-Gen-1762/

would even buy aasus b550 over msi 450- least can run that ram to 4000hz + etc :D
 
orbitalwalsh said:
at £130 for b450 i'd rather wait and pre=oorde a better B550 board

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...ntel-Core-10th-Gen-vs-AMD-Ryzen-3rd-Gen-1761/
Click to expand...

OK, help me out here, please - what does the B550 give me for the £50+ extra, for the intended build that the B450 doesn't? I'm aware of the M2 from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0 but, to be honest, an M2 PCIe 3.0 is more than quick enough, realistically and I'm not going to be getting 4000 MHz RAM and wasn't likely to hang on until the next gen Ryzens appear.

I don't usually overclock CPU or RAM, and tend not to upgrade any more frequently than 5-6 years at a time... And are there any concerns around early adoption of these 1st tranche boards, in terms of working out which ones are decent and which are now, given all the prior debate about, for example, MSI vs Asus on the B450s and x570s (as I understood it, there were plusses and minuses around voltage management from different manufacturers, but please do correct me if I got that wrong?)
 
If you worried about costs , then go b450 matx Toma or cheaper ASRock and job done . More the fact that MSI board was launched at £85 last year and haven't dropped in price when entry b550 are £105 (but on ore order) . For me it's that the b450 Toma isn't worth that money, specially 2/3 months ago was £105 with roughly same exchange rate .
No, PCIe 4.0 drives aren't worth it in their current forms now. That aren't at full bandwidth speed . Should outpace next gen consoles when proper controllers are released .

If you intend to update your GPU in 5 years (wouldn't really need to for lightroom use only ) then b450 PCIe 3.0 is your limitation . Incoming GPU mid to high end would and should be pushing PCIe 3.0 to it's limits, which Gens after that providing more power then PCIe 3.0 can handle .
 
OK, that makes sense - thanks for clarifying. Guess it's too early to know which of the new B550 boards is best to go for just yet, in terms of which vendor has the best implementations?
 
scoop said:
OK, that makes sense - thanks for clarifying. Guess it's too early to know which of the new B550 boards is best to go for just yet, in terms of which vendor has the best implementations?
Click to expand...

The appeal of the bundle with the 3900 (non-X) and the B450 Tomahawk MAX is that the board works out sub £90, if using the CPU price of £350. If you are looking at B550 then add another £50 to be at the Asus B550 TUF Gaming. I suppose it's not a huge amount, but we were working to a budget to start off with as usual :D
 
Journey said:
The appeal of the bundle with the 3900 (non-X) and the B450 Tomahawk MAX is that the board works out sub £90, if using the CPU price of £350. If you are looking at B550 then add another £50 to be at the Asus B550 TUF Gaming. I suppose it's not a huge amount, but we were working to a budget to start off with as usual :D
Click to expand...

Agree - the budget is fairly controlled, so the 3900/Toma for ca £440 is appealing if still available, and I think the board does all I need it to do for the foreseeable future, but best I found with any stock was more like £500...

Given the x470 Gaming Max board is £30 cheaper than the Tomahawk, any reasons to go for/not to go for that board? I thought the x470s were a higher spec so surprised to see it cheaper?
 
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scoop said:
That's some interesting thoughts - One of the ideas for the 2 drives in LR seems to like having cache/catalogue and images on different drives, but given the speed of the M2 that's worth a think.
Click to expand...

that’s right. I got my cache and catalogue on separate drives. Also I really don’t think you will notice much different in LR from that memory speed boost. LR is also not very heavily threaded so not sure you need 12C cpu, 6 core is even over kill for LR. And you can’t open multiple instance of LR anyways.

photoshop is a different ball game altogether.

I would stick with 6core CPU - 3600 or 3700x and have 3200MHz ram and have them clocked higher to 3600MHz. Micron E-die ram are meant to be budget friendly and overclockable.

your original build is ok. But I would buy an x570 board such as ASUS Prime or ASRock Steel legend. And change the GPU to 1660 super (6GB ram). Reason being you will get much more resale value than 4GB card down the line.

also shop around. If you are a keen hotukdeal watcher there is currently a decent prebuilt available for much less than your budget that meets all of your requirements. Only issue is you have to wait and it is matx format
 
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