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Please spec me a budget CPU for graphic design and gaming

Cern

Cern

Cern

Soldato
Joined
3 Jul 2008
Posts
3,788
Location
London
I'm looking to build a new system as it's not viable to upgrade my existing rig for various reasons. I've always gone Intel in the past, but this time around I'm finding myself tempted by AMD and wondering what the best fit is for my usage (see below). My budget is fairly tight so I'm not really able to go above the cost of an i5-9600k + cooler, so around £270.

The CPUs I'm currently considering are:

i5-9600K
Ryzen 2700X
Ryzen 3600 / 3600X
Ryzen 3700X

Usage:

Productivity: heavy graphic design involving Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter with large and complex images (high resolution, lots of layers). Occasional video editing, but nothing that serious.

Gaming: 1440p @ 60Hz. Typically games such as Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Borderlands series, Mass Effect series, MMOs such as FFXIV and WoW. I only need a solid 60 fps due to monitor.

I'm most likely going to be combining this with 32GB DDR4, a GTX 1660 Super, 650W PSU and a motherboard in the sub £125 price range.

I'm not really that interested in overclocking and if I did it would be fairly mild. Mostly I just want something versatile that can handle everything I throw at it now out of the box and has a reasonable amount of future proofing as I won't want to upgrade again for 3-5 years.

Any advice is much appreciated, thanks in advance
 
Cern said:
I'm looking to build a new system as it's not viable to upgrade my existing rig for various reasons. I've always gone Intel in the past, but this time around I'm finding myself tempted by AMD and wondering what the best fit is for my usage (see below). My budget is fairly tight so I'm not really able to go above the cost of an i5-9600k + cooler, so around £270.

The CPUs I'm currently considering are:

i5-9600K
Ryzen 2700X
Ryzen 3600 / 3600X
Ryzen 3700X

Usage:

Productivity: heavy graphic design involving Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter with large and complex images (high resolution, lots of layers). Occasional video editing, but nothing that serious.

Gaming: 1440p @ 60Hz. Typically games such as Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Borderlands series, Mass Effect series, MMOs such as FFXIV and WoW. I only need a solid 60 fps due to monitor.

I'm most likely going to be combining this with 32GB DDR4, a GTX 1660 Super, 650W PSU and a motherboard in the sub £125 price range.

I'm not really that interested in overclocking and if I did it would be fairly mild. Mostly I just want something versatile that can handle everything I throw at it now out of the box and has a reasonable amount of future proofing as I won't want to upgrade again for 3-5 years.

Any advice is much appreciated, thanks in advance
Click to expand...

3700X with MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX is the fastest combination for what you need. You won't need to buy cooler also.
 
If you can I would save a bit more and get a better GPU. I think you'll be a bit disappointed with the 1660 unless you don't mind medium setting ?
 
koooowweeee said:
If you can I would save a bit more and get a better GPU. I think you'll be a bit disappointed with the 1660 unless you don't mind medium setting ?
Click to expand...

I realise the GTX 1660 Super is a bit of a compromise, but to upgrade to something like a RTX 2060 would mean cutting back on the CPU because of budget restrictions. So I guess it would be a question of 3700X + 1660 Super vs 2700X + 2060.
 
Do those applications use the cores/threads in a meaningful enough way if it is worth paying £100 more than the Ryzen 5 3600? It still offers pretty good performance in older less optimised stuff and has some multi-threaded grunt with 12 threads. Would give you a more balanced system. According to Puget, the 3600 seems to bench faster than the 2700X in Photoshop, even with the 2 extra cores.

You might want to check which of these you use a lot of too:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html
 
Are your old parts worth anything? If you can make atleast £60 then your going from gtx 1660 to an rtx 2060 etc.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I don't really want to go down the route of recycling old parts or buying used, for a number of reasons, so it'll be a new components build.

I think the 3700X is perhaps a bit of a stretch for me, especially if I'm considering going beyond a GTX 1660 Super.

So I'm currently leaning towards the 3600 or 3600X paired with the MSI B450 Tomahawk as suggested and then hopefully a RTX 2060

Is the 3600X worth the extra £30 over the 3600? Or is that money better invested into upgrading the GPU? I note the 3600 and 3600X have different stock coolers.
 
Cern said:
Is the 3600X worth the extra £30 over the 3600? Or is that money better invested into upgrading the GPU? I note the 3600 and 3600X have different stock coolers.
Click to expand...
Better spent on the Gpu.

OCUK have a new deal on rtx 2060 super for £300 so that 30 quid would move you from a 2060 to the super
 
Last edited:
Well, I'm close to placing my order and this is what my basket currently looks like:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £852.05 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​

I decided on stretching to the 3700X because I think 8 cores will future proof me better than spending extra on the GPU at this point in time (I'm happy with gaming at 1440p, 60Hz, High). The Asus RTX 2060 on sale for £299 is very tempting, but it's currently out of stock anyway.

Anyway, does the above basket look ok? Bear in mind I'm going to be running at stock or at most a mild overclock.
 
Gibbo said:
Hi there

Cracking deal for both online and in store:


ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card @ £299.99 inc VAT



ZT-T20610E-10M, Boost Clock: 1650MHz, Memory: 8192MB 14000MHz GDDR6, Cuda Cores: 2176, VR Ready, PhysX/CUDA Enabled, NVIDIA Turing, 12nm Process, Real-Time Ray Tracing, 5 Years Warranty



Only £299.99 inc VAT PLUS Shipping.

ORDER NOW



Shall go live Friday at 9am and end Monday at 9am unless they sell out, we have only 100 and this price is way below our replenishment cost as all prices are going up dramatically due to big shortages as factories have either not come back into operation since CNY or are at partial operating capacity because of Corona Virus. :(

Available online (plus shipping) and in store. :)
Click to expand...

This one goes live Friday 9am if you got your trigger finger ready!
 
Cern said:
Well, I'm close to placing my order and this is what my basket currently looks like:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £852.05 (includes shipping: £11.10)
​

I decided on stretching to the 3700X because I think 8 cores will future proof me better than spending extra on the GPU at this point in time (I'm happy with gaming at 1440p, 60Hz, High). The Asus RTX 2060 on sale for £299 is very tempting, but it's currently out of stock anyway.

Anyway, does the above basket look ok? Bear in mind I'm going to be running at stock or at most a mild overclock.
Click to expand...

your golden - You'd be suprised - i game @ 1440p 144hz with no issues - people seem to think ryzen is behind intel for gaming ITS NOT you may even find in some games minimums are better and or games such as CSGO it even outperforms intel. excellnt build but i'd get the 5700 over the 2060 no contest


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £319.99


wtf the 2060 super trades blows with the 5700 ok....​
 
faceman123 said:
your golden - You'd be suprised - i game @ 1440p 144hz with no issues - people seem to think ryzen is behind intel for gaming ITS NOT you may even find in some games minimums are better and or games such as CSGO it even outperforms intel. excellnt build but i'd get the 5700 over the 2060 no contest


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £319.99


wtf the 2060 super trades blows with the 5700 ok....​
Click to expand...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-43c-as.html or

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-1b9-gi.html
 
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