Is this a balanced system

hollies

Member
After much talk and deliberation I think i have settled on this spec to last me the next 6 years or so! Is it well balanced?

Thanks Rob


Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R6 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 Eight Core Processor i9-9900K (3.6GHz) 16MB Cache
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
6TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 256MB CACHE
2nd Storage Drive
6TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SAMSUNG 970 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW & SOFTWARE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i PRO Cooler w/ PCS Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
 

jerpers

Master
What are you using it for? Depending on use you can get a more balanced and better system for the money.

Also what is your budget? If gaming, what monitor have you got/are you getting?
 

polycrac

Rising Star
Hi Hollies,

What are you going to be using it for? Gaming? And what screen are you pairing it with?

My main queries with the build are:

1) that the RTX 2070 seems to be a sort of the worst of both worlds, when it comes to the new range - a lot of the expense without much of the grunt.
2) the pro drives are not much better than the regular ones for most users, but cost a fair bit more.
3) if it is just for gaming then I'd stick to 16Gb, 32 won't help futureproof it and if by some miracle you needed some more later you can always add extra.
4) you have MASSES of storage! Again, unless there is another (non-gaming) need for it, maybe start with 6Tb and add more later
5) the Pro M.2 is a lot more than the normal (Evo) one but the difference in speeds isn't massive, I'd go with the Evo, perhaps getting a larger size drive if the money is really burning a hole in your pocket, which reminds me...


What is your budget for the build and how much did this one cost when you configured it?

*edit - ninja'd!*
 

hollies

Member
"Hi Hollies,

What are you going to be using it for? Gaming? And what screen are you pairing it with?


What is your budget for the build and how much did this one cost when you configured it?"


Thanks jerpers and polycrac I'll answer both of you together.

Definitely no gaming apart from Spider Solitaire!

The main use will be hi res editing of very large images with Photoshop, Lightroom and other photo software. 4K Video editing and some music editing.

Currently have a Benq 27" (centre) and 2 x 24" Dell Ultras (L + R)

I want this machine to last me at least 6/7 years. It will be that long before I would consider any further upgrades.


The storage is needed for very large photobase, many videos and music files. I am currently well over 3 TB in the both 6tbs that i currently use in a PCS machine that is now 7 years old.

The cost of this spec was £2.6K



Rob
 
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Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
The RTX 2070 is £100+ more than a GTX 1070 ti and this is the kind of relative performance:
pic_disp.jpg pic_disp (1).jpg

Similar story in Premiere Pro: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...018-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2070-Performance-1265/

I suggest sticking with the 1070 ti. If you want to spend the £100 on something, get a 2nd or a larger SSD.

Likewise the Pro HDDs carry a hefty price premium, which I think would be better spent on a second SSD, for project files or as a scratch drive depending on your uses.

Maybe the 3200MHz RAM if they offer it as Photoshop can benefit from RAM frequency.

Are any of those monitors 4k? If not you may want to get a 4k monitor to view your material in native res.
 
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hollies

Member
Similar story in Premiere Pro: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...018-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2070-Performance-1265/

I suggest sticking with the 1070 ti. If you want to spend the £100 on something, get a 2nd or a larger SSD.

Likewise the Pro HDDs carry a hefty price premium, which I think would be better spent on a second SSD, for project files or as a scratch drive depending on your uses.

Maybe the 3200MHz RAM if they offer it as Photoshop can benefit from RAM frequency.

Are any of those monitors 4k? If not you may want to get a 4k monitor to view your material in native res.[/QUOTE]



Thanks Oussebon

Very informative.

Monitor is not 4k at the moment but is my next upgrade.

My thoughts are, rightly or wrongly..

I already have another 500 ssd for a scratch disk and I only ever put programming software on the main ssd so a larger one is not really necessary. (I perhaps should have said this in the original post)

Is the RTX 2070 not worth the £100 extra in the long run to keep it up there over the life span of the PC.

Likewise, the Barracuda Pros are only £60 each more. Is it not worth paying it in the long run?


Rob
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Is the RTX 2070 not worth the £100 extra in the long run to keep it up there over the life span of the PC.

Likewise, the Barracuda Pros are only £60 each more. Is it not worth paying it in the long run?
The performance difference between the 1070 ti and 2070 is slender, a few % or fraction of a % depending on the uses. Similarly the HDDs are just for storage, so any such speed gains as you might get from the Pro versions don't seem terribly important.

Versus saving £220 - e.g. for future upgrades.

I know you say you want to buy the PC and just keep it unaltered for ~7 years, but tech develops so fast you can't plan that kind of futureproofing with any certainty. It's not something that throwing money at really helps with.

What is nearly certain is that if you find the PC's performance inadequate within 7 years, it won't be a very slightly better GPU and slightly faster HDDs that would have made the difference. However, £220 saved would make the difference in letting you buy something that would matter (e.g. a future, more powerful GPU, with new hardware features that Adobe adopts; maybe an extra NVMe SSD; network storage to back up files). Sometimes the best futureproofing is to not spend money past the point of diminishing returns.

If you're 100% not going to upgrade the system then just save yourself £220 anyway because as I say the performance differences are so marginal especially for your uses that there's no real benefit anyway.

I already have another 500 ssd for a scratch disk
I've seen some workstation recommendations as saying 3 SSDs is ideal, 1 for OS programs, 1 for project files/libraries, 1 for scratch. Or similar for Premiere Pro:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/
So a 3rd SSD isn't necessarily a waste.

Maybe see how you get on with the new SSD and your old SSD. Nothing stops you adding a 3rd yourself down the line if desired.
 
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hollies

Member
Thanks again Oussebon

If I was trying to save money I can see your point entirely. However, that is not my main criteria and for the saving of only £200 it doesn't seem worth it. If there was some actual benefit from changing things, that would be different. Again, I understand the differences are marginal but they are real.

What I really want is a system that is well balanced and very capable of doing what i want it to do, without hesitation.

My current system has 16gb of Ram and is painfully slow in Lightroom at times which is why I have gone for 32gb and a much higher spec system.

The idea of a third SSD may be the way to go si I will look at that.


Rob
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
They will be barely perceptible if at all, and therefore not real. There's no hesitation about my comments - if a GTX 1070 ti sucks at any time an RTX 2070 would also suck. If an RTX 2070 doesn't suck, neither would as 1070 ti. Same with the HDDs.

I know showing people bar charts can be dangerous. But if the difference is 98.4 vs 98.8, for £100+, how on earth are you going to spot that difference. It's like with gaming builds where people spend £150 more on the Asus branded card because it gave 112 fps instead of 111 fps in 1 benchmark. As for the drives you'll get no performance advantage while using PS etc.

If you want real differences, buy a better GPU in the future with the money you save instead of buying placebo.

If you want to spend money because you have money and you want to spend money then sure, but you're kidding yourself and cheating yourself out of both money and performance by overspending now.

It's your cash and your right ofc. I can't stop you giving money to Seagate, Nvidia, and PCS for no gain to yourself. :)
 
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hollies

Member
They will be barely perceptible if at all, and therefore not real. There's no hesitation about my comments - if a GTX 1070 ti sucks at any time an RTX 2070 would also suck. If an RTX 2070 doesn't suck, neither would as 1070 ti. Same with the HDDs.

I know showing people bar charts can be dangerous. But if the difference is 98.4 vs 98.8, for £100+, how on earth are you going to spot that difference. It's like with gaming builds where people spend £150 more on the Asus branded card because it gave 112 fps instead of 111 fps in 1 benchmark. As for the drives you'll get no performance advantage while using PS etc.

If you want real differences, buy a better GPU in the future with the money you save instead of buying placebo.

If you want to spend money because you have money and you want to spend money then sure, but you're kidding yourself and cheating yourself out of both money and performance by overspending now.

It's your cash and your right ofc. I can't stop you giving money to Seagate, Nvidia, and PCS for no gain to yourself. :)



Thanks yet again. You put it so clearly it is very hard to argue against.

As I don't have the faintest idea what the difference is between 98.4 and 98.8, an RTX or a Ti or whatever the fps figures are for instance, it is just a matter of trying to go with what I perceive to be the better option.

That is why this Forum is so great.

Of course, I am aware that salesmen may try to build up a system unnecessarily but i have been the driving force in this and, after going through several configurations, I have just settled and what I think are the correct (better) components. The higher the number, it must be better!

For every argument there is a counter argument but as I don't know what that is, I will go with what you are saying.

I did actually think at one time of getting the best I can for around £1500 and then doing it again in about 3 years time. That way, I would be spending the same amount of money over a similar period. I quickly forgot about that though.


Is the rest of the system then, a decent enough system.


Rob
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
RTX is what Nvidia are now calling GTX, in honour of the 'RTX' features on their new family of GPUs, such as real time raytracing in games (well, game, only 1 game supports it so far) and a form of anti aliasing called DLSS based on some tensor cores added to the GPU. Tensor cores are most associated with deep learning and AI.

Otherwise it's functionally a GTX 1080 (which is barely more than a 1070 ti).

Nvidia have run some impressive examples of how their tensor cores can reconstruct photos. However, I can't see Photoshop making much use of that any time soon. And if it does eventually leverage that somehow, buying an expensive first gen product would likely not be as sound a buy as getting something one or two gens down the line when the tech has matured. i.e. works better. The performance hit vs image quality gains we've seen in Battlefield V for ray tracing suggest that whatever usage the RTX features end up having in the real world, we've got a long, long way to go.

Nvidia has apparently not sold RTX cards very well so far because of the RTX features being basically a bit useless at the moment. That and the price hikes over the old gen (which they can do due to no competition above GTX 1070/GTX 1080 level) have made these cards unattractive,

I did actually think at one time of getting the best I can for around £1500 and then doing it again in about 3 years time. That way, I would be spending the same amount of money over a similar period. I quickly forgot about that though.
That's actually not a bad idea. Especially if you don't mind doing DIY upgrades. In 3 years time we'll have PCIe 4.0 maybe even 5.0 on motherboards, DDR5 RAM, and maybe some actual competition in high end GPUs. We're expecting PCIe 4.0 next year actually. And maybe photoshop will also use more CPU cores more efficiently and get more gains from better GPUs, who knows...
 
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polycrac

Rising Star
I did actually think at one time of getting the best I can for around £1500 and then doing it again in about 3 years time. That way, I would be spending the same amount of money over a similar period.


Rob

Seconded. This is a good plan, performance gains from three years of progress are likely to be greater than investing the extra cash now.
 

hollies

Member
Seconded. This is a good plan, performance gains from three years of progress are likely to be greater than investing the extra cash now.

Ok, so going from the top to something around £1500-£1600 or so. What would be the ideal spec for a photo pc? Where would the bulk of the money need to be spent, forgetting the HDD's as I can add them later if needed and i will have a spare 500gb SSD for a scratch disk. (I already have 2 x 6tb HDDs that I can just move into the new machine.)

Appreciate your thoughts.

Rob
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
CPU, RAM, GPU. Spending high, but not excessively, on each. So a 9700k, 32gb RAM if you need that, and you can still squeeze a 1070 ti in there more or less. You're still getting the overwhelming majority of the performance you have had you got a 9900k and RTX 2070, they're just a lot cheaper.

You're mostly sorted for storage.

Any CPU cooler should do as you're not overclocking. Ideally a TXm PSU. Whatever case that's not too cheap.


Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
---Get Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 & More w/ select Intel CPUs!
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
---Get an AMP500 Gaming Mousemat w/ select GIGABYTE Motherboards!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
---FREE Geforce Fortnite bundle w/ select GTX cards
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Storage Drive
NOT REQUIRED
1[SUP]st[/SUP] M.2 SSD Drive
250GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3000MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 100 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price £1,642.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z370-pc/dAQY9wAjuu/


A cheaper motherboard will do if you don't need USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C. Since that hasn't really taken off yet, there's not much that makes use of it, you could maybe leave that feature for your upgrade in a few years time when you'll probably replace the CPU, mobo, and RAM (if DDR5's out by then). The Z370-P 2 slices £70 off (it has 2 M.2 slots and 4 Sata ports)
 

hollies

Member
CPU, RAM, GPU. Spending high, but not excessively, on each. So a 9700k, 32gb RAM if you need that, and you can still squeeze a 1070 ti in there more or less. You're still getting the overwhelming majority of the performance you have had you got a 9900k and RTX 2070, they're just a lot cheaper.

You're mostly sorted for storage.

Any CPU cooler should do as you're not overclocking. Ideally a TXm PSU. Whatever case that's not too cheap.


A cheaper motherboard will do if you don't need USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C. Since that hasn't really taken off yet, there's not much that makes use of it, you could maybe leave that feature for your upgrade in a few years time when you'll probably replace the CPU, mobo, and RAM (if DDR5's out by then). The Z370-P 2 slices £70 off (it has 2 M.2 slots and 4 Sata ports)


Brilliant. Many thanks Oussebon

I think that's the way I will go for now.

I'll be back when it's time to upgrade!
 
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