Rendering & Gaming Desktop.

[SubZer0]

Hey everyone,

I plan to order this PC for Rendering (Adobe Premiere Pro) and Gaming (Dota 2 / Starcraft etc).

Furthermore I also wanna have this shipped to Pakistan once it is delivered at my UK address because I am in Pakistan currently so in case anyone can suggest a good overseas shipping service provider that would be highly appreciated.

My budget is around £40 / month and this will cost me £41.98 / month.

This is my upgrade from an i3 2.4 GHz 8GB Ram Dell Laptop so am hoping this will suffice for another few years easily.

Any suggestions welcome granted they don't exceed my monthly budget limit.

Thanks

 

[steaky360]

Hi Subzero,

Just FYI if you click next from that order page you can format your order so its easy to copy/paste into the forums. Makes it much easier for folk to see what you've specified .

Just a note on the finance, its sometimes better to consider the total price for the build rather than a 'per month' price even if that's how you intend on paying for it. Just so you get a good feel for what you're buying (makes it easier for everyone else too), I think £40/month is approximately £1500 from checking the configurator this morning.

 

[steaky360]

Here's your spec (I think... hope I've not made any errors)


Case CORSAIR SPEC-04 MID TOWER GAMING CASE - BLACK/RED
Processor (CPU) AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight Core CPU (3.4GHz-3.8GHz/20MB CACHE/AM4) ()
Motherboard ASUS® PRIME X370-PRO (DDR4, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card 6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive 256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling Corsair H100i V2 Hydro 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 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB 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
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Price £1,504.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-pc/Zu4YZKtEBu/

 

[SubZer0]

Thank you for the tip and no there are no errors .
What do you reckon about the build spec? is it good for a pc that's around £1500 pounds or can I do better?

 

[ubuysa]

32GB of RAM is WAY overkill, for gaming you can probably get away with 8GB and 16GB is plenty. I understand that you're trying to 'futureproof' but unless you're a big virtual machine user or a 4k video renderer you'll struggle to use 16GB of RAM and the other 16GB will be wasted.

I'm assuming you have your own hard disk to put in there? 256GB isn't a great lot of storage these days (that SM961 is a great SSD though).

You do know that WiFi is not included in that spec?

 

[SubZer0]

32GB of RAM is WAY overkill, for gaming you can probably get away with 8GB and 16GB is plenty. I understand that you're trying to 'futureproof' but unless you're a big virtual machine user or a 4k video renderer you'll struggle to use 16GB of RAM and the other 16GB will be wasted.

I'm assuming you have your own hard disk to put in there? 256GB isn't a great lot of storage these days (that SM961 is a great SSD though).

You do know that WiFi is not included in that spec?

You're absolutely right about the overkill part however I've learned that having a little bit of extra umph in the ram department always pays off in the long haul.. meaning I won't have to think about it for a few years and that is some peace of mind I'd love to have.

Yes I have more than a few ssds with me hence going for this option. Always wanted to have an m.2 or m.3 drive so this way I'll kill two birds with one stone as pcs makes it mandatory for any pc you buy to have at least one hdd.

Wi-Fi won't be included sure but I'll just use the Ethernet for it I guess.

My question and concern if I'm honest was really if i can get anything better for my money. So far it doesn't seem so however if anyone can suggest a spec better than this one for the same amount of money I'm all ears.(eyes in this case)

 

[Drakodan]

Upping the CPU from a 1700X to a 2700X is less than £10 more I believe, and is therefore a no-brainer due to the higher clock speeds.

 

[Oussebon]

having a little bit of extra umph in the ram department always pays off in the long haul.. meaning I won't have to think about it for a few years and that is some peace of mind I'd love to have.

For gaming this is not true. There is very, very little difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM for gaming uses (often 0 difference). By the time games need 32gb RAM, you won't have any advantage to having bought it because the rest of the system will be obsolete and the bottleneck anyway.

If you think you might need it for rendering in Adobe Premiere Pro I suggest you make absolutely sure first. RAM is currently extremely expensive and you're robbing other parts of your system that definitely will improve performance in order to afford it.

Upping the CPU from a 1700X to a 2700X is less than £10 more I believe, and is therefore a no-brainer due to the higher clock speeds.

Absolutely agreed.

Also the X470 motherboard is about £10 less than the X370 one. So I'd probably suggest checking that out too.

 

[SubZer0]

Upping the CPU from a 1700X to a 2700X is less than £10 more I believe, and is therefore a no-brainer due to the higher clock speeds.

Great tip indeed. Thank you. Ordering a 2700x now.

 

[SubZer0]

For gaming this is not true. There is very, very little difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM for gaming uses (often 0 difference). By the time games need 32gb RAM, you won't have any advantage to having bought it because the rest of the system will be obsolete and the bottleneck anyway.

If you think you might need it for rendering in Adobe Premiere Pro I suggest you make absolutely sure first. RAM is currently extremely expensive and you're robbing other parts of your system that definitely will improve performance in order to afford it.

I would disagree, 8 GB and 16 GB of Ram makes a huge difference in gaming performance, however that being said you're right about the rendering part and most of my usage will be for that entirely.
Also thank you for pointing out the X470 being cheaper as I will be ordering that too instead of the X370 alongwith the 2700X.

My concern now is Ram compatibility.
but hopefully PCS will sort that out before sending me the system.

 

[Oussebon]

I would disagree, 8 GB and 16 GB of Ram makes a huge difference in gaming performance,

No.

See articles linked here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...-Hardware-FAQs&p=397286&viewfull=1#post397286
And anecdotally people I know who have tested it reported minimal differences in framerate, though did comment that alt-tabbing games was smoother with 16gb RAM over 8gb. Needless to say even this sins't because all 16gb RAM are required, simply that more than 8gb were what the system wanted. Point being, 16gb is robustly futureproof.

It's a ludicrous suggestion to argue 32gb RAM as being a sensible choice for gaming or gaming futureproofing. The approach that MOAR RAM BETTER 4 GAMING is on the same level as telling people to 'download more RAM' in all honesty.

Ofc some non-gaming uses do benefit from this.

PCS will make sure the RAM is compatible.

 

[ubuysa]

Decades ago (like in the last millennium) when RAM was about 50 pence per megabyte, PCs came with 128MB of RAM and even the simpler flavours of Windows back then really needed more than that. In those days 'buy more RAM' was very often the best solution to a slow PC (after the hard disk of course) and when specifying a new PC the adage 'buy as much RAM as you can afford' was very wise advice.

These days RAM is, what, 1 pence per megabyte? Consequently PCs come with at least 4GB and more usually 8GB installed, and for most but very demanding uses (and that includes modern games) you'll never need any more RAM for the life of the PC. For gamers and your average higher end users 16GB makes more sense and is plenty, for a very very few who do run highly memory intensive applications, 32GB or even 64GB is of great benefit.

The old adage of 'buy as much RAM as you can afford' is no longer good advice. The problem I think, is that it's become so ingrained over the years that it's a hard 'rule' to forget. It's up there with 'never let Windows Update install drivers', and 'always set the pagefile manually to 1.5 times installed RAM' those are other 'rules' we need to forget (mostly).

 

[SubZer0]

Thank you Oussebon and ubuysa both for your insights.

Most of the Ram I am getting is because of rendering concerns really.


After doing some extensive research and increasing my budget a bit this is what I have decided to go for.


Case
GAME MAX FALCON BLACK GAMING CASE (RGB LED)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.35GHz/20MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte X470 AORUS Ultra Gaming: ATX, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
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! ()
1st Hard Disk
NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W VS SERIES™ VS-650 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i V2 Hydro 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
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB 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
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
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 4 to 6 working days
Quantity
1

Price £1,759.00 including VAT and delivery

 

[Oussebon]

Looks good for rendering and will perform solidly for gaming too ofc. If going for an H100i cooler, I assume it's because you'll have the system under heavy load and want max cooling. So do consider the better thermal paste too.

 

[jerpers]

Looks good for rendering and will perform solidly for gaming too ofc. If going for an H100i cooler, I assume it's because you'll have the system under heavy load and want max cooling. So do consider the better thermal paste too.

Also, if noise is a consideration, bear in mind that the stock fans on that cooler are quite loud. I had to swap mine out after a day as they were so irritating.

 

[tom_gr7]

looks like a solid spec imo, but like Oussebon said get the better thermal paste.
I'd also consider getting PCS to Overclock it for you. Unless you plan on doing this yourself. It would probably help with your rendering work

 

[Oussebon]

Sadly PCS aren't yet offering Ryzen+ with an OC, only Ryzen 1st Gen. It's still going to be faster than 1st Gen with an OC though.

But yeah, I 100% agree - in fact I looked it up to check if they offered it when I posted before and was sad to see they did not Someone else commented on this fact on the forums today too.

 

[SubZer0]

Looks good for rendering and will perform solidly for gaming too ofc. If going for an H100i cooler, I assume it's because you'll have the system under heavy load and want max cooling. So do consider the better thermal paste too.

Done.

Also, if noise is a consideration, bear in mind that the stock fans on that cooler are quite loud. I had to swap mine out after a day as they were so irritating.

Don't really care much about system noise unless it becomes too much to bare, then I'll just goto my local pc parts shop and get some good corsair fans.

looks like a solid spec imo, but like Oussebon said get the better thermal paste.
I'd also consider getting PCS to Overclock it for you. Unless you plan on doing this yourself. It would probably help with your rendering work

Plan to Overclock it myself later on.