New PC
retiretomaui
Posts: 392
Hey all.
I'm in need of a new PC, so I'm wondering if the following specs would work for medium gaming/CAD/3D printing/moderate rendering. The old HP Envy seems to be having issues after four years... I wuld likely be getting an HP Obelisk/Omen PC.
AMD 2700.
32 GB Hyper X RAM.
8 GB 1080 or 2080 depending upon how the Christmas sales and rebates go.
512 GB SSD.
2 X 3TB 7200 SATA HDs.
The lack of an internal optical drive bugs me, as well as the lack of liquid cooling which HP's lesser ranked 1800X systems features, but I can live with it. I guess.
Anyway, what are your thoughts?
Many thanks,
Bob
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Comments
Forgot to say, many thanks for any input! The merlot is working its magic!
Bob
Don't buy prebuilts!
You don't need liquid cooling for the R7 2700 unless you plan to go crazy overclocking. Considering you are seriously considering buy an HP prebuilt I cannot believe you'd ever OC high enough to need water cooling without blowing up the system, not to be insulting just an honest assessment.
You really don't need to spend the extra mony on 7200 rpm HDD's if you also have a decent sized SSD. You'd be better off either buying a 1Tb SSD or a bigger 5400 rpm HDD.
HP includes a 500 Watt 80+Bronze PSU which is, IMNSHO, completely inadequte for the system as specced.
For $2542 (the 2080 version since it is highly unlikely there are any 1080's left in the retail stream) you can get this:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QkTYq4 (actually at the time I put this together it was $2554.74 so if $12 makes a difference at that price level...) and it gets you a 2080ti, a 1Tb SSD and a real PSU.
You can put it together with a philips screwdriver and some patience after watching a youtube video or two.
I get airline miles and an extended warranty by buying direct. Maui calls... And, I like extra storage given the CAD work that I do. As extra info, I don't need overclocking, but the point was that HP offers liquid cooling on their 1700/1800 systems but not on their putatively hotter runner 2700 systems. Odd that...
If that is sufficient to let you get ripped off that badly so be it. Just be aware that PSU is dangerously stressed by the system as specced. It likely will not last.
As to the extra HDD's Getting another 4 Gb WD blue is pretty trivial. I could mess about with the system I specced a little to get one in at the same price, You'd get a lower quality motherboard and lower speed RAM but we're talking about $100 in a $2500 system.
Why is HP offering watercooling in the older HW? Why does HP do anything in their prebuilts? Who knows. They build crap and sell it to people who don't know any better. BTW the 2700 isn't hotter than the 1700. Both have a rated TDP of 65 W and come with the same cooler.
Actually, Cooler Master says that this setup with a 1080 needs about 404 watts, and I added some extra USB devices and stuff to simulate an "added" or evolved configuration you push it to around 454 watts under load. So, the 500 watt power supply being spec'd by HP appears adequate, and it can be swapped out in the future for a reasonable price, if necessary. I've gotten similar results from other configurators, with a 2080 being necessary to put the stock power supply in potential trouble. That gives us a load wattage of 442 and a recommended wattage of 492. So again, the power supply appears to be adequate for the task, especially if I were to go with a 1080, which I likely would given the quality issues with the 2080 currently, let alone the price.
I appreciate your passion for building computers, really, and I don't mean to argue with you. Some of us just don't have the money, the time, nor the experience to build our own rigs. It isn't an option, and if you knew my work schedule you'd understand why! If you are able to, awesome. Personally, I'd go for something from Origin PC or the like if I could, but I don't have four or five grand lying around. I've been buying prebuilts since the early 1990s, the first being a 386SX 25 (how's that for ancient?) and rarely ever had a problem, using them for years until time passed them by. My original question was whether the parts I had originally listed were adequate for light gaming, moderate rendering, CAD and 3D printing. I think they are, but I wanted the forum's views.
Thank you again,
Bob
It is always good to have a little overhead. Rendering can take everything you throw at it, and the best upgrades can come from adding a second GPU to the machine. As specced, you cannot do that. You motherboard cannot use more than one GPU, so multi-GPU is out of the question.
Another big issue I see is the front of the case totally covered by plastic. So to draw in air, the fans up front must pull air from the opening on the sides up front. This is not very efficient at all, and absolutely will cause temps in the case to rise a lot higher than otherwise. Many prebuilt cases are like this as they value looks over airflow. If you can buy a case that has an all mesh front you will get much greater airflow. I have a video on the H500 case by Cooler Master. The reason I am linking this is because the case comes with the option of going all mesh up front or using a cover. The differences in thermals is dramatic, and because you are rendering, the thermals are a big deal. Your machine will be running full 100% for as long as the render is going. Few other programs do this. Elevated heat over the long term will have an impact. You may find your GPU is throttling because it gets too warm after long renders.
If you really wish to continue, I would drop the hard drive "upgrades" and buy these yourself. The 3TB hard drive is $169 increase over the 1TB. That is $169 for 2 more TB, which is obscene. You buy 2nd and 3rd hard drives yourself and save a lot.
So basically the computer you build here will have very little room for upgrades in the future, in spite of HP claiming it does. More powerful GPUs may need bigger power supplies. You cannot upgrade beyond 32GB RAM, and so on. The motherboard looks very cheap, a $50 motherboard in a $2000 PC is not wise. You can do it, but as has been said, you can do so much better. I looked up the motherboard, and it really is bottom of the barrel. Seriously, it is BAD. In fact, it only has 2 SATA ports! So you can only use 2 internal drives and nothing else. It does have 2 M.2 ports, but that is not much of a saving grace.
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06126174
If you have a Microcenter near by, look them up. Or ask a local PC builder for an estimate. If you can get a better case and motherboard with the rest of these specs that would be great.
A PSU is most efficient at 50% of its rated maximum load. Never ever run one at 90%+ of its rated load full time. HP doesn't care abou how long the rig lasts. I do.
But why should you listen to someone who has no financial stake in selling you another rig as soon as possible? I do recommend you continue listening to the company infamous for selling PC's with nonstandard components that lock people into not being able to upgrade and that does have a vested interest in selling you another system as soon as possible.
Anyone can build a PC. You've been convinced you can't. It takes a couple of hours and a philips screwdriver. Even if you absolutely won't, look on craigslist or some other local resource and find some local builder, There are lots of us around, who will build the system for you for a small fee, I charge $100 an hour if you supply the parts. If you can't swing 2700 drop the 2080 to a 1080, if you can find one and that should work fine. Just don't let HP convince that they're your only option.
To add to the others giving you good advice about PSU's:
do not trust PSU calculators, at least not so much as to feel safe with less than 100watts of headroom. If you do a bit of googling around tech forums, you will read plenty of people giving the same advice about power supplies. do not skimp on them. You really do need a safety barrier. A bad PSU is perfectly capable of taking out pretty much your entire system if it fails. The PSU in your hp product is listed as a Bronze rated unit, which is the lowest rating for PSU efficiency, and i did not see a brand listed.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/psu-buying-guide,2916-5.html
Have a look at that page, and the other pages in that guide, it explains alot about power supplies and how important they are. It also has some examples of PSU failures.
I have a little story about my last PC build gave me a bit of a headache - Depending on your country, and how power is delivered through the electrical circuits in your house, i believe it can affect the maximum output of the PSU. I am no electrician so i am not going to try and explain that any further than it comes down to whether your electrical circuits deliver AC or DC currant and how many Amps it is delivered at, but i learned this when i built my current PC. With 3x Titans, water cooling, 6 hard drives and an OC CPU, a 1200w PSU was borderline for me.
So to give myself more peace of mind, i went with a 1500w PSU. Little did i know that it would come with a different power plug that does not fit into the normal power outlets found in houses in Australia - basically the normal plugs here are 230v DC 10amp plugs. The PSU came with a 15amp plug which is bigger. So i did a bunch of research on it, and found that the PSU will only draw 15amps of current on AC power, and that australian households are all on 230v DC power and the input specs on the PSU meant it could never draw more than 10amps on 230v DC power. I ran that by a relative of mine who is an electrician and he confirmed it was safe to use in my house with a plug adapter, but it also led me to believe that while it will never draw more than 10amps of currant, it will also never reach its maximum 1500w power output, or it would affect the PSU performance in some way. Someone more electrical saavy than me may be able to confirm or refute that.
That may have no bearing on your situation given your power requirements are much lower than mine, but it does show that the power going in can be as important as power coming out.
I thought i was aware and safe with power supplies before that little drama, but now i am even more so.
My advice to you retiretomaui would be to bump up your PSU to something a bit more than 500w, and with a better efficiency rating.
Edit - Should just add that i agree with the poster above me regarding HP. I have had some dealings with them through my work, and i will not sing them any praises.
Ok. 80+, and the various sub types bronze, gold etc., are certifications of the efficiency of the PSU. they are not a quality certification except insofar in that it takes a certain quality of components to deliver that quality of efficiency.
80+ means a power supply is at least 80% efficient at 20% load, 50% load, and 100% load. That means that the PSU might always waste 20% of the power it draws from the wall as heat no matter what load it is under.
80+ bronze is at least 82% at 20% load, 85% at 50% load and 82% at 100% load
80+ Silver is 85% at 20%, 88% at 50% and 85% at 100%
80+ Gold is 87% at 20%, 90% at 50% and 87% at 100%
80+ Platinum is 90% at 20%, 92% at 50% and 89% at 100%
80+ Titanium is 92% at 20%, 94% at 50% and 90% at 100%
These figures are for 115 V AC supply, IOW US wall current) The figures are slightly different for different wall currents.
So as you can see if you are going to be running you PC a lot under a significant load, i.e. rendering you want the PSU to as highly rated as possible and you want it to be as close to 50% of it rated maximum rated wattage as possible. This will result in you using less power in the long run and this will lower your overall operating cost and the price differences in these PSU is trivial.
I may someday build my own PC, exclusively for DAZ Studio. Money is tight, so I want to be wise and informed. I followed most of this discussion without difficulty. I watched the video review of the Coolermaster H500. The case looks appealing. However I am a bit concerned that you would face limitations concerning a choice of a GPU. He said you need a liquid-cooled GPU?! I am afraid to use liquid-cooling because I saw some YouTube videos showing some real disasters with liquid cooling.
I have several questions about building a PC around the H500 case. Let's assume I went with an AMD CPU. What motherboards would work best? Could someone suggest a list of what would go together? (I can't think of the proper words right now.) I vaguely understand about the PSU. Could someone suggest a good PSU for such a build? I'm not sure when I could find the money for such a project, but it helps to have a goal to work toward.
He was discussing using a liquid cooled GPU if you went with a vertically mounted GPU. That is an unfortunate trend in cases you can safely ignore. If you mount the GPU directly to the motherboard a standard aircooled card will be fine.
As to a good build in the H500 case, give me a price point, that is the usual limiting factor. The $2500 build I posted up thread is in the H500 for instance. I can just as easily but together a much less expensive build in the same case. I could also probably put together a HEDT build that could top $5k, but at that point I'd probably argue you'd be better off in a more expensive case. The choice of PSU is reliant on the total draw of the rest of the system. I generally aim, as I explained above, to hit the 50% efficiency point which also give the user room to upgrade and add components in the future without worrying overmuch about the PSU. I also usually aim for a modular or semi modular PSU, this refers to how the cables are attached to the PSU, so that there aren't lots of excess unneeded cables in the case but if upgrading is desired it is possible.
As to the best motherboard for the Ryzen CPU's? The chipsets you want are B450 or X470. Most of the manufacturers are pretty good so it would be hard to go wrong with any of them. I prefer ATX form factor since it provides plenty of room for expansion and is the easiest to assemble. I strongly dislike mATX and Micro Itx for first time builders or for builds that may need to be expanded. eATX may be an option if you have the money and use something like PCPartpicker to stear clear of any incompatibilities but then you would likely be looking for a full tower case not the H500 case.
kenshaw011267 I'll just go back and take a closer look at your suggested build above. I'm mainly looking to see which parts go together. I'm sorry, I'm feeling a bit embarassed. The $2500 price tag is too high for me. But even $1,000 might be too much.
$1k would be tough unless you have most of the components already. Even a 6 Gb 1060, which IMO is barely adequate for iRay rendering is $200. With the current state of RAM prices and other component costs that doesn't leave a lot of room to stay under $1k.
Here's the cheapest reasonable build I could put together:
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/kbs666/saved/#view=LxbxGX
That's $820 without a keyboard, mpuse or monitor. I'm assuming you have those at least. It uses last year's CPU rather than this year's but those were corners i had to cut to save some money. No SSD and only a 1060.
Ermm.
Why are you spending so much on an HP prebuild?
It is pretty crap.
Yeah, vertical mounting a GPU is a weird fad, it exists purely to show off your GPU. But to do so means the card will cool much less effectively, which is why they recommended liquid cooling for that particular setup. It is rather silly and unnecessary, and you lose the option to install multiple GPUs.
I was looking up ibuypower and they don't use quite as crappy motherboards and power supplies. They have a model that has a Turing 2080 and i7-9700k for $2000. The power supply is a gold rated 650 Watt model, and the motherboard has 4 slots for RAM. So it can go up to 64GB, double what the HP can. It has room for 2 GPUs, so you can buy a second GPU later and potentially double your render speeds. It also has 6 SATA ports for plenty of hard drives and a M.2 port. It doesn't look so bad. The one concern I have is the case is all tempered glass, even the front. As I described earlier covering the front this way is not the best idea for cooling. It also has a blower style cooler on the GPU, and some other 2080's are clocked faster. Still, over all it is vastly superior to the HP build, at least ibp tells you exactly what parts are going in it, and you can always customize everything. For what is inside, it is not such a terrible price. The prices they list do not seem to be inflated. (Again, the full part list is on the page so you can research every piece that goes in it and compare for yourself.)
iBuypower used to be the bottom of the barrel as far as prebuilt systems came. But they seem to have significantly upped their game. Those are off the shelf retail components, except memory which they are cagey about. The cases tend to be older or second tier as well as mostly those aimed at the "doesn't know any better crowd" but that does seem to be the market they're targeting overall.
You could do a lot worse than that if you absolutely have to buy prebuilt. Just get that front panel off so the case can breathe. You might even investigate all the various case options for one where the front panel breathes better, there are several with visible fans maybe one of those isn't all closed off.
If you can afford Falcon I highly recommend them, They build servers for google and are extremely supportive for systems they build. Their service is excellent. When my system messed up they paid to have it shipped back, owned up to a mistake, and rebuilt (not repaired) a brand new system and shipped it back.
There are several boutique, for lack of a better term, prebuilt system manufacturers out there, but they come at a significant price premium. Falcon and Origin both have excellent reputations but the prices are sky high for what you get. You're paying at least 25% over the actual cost of the system for that brand name and that CS, which in all likelihood you'll never need.
That's true.. but, what happens if you power it on and it doesn't post.. or throws a code.. or whatever. Installing all the OS and the like is another part of PC building that can be a bit of a nightmare too. In theory, yea it's quite straightforward, but...
I'm not looking to dissuade anyone building their own PC, but it can be potentially be really frustrating and I can see the appeal of just getting one, built.. which 'just works'. If it doesn't.. you just send it back.. simple.
90 or 95% of the time if when you turn it on nothing happens or it doesn't post or it throws a code the problem is a loose connection or a card or the memory isn't seated all the way. So you turn the power off and go through everything and check all the connections. It happens to everyone. It happens to me myabe 1 build in 10. The rest of the time you have a legit bad component which is a nuisance but you RMA it and generally speaking the manufacturer sends you a new one straight away. Keep in mind that I build PC's as a side gig and do some at my "real" job and in hundreds of PC's I've had, I think, 2 instances of bad hardware new out of the box. Honestly i think the biggest headaches of PC building are the front panel connectors and getting the RAM in the right slots the motherboard manufacturers seem to go to great pains to make their manuals as opaque as possible But even that is not insurmountable problems.
Installing the OS is pretty easy. Just follow the prompts. You do need to get a thumb drive and go online from another computer and get the Win 10 installer but these days that's not really a problem. If you are careful buying motherboards you'll even get a thumb drive with the drivers for the MoBo rather than needing to go online and get them.
I believe Novica recently purchased a new pc - check on the thread and ask some questions there.
Thanks for your effort. Obviously, I need to put off any such purchases until I've gathered sufficient funds.
Right - but the point was someone who is new to building PC's.
The same way it's easy for a mechanic to explain to me its easy to change the alternator in my car.. its just 4 bolts and a belt.. easy when you know how! However if you're not experienced any/all of the above can be a minefield.. that was my point, if the OP isn't comfortable with having a go, or happy to get stuck in looking up stuff it you run into a problem then pre-built PC's are far less hassle.
I always have told people to watch one of the very good YT videos on building a PC. they all cover that subject. It isn't a minefield.
If you don't have time to build one yourself, call your local computer stores (Not Best Buy) and have one of them build it. You can order all the exact parts you want from your favorite (Newegg / B&H) store. Have them shipped to you or the computer shop you chose. You will save money and won't get a bloated (HP crap software) computer. Anything goes wrong, you take it to your local store. Rather than shipping it back and waiting weeks.
Thank you Mr. Tomalin, that's exactly the idea. You put it very well, better than I. There is something else that the non-prebuilt folks aren't understanding: I get a lot of extras for buying a prebuilt with a certain credit card combination, everything from airline miles to free extended warranties; if I'd bought from Dell or HP a few months ago using my United card I'd have earned the equivalent of a one way coach ticket to Hawaii plus a nearly free rental car, and yes, as I said earlier, "Maui calls." Buying a prebuilt through certain airline and credit card portals can often net a nice discount on the rig, too, sometimes up to 20% off. In many cases, I can get more dollarwise overall by buying a prebuilt than if I did it myself. As I said in an earlier post, I've been buying prebuilts since the early '90s with nary a problem. The one time I did buy from a local PC builder he went out of business a year later, so there went my local service and support. On the other hand, I rather doubt that HP, Dell/Alienware, or Lenovo will go under anytime soon. Their rigs may not be perfect, but they get the job done for a decent price point (with the right financial research and incentives, and I'm an Economics teacher so I know how to bleed the system for every last shiny penny. Oh, do I ever).
I actually do respect the folks who can build there own systems. I do not mean to denigrate their opinions. Its just that building my own isn't an option right now for a variety of reasons, mainly time. I work two jobs, a regular job teaching 8 to 10 hours a day, and then often a weekend job doing SATs and the like. In between, I make odd monies doing hobbyist CAD work. I work full time in the summer in an extension program with everyone from kids right out of the slammer to gangbangers to Olympic trials kids making up credits because training gets in the way of school. Seriously, we run the gamut. Its a wonderful source of summer income when we aren't pulling a regular paycheck. I also still must do 1 to 2 hours of physical therapy and working out every day due to recovering from broken legs from several years ago. Sorry for the sob story, but as a result the one I do not possess a lot of is TIME. I just don't. That's where a prebuilt comes in. I just hope that the folks who look down their noses at prebuilts and scorn those who buy them understand that everyone's circumstances are different, and none of us has a perfectly smooth ride.
Thank you to everyone who offered a constructive opinion on the Ryzen specs I posted in my original post. I may or may not go with it. I'm still deliberating.
Bob
I give up. After how many years of HP ripping people off they still convince people to buy their junk somehow. i get businesses buying from them but individuals it just makes no sense at all.
At least buy from a prebuilt SI with a better reputation. If an HP system goes bad you've got literally no option but HP for repairs or service. No repair shop will touch them because they use nonstandard components. That means if you're in a time crunch you're screwed. If you go to iBuyPower or even Dell you'll get a PC with standard components and if something goes bad you can take it to the local shop if you need it fixed faster than shipping it back and forth to HP.
I know I'm a day late, dollar short and all that. I wouldn't worry about the optical drive. A lot of the best systems nowadays will come without one. If you need one, you can buy whatever type of drive you need. It's easy to install by yourself or, if you don't feel confident, chances are you have a friend/family member who will do it for free. It's that easy. And if the case doesn't have room/SATA ports for one, you can get a USB external.
So don't base your buying decision on whether it has an optical drive. Chances are if you actually need one, then you need a specific type (DVD, Blu-ray, Rewritable, Dual layer, etc) so it's probably best to buy it aftermarket.
If you like prebuilts, go for it. At the end of the day, you need to be using the computer you are happiest with and that you feel the best about. The optical drive is like getting a car with whitewall tires (since we all love a good car analogy), almost no manufacturer will offer them, but they are still a thing, so it's best to buy them aftermarket.
Good luck and happy shopping.
Many thanks. There are some nice Alienwares on sale at Costco currently with 8700s and 1080TIs that I'm considering, as well .