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AMD has made great strides with Ryzen. Intel is still a bit better for gaming, but Ryzen is becoming quite regrded for content creation, which seems to be up your alley. You can get more cores for streaming/creation. You could easily run a render and still stream. Not to mention more cores means faster rendering when dropping to CPU. Also, testing has shown that if you run multiple GPUs, having more CPU cores run Iray faster for some reason, even when the CPU is not actively rendering. For single GPU the CPU does not really matter, but it does make a difference for multiGPU. There are lots of lanes for extra stuff to hook up. And better still, AMD has promised to support the same socket for a while, meaning you can upgrade down the road instead of being stuck on a dead end socket. You might not get all the features (like the upcoming chips just announced support PCIe 4), but they will work on the current mobo. That is a big deal to me, and the price of their mid tier range is unbeatable.
See what you could do is build yourself a base for a system to upgrade later. For less than $2000 you can build quite a bit if you go AMD. You could get a 1080ti now, and then in 2 years buy whatever is out then and add it to the 1080ti so they run together, rather than replacing the 1080ti. (Unless you go real crazy and buy several future GPUs.)
In the spring AMD will be shipping new CPUs that support PCIe 4. I wonder how much of an impact that will be on this type of rendering. Especially with multipleGPU (that support 4.0).
I plan on going AMD whenever I build again.
I'll stick with my original comment, "not impressed."
... I will add though: and getting less impressed as info appears.
but still better than an intel i7 4790 with 16gig ram and on onboard gpu intel 4600
You're really putting me in a tough spot. In order to stream effectively on Intel you pretty much have to go with the i7. To get a lot of USB ports required going to a fairly expensive MoBo. To get the whole system under $2k required some compromises and I think you may regret not going with an SSD, load times of Win 10 from a HDD are terrible. I think it does not compare at all favorably to the ryzen rig I specced out upthread which was cheaper by a little.
But here it is:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KW9pRJ
I could not get all the parts from a single supplier although most components can be gotten from either Amazon or Newegg. If you go with the lowest price supplier overall it comes out to $1862.63 as of right now including some sales and rebates.
...be careful with Newegg though as they also handle a number of third party vendors, a few of which are in Asia and thus will involve long shipping times. I always check just the "Newegg" box in the Sellers menu on the sidebar, as well as "new" under Condition ("Refurbished" means "used" and or rebuilt/cleaned). Never had a component arrive "DOA" or one that failed after a short while when I checked those two boxes.
IIRC PCPartPicker strictly means NewEgg and Amazon when they list NewEgg andAmazon when they list either site as a supplier, both allow third party sellers. I cannot ever recall being directed to a part being sold by a thrid party on either site but I may have simply forgotten.
Also I got an email from PCPartPicker saying the GPU i picked is now listed as out of stock on NewEgg. After some searching it looks like there are no 1080ti's listed at what I'd consider a reasonable price. If you want to build this system you should go on Amazon right away and order the cheapest 1080ti you can find.
Thanks everyone for the good commentary and assistance. Especially @Kkenshaw for Specs and Outriders GPU work and info.
I might do as suggested above and just go grab a 1080ti now and wait on a pc a couple of months. This would open up grabbing a bargain over the holidays and adding the 1080ti.
HP is now offering the new 2080 for same price as 1080ti and is running a 3 day sale. With $2065 pricetag so things are moving lower in price. Decent power supply and intel i7-8700.
I think I will look more into the information about Ryzen. I know many here are very happy with a Ryzen/Nvidia combo.
I tend not to pay "extra" for future proofing as my disability and life seems to make that a bad option the few times I tried that in the past. I have had better luck buying a bit less of a PC and then snagging the new stuff a couple years ahead. I would have beat the microcoin mining and had a new system last Fall with the 1080ti, but I ended up in rehab for 5 months learning to walk again after a strange illness. (not even my main physical disability) The mining spree kinda messed up things for lots of folks.
There is somewhat of a chance that iRay will lose support and DAZ will end up with other engines, so being able to grab a differnt system better suited to the new tech in a couple of years works for me know.
I still have not heard about actual availability for the Walmart DTW3 either.
Is there much difference in 1080ti "quality/vendors"?
Nvidio makes all the actual GPU's. The aftermarket companies just make the circuit boards and the coolers. All the brands are pretty well thought of though so it would be hard to go wrong with any of the brands that do business in the US. So there can be substantial differences in performance between different ones but fundamentally a 1080ti is a 1080ti as long as you're not pushing them in gaming or the like. For rendering they're all pretty much the same. I'd recommend, just as a matter of how cases exhaust, to go with the cards that have multiple fans over the ones that are listed as Founder's Edition and have one fan and are sometimes also marked as blower style cards. They strictly exhaust their heat out the back of the card which is less efficient.
If you get a 1080ti you might have a great deal of luck waiting till Cyber Monday to pick up the rest. Amazon and the other eTailers tend to push computer components pretty hard then. RAM and SSD prices should continue to come down as well just due to ongoing market forces. Unfortunately the silly tariff crap might drive up other prices as the brands may run out of stocks they imported before the tariffs took effect.
...some cards are optimised (overclocked) out of the box for increased gaming performance and those usually have a higher cost. As I don't game, a reference card is good enough for my needs (I don't overclock anything as it means higher power consumption and more heat produced thus forcing fans to run at a high RPM which increases wear on moving parts, or require the use of water cooling to keep CPU/GPU temps manageable, I wouldn't recommend overclocking a single fan reference/blower card unless you have a waterblock for it).
There are some card vendors which have occasional quality issues and some that are rock solid. EGVA is always a good choice as are MSI, and Zotac.
It just so happens I watched a video from GN coving this topic a little while back. The answer is yes and no. Some cards will be overclocked out of the box, which for Iray might shave a little time on a long render. Some cards have better coolers, which while intended for overclocking can also effect temps in general. Considering how hard Iray pushes a GPU to 100% for possibly hours on end, having a decent cooler is probably a good idea. And then you have board quality. In this video you'll see Steve talking about the quality of other components on the board.
In general you will get the advertised clock speeds, so most cards should perform as specced. But the little things can make a difference, and Steve points out a couple of silly coolers that actually are not so goo inspite of their large size.
Personally I went with EVGA SC2, used, because I found a great deal at just over $500. The card is good enough and at that price was too good a value to pass. Cards have jumped in price since then, and it hasn't been that long! (I bought during the Turing launch when people were getting rid of 1080tis.) Though used it still has 2 years of warranty left, EVGA will allow warrantees to transfer. (I verified this.) Some others board makers will honor warrantees on second hand as well. Also, if people are concerned about overclocking or mining that may void warrantees, it doesn't. When asked about the subject, EVGA flatly said they will honor the warrantee regardless of how the card was used.
Okay so I will watch the video and happy to see vendor names you all ahve selectesd as ones I was looking at. And I have no intention of overclocking anything!
New question... So CPUs... Cores and Threads How this applies to NON-GPU Rendering and me wanting to stream, record, render and do graphics all at one time! Usually NOT more than 2 but for sure several times a week 3 or 4 major things at once. So I realize that AMD Ryzen is stable and Intel has certain i5s that seem better than some i7s for cores but then certain other numbers and threads are less.
So I am lacking in this cores vs threads area of knowledge. Any help would be appreciated.
I wouldn't buy a reference edition for heavy use. Rendering IMO qualifies as heavy use. Those blower style coolers simply don't move much air and the way they vent is terribly inefficient. Even Nvidia went away from that design with their 20xx founders edition which has a more standard multi fan cooler.
Actually don't knock blower style coolers too much. If you run multipleGPU the blower style can actually be better. With dual/triple fan coolers that air just gets shoved around the case and can warm others parts. If you have 2 GPUs then you have one GPU almost certainly pushing air near or on top of the one next to it. I used to have a blower 670 and that card stayed cool enough. It never once breached 70C and generally hovered in the mid 60's. That's pretty decent for air. When I added a 970 to this rig, the 670 still maintained that temp. The 970 is a Gamer Edition MSI with that very familiar dual fan many MSI cards have. So I had a 670+970 for a while. When I got my 1080ti I removed the 670 and run 1080ti+970. I have noticed temps are slightly higher by a couple degrees, so I believe this is due to the 1080ti blowing its warm air around the case instead of ejecting it like the 670 did. The 1080ti does draw more power, but it is not that dramatic. The 670 being fairly old used a fair bit of power itself. Even so I don't think I'd want a Founder's 1080ti since it they are slower (I do play games so having that little extra is nice.)
However it is true that blower style alone can be warmer depending on the setup. The Pascal Founder's cards are generally the worst performers in every regard and nearly every 3rd party vender does a better job cooling at cooling over the Founder's. I want to point out the Founder's is not the only blower available. Gigabyte has a "Turbo" blower that performs better than the Founder's. But I bet you will hear the Turbo, blowers can be louder.
I don't overclock, either. But the card I have is overclocked from the factory and I keep that. The Pascal cards overclock extremely well, so there can be a noticeable difference between cards that have a factory OC vs the Founder's that do not. And a user can push performance even higher. Many 3rd party cards are clocked a lot higher than the Founder's.
I can see this small gain by comparing my SY bench to others. There was a user that posted times for two 1080tis that are both Founder's. They also ran the test with one. My card is about 10 seconds faster in this same test, which is an 8% gain just with a factory OC. The other user has a newer CPU, which also goes to show how little CPU matters for rendering. Maybe some of this is within margin of error, but about 5-8% sounds reasonable to me. If you calculate this, 8% off a 3 hour render will save you 24 minutes. So there is a noticeable benefit using a good card that has a good OC. I would NOT buy a Founder's card.
...depends also on the airflow in your case, The case I have has a tremendous amount with three exhaust fans (two 140mm on top). All intake fans have washable micro screen filters as well to minimise dust contamination.
Still looking for CPU core/thread info, but thanks for clarifying reference, founders, factory OC and blower info for video cards. In the past week 1080TI cards are all but gone as the 2080 are too expensive for the small gain. Twice now I have had bad luck with timing, LOL. So depending on what you can share with me about CPU infor I might punch up the CPU and drop down 1 level of Video. If I can render 1 figure with hair and clothes in a simple scene (a sparse room or simple ground) and a couple of lights, I can teach the basics.
I am noticing some cases do what I consider a horrible job of fan placement to cool a variety of items. The worst seem to be a lower front fan only placement that is going to have the PS drafting most of the fresh air strait back with the video card and CPU and Ram getting virtually none. A rear fan exhausting warm air with no FLOW THRU makes little sense to me. Also the metal shroud to hide "lazy/bad" cable management on the bottom does not help to get air up. At the least a top front or even mid front would help airflow for GPU/CPU/RAM greatly. Noise will be somewhat of an issue but my impression is good air FLOW beats raw fan speed and so picking a "better" case for good air flow with "quieter/slower" fans makes more sense for me.
Intel has been changing this up so it depends on the specific chips
I9 9900k 8cores/16thread
I7 9700k 8core/8 thread
I7 8700 and 8700k 6core/12thread
I5 8600 and 8600k 6core/6thread
There's a bunch of other and older Intel chips but those are the relevant ones. More threads are what matters for rendering and for streaming.
For ryzen it is very simple
Ryzen 7 all have 8core/16 thread
Ryzen 5 x600 have 6core/12thread
Ryzen 5 x500 and x400 have 4core/8threads (some of these will have built in Radeon graphics but that is mostly irrelevant for this discussion)
Both AMD and Intel are selling CPU's that they are calling High End DeskTop CPU's with much higher core and thread counts, AMD is selling a Ryzen CPU with 32 cores and 64 threads for $2k but those are all well outside your price range.
The relevant issue for you is unless you want to spend the money on the I9 9900k, which is very expensive as are the MoBo's meant for it, to get an 8 core 16 thread cpu which will be your best bet for streaming and other CPU intensive tasks you should consider the Ryzen 7 line. In particular the R7 2700 is considered, not just by me but by pretty much the entire industry, to be a great deal price to performance wise both as a standalone CPU and in regards to the cost of the CPU and the MoBo's that you can put it in.
For cases there are a lot of very bad cases out there. If you want a recommendation I would point you to a specific one I've built in that I think highly of (it is important that you do get the CM H500P Mesh and not any other kind of H500P as the base model is terrible). It has 2 massive fans in front that really move some air.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811119353
Or you can check out the Gamers Nexus channel on youTube which does case reviews and is very performance oriented. They also thought very highly of the case I recommend which is why I initially bought it for the client who simply want a high performance case.
The H500P has a closed off front, I think its plexi, which is why I warned against buying it. The case I linked is the H500P Mesh where the front panel is all mesh. Therefore those 2 200mm fans get to actually pull in air.
Thankfully the days of 80mm fans as standard is over. !20mm is what the industry seems to have settled on. And that size moves a decent amount of air even with only 2 or 3 in a case.
If you want a lot of drives your options are limited these days, particularly if you want an exterior drive bay. I built a big server for a small business that wanted that specific sort of thing late last year and pickings were slim. Dig around on PCPartPicker and filter for full tower case and you'll have the most options but prices go up pretty fast.
Keep in mind AMD has committed to keeping the AM4 socket for the consumer Ryzen CPU's through at least the the Ryzen 2 CPU's, the present generation is is Ryzen +, the ones coming in 2019 are Ryzen 2. If there is a Ryzen 3 it hasn't been announced yet. I bought Ryzen 1 when it launched and upgraded to Ryzen + without switching MoBo's. I just had to flash my bios. The same should be true of going from R+ to R2 although R2 should support PCIE gen 4 so the new MoBo's might be worth the upgrade simply for the higher bandwidth.
Thanks for the updates. Spent most of the last 16 hours watching Gamers Nexus and getting back into hardware again. Their mail unboxing was a history of my prior life of very old ram and CPUs, LOL!
Yes that Mesh Case is the ONE case to get I think, I will be droping to a USB DVD if I decide to even use one but I have a lot of backup options.
Unfortunately the Gamers Nexus review, while it makes a lot of salient points, has a title that is a clear accusation and so we cannot allow it - the post with the Youtube link and the replies have been removed. An alternative review which avoids accusations would be fine even if it made the same points about components and build.
I really want to see technical reviews, describing just why certain choices of hardware are better than others. I am still looking for an objective review of this computer system.
This is an objective review of the system
The motherboard is not just bad but terrible.
The case is worse than the motherboard.
The PSU is at best of unknown qualityand is potentially a fire hazard.
The assembly is bizarre and involves decisions that indicates that whoever planned the assembly is not familiar with PC building or the case and motherboard in question or standard electronics assembly standards.
This is all for a PC that is objectively at least $400 over priced.
This goes beyond my usual distrust of mass market prebuilt SI's. This is the worst quality prebuilt for the markup I've seen in a very long time. Particularly considering that it is being marketed as a high end gaming system.
I agree totally with kenshaw, and Gamers Nexus is one of the most objective review places on the internet. Sometimes Steve might get opinionated, but he does so for a reason. We cannot link the review to Gamers Nexus to this particular forum due to policy, but in that review Steve goes into great detail on exactly why the parts in the PC do not make sense. I am not sure how it can be explained any better. They have not posted the thermals and performance just yet, I am not sure why. But it should not be hard to assume the performance is not quite as good.
Regardless, the parts inside do not match the price. Not even close. A sub $70 motherboard that is highly restrictive and offers no possible upgrade path. A sub $40 power supply that is uncertified and a known lesser quality part. A sub $90 case that has no airflow so your components will run hotter. The 1080ti and the 8700 are the only parts of value inside this PC. But as has been stated several times, you can get those parts in a better overall PC for a lot less. ibuypower has a PC with a 2080 and a i7-9700K for $400 less than what Walmart is asking for the Overpowered machine. And the ibuypower has better name brand components inside, so performance of that machine is almost certainly better overall. The 9700K is better than the 8700, and the 2080 renders Iray faster than the 1080ti, though the 1080ti does offer 3GB more VRAM. Either way, every part in the ibuypower model is more expensive than the Overpowered PC and still costs less overall.
So there are 4 major reason to not buy Overpowered. The price is too high for the parts inside. The motherboard, case, and powersupply are all very poor choices in a PC they are asking $2100 for.
I really wanted to learn from this thread. I visited Steve's site, and just didn't find the kind of information I want. Maybe it's because I'm not a gamer. I won't be following Steve or Gamer's Nexus. In the end, I admit the Overpowered PCs are likely not a great buy. I've become rather jaded when it comes to similar threads about buying or building PCs. Some people express opinions that are based on information that is over a decade old. I don't have time or money to waste.
I'm done with this thread.
and I said "An alternative review which avoids accusations would be fine even if it made the same points about components and build." The issue was that the title, and comments paraphrasing the title a couple of times in the video, went beyonf ofering opinion on the buld quality and component choice and made dict accusations - which we cannot permit.
GN covered why the H series board was bad and why a B series board would have been a better choice and would not have cost any significant amount more. They also covered what was wrong with the case, PSU, assembly issues and the inflated price compared to other available systems from other SI's. None of that was strictly from a gaming perspective. I don't think FPS or a game title was mentioned once. So what precisely were you looking for? My information is certainly not a over a decade old I just delivered a build this afternoon.
I have two custom built rigs, one by Falcon, very expensive better system and a less powerful less expensive one, with a 1080ti, built by a local guy in Southern Cal. On Cyber Monday he is picking up a 2nd 1080ti and a 2nd 2TB SSD. When he comes over I can as him the pros and cons of the walmart rig. I asked him about upgrading from a 1080ti to two 2080's but he said the 1080ti's hog less power than the 2080's and my PC was limited to the 1080's unles I did an updrade. 2080's would run too hot and the processor was too inferior for a set of power hogs (2080's).
Hope the folllowing helps anyone looking to build/buy a decent rig. Processor and cooling are a must have for future up grades and the walmart processor appears to be at it's max. I'll compare my near maxed out machine with walmarts.
One 1080ti Nividea Card (can accommodate 2) VS WALMART is limited to a single 1080ti as is.
Asus ROG Strix Z270E Gaming Motherboard VS WALMART H310M S2 (doesn't have a 3D Mount to accomodate 3D Printing) see image with specs at bottom.
Intel Core i7-7700k CPU 4.20GHZ Quad Core 8 Logical Processors -VS WALMART i7-8700 CPU 3.2 GHZ
120mm Copper Pipe CPU (Cooler Master), VS WALMART appears to cool it via a cooling fan
1000 Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply (needed for SLI) - VS WALMART 500-650 watts that appear to be uncertified
3 120 MM case fans - VS WALMART appears to be 1-2 cooling fans
Memory 32 GB (RipJaws) DDR4-3200Mhz 4 DDR4 4-DIMM (expandable to 64gb but he used 4 of 4 slots) Version VS WALMART 32 GB 2400Mhz 2xDDR4 2-DIMM limited to 32GB Ram.
Edit: Sorry for spelling errors, I was I a hurry, heading out, (to Walmart ha ha ha). The problem was with the power supply not the prosessor.
Part of the problem with the title and such is that they were shipped the wrong computer. Whether this was by accident (appears to be so) or not does not change the review of the items found.
To be more specific the CHIPS found on the Motherboard would acttually slow down th VIDEO Cards performance along with some very BAD choices for cable routing, including using cables to help hold the video card in place.
The power supply was 500Watts, but it was unrated. Power Supplies used for more powerful systems need to be rated for EFFICIENCY. This is NOT a quality issue, but often better parts ARE used in more Efficient Power Supplies.
Bad choices of where to plug in fans and only having 1 USB 3 port available to use (rear of case) did not help, The front face almost completely closed off air flow to the front fans and what was opened had no filtering, so the system would run hotter and dirtier than a different case front.
As OP, I was hoping they had made better choices as this was a joint venture, but alas virually any other SI System Integrator(they build PCs) will get you better barts for the same price or charge less for similar if not BETTER parts!
As for true DIY getting to CHIPS/Functions/Performance on a MoBo(motehrboard) I still say is beyong MOST folks expect true text afficianados. ANYONE can Learn this information, but to start from scratch it is just too much to do "quickly".
I am planning to go with an SI and custom spec most of my system. I am actually leaning to splitting the machine into a content authoring machine and a SMALL SCENE render system that will do both IRAY and some other graphics design software I have used for years. This will give me more control and I can prebuild in some upgrade options as I save my pennies.