Over the next month, I want to upgrade/renew my setup.
My current setup is kind of old:
- Mainboard: EVGA Classified SR-X
- CPU: 2x Xeon E5-2630 Hexa-Core @2,3GHz
- RAM: 20GB DDR3
- GPU: INNO3D GeForce GTX 950, 2GB
- Drives: 128GB SSD, 2x 1,5 TB HDD
- Power Supply: Xilence Modular Series ATX2.3
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 3 Rev. B PCGH-Edition
- Case: Lian Li PC-Z70
The 5.1 sound JACK cable connections on my mainboard are kind of broken, which doesn't matter to me much, because I use optical toslink cabel to plug in my headset. For internet connection, I use Wifi.
Requirements for future setup
Generally, I aim for good performance in Gaming, 3D Graphics and Development. More specifically, I want to do 3D grafics including particle effects, interactive grooming, etc. Below, I try to sum up the most important Applications and Games that I focus on:
Computer Graphics minimum requirements (from Autodesk, Arnold Renderer Docs, Allegorithmic Tech specs, UE4 Docs):
- 64-bit Intel® or AMD® multi-core processor with SSE4.2 instruction set, 2.5 GHz or faster
- minimum 16 GB RAM, better 32 GB (for running multiple apps simultaniously)
- GPU (from Certified GPUs for Maya): Geforce RTX 2080, RTX 2070 RTX 2060, TITAN V, TITAN X, GTX 1080, GTX 1070, GTX 1060, GTX 980, GTX 970, GTX 680, GTX 965M, GTX 980
- CUDA™ Compute Capability 5.0
- NVIDIA GPU of the Turing, Volta, Pascal, or Maxwell architecture
Game requirements
I do play RPGs most of the time. Games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the upcoming This Land is my land, but also Division and Division 2, Forza Horizon 4...
I try to sum up the requirements:
- CPU:
- This land is my land: Intel Core i7 3.2Ghz or equivalent
- Forza Horizon 4: Intel i7-3820 @ 3.6Ghz
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Intel Core i7 4770K, 3.40 Ghz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 3.20 Ghz
- GPU:
- This land is my land: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 or equivalent
- shadow of the tomb raider: at 2160p raytracing: RTX 2080 Ti
- RAM: 16GB
I will upgrade my GPU soon, probably to a RTX 2080 or even a 2080 Ti. But I don't know what to do about the rest of my setup. I'm a little bit afraid of buying everything new at once (because of the price), so I would prefer to buy the parts one by one over time, but end up with an up to date system anyway. :|
- My mainboard seems to be very old. Would you recommend buying a new one? If so, what would you recommend? Can I use some of my old hardware on my new board until I have the money to buy new hardware or do I have to buy everything at once?
- I'm thinking about addind a larger SSD, because I'm running out of memory on my 128GB SSD. Would you recommend M.2? If so, how would you introduce M.2 to my current or future setup?
- As todays CPUs have many cores in one CPU, I assume that a dual socket setup is not really worth it, am I right?
- most applications recommend 16 GB RAM. I want to work on one machine with multiple applications simultaniously. Of course I actually work only in one of them, but the others are running in the background. How much RAM do I need?
- Can I use my old DDR3 RAM in a DDR4 mainboard til I can afford new RAM?
Budget
As I said, I'd prefer to buy one piece after the other and upgrade my PC over time or save money and buy everything all together. So I'm quite flexible about money. Also, I'm looking for a PC that last the next 7-10 years and after that is still not too bad for gaming.
That being said, I assume, 2k plus/minus 1k € is a good price for a computer. If I see a benefit, the price can go further up.
