Question AMD Ryzen 2600 6-Core 3.4 GHz with RX 580 4GB or i5 9400f with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB

[coco80]

I'm contemplating between two pre-built pc-s, for productivity and multi monitor setup. One is a Skytech with Ryzen 2600 & RX 580; the other is Lenovo with i5 9400f & GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB. I won't be doing any gaming, 90% of my requirements are for work with 3 monitors (excel..etc). I also plant to use Adobe Creative Cloud and some video editing. 3 monitor support is a must. Again, gaming is not important, multi monitor support and decent video editing is. The lenovo is about $80 more expensive, which I can live with if it's a better system for my use.

Thank you for your expert advice!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, if they were custom-built rigs, I would choose the Ryzen 2600 rig, and flash the BIOS on the mobo, and install a 3700X.

For purely gaming, I think that the i5-9400F and GTX 1660 ti, if you're stuck with those two configs, would be a tiny bit better for gaming.

For productivity, not really sure. I know that the 3000-series Ryzen CPUs really excel at productivity, but that's a 2000-series Zen+ CPU, which is really just a 12nm process-enhanced version of the 14nm Zen architecture chips, basically same arch., more clock headroom for overclocking and whatnot.

One thing though, the RX 580 probably has MORE video outputs than the GTX 1660 ti does, so there's that.

So for multi-mon, I might give the rig with the RX 580 the edge.

But for video-editing, maybe the GTX 1660 ti would be faster? It has the Turing NVENC / NVDEC hardware in it, as well as GDDR6.

In short, I'm not really certain one way or the other, they both have good and bad points.

I would try to find out if the Skytech uses a "DIY/whitebox"-channel mobo (an enthusiast mobo). If so, then flashing the BIOS and upgrading to a 3700X might be a viable solution, that would clearly put that rig out front for productivity.

You haven't mentioned RAM or storage, those could be factors too. How much RAM does each come with?

 

[coco80]

Thank you Larry, the Lenovo has 16GB RAM and 256 GB SSD, the Skytech has 8GB and 512 GB SSD.

You are right, the RX580 has 3DP & 1 HDMI ports and the 1660Ti has 1DP, 1DVI-D, 1HDMI.

I wonder if the RX580 supports 4 monitors

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's what I would do: I would contact Skytech, see if they'll give you info on what mobo will be in the system, if that mobo can be flashed and upgraded to a 3000-series AM4 Ryzen CPU, and then get that one if it can, and then buy a 32GB kit of after-market DDR4-3200 RAM, and put that in there, and take out the 8GB of pre-installed RAM.