Critique my build - CAD, Photography, and Gaming PC

[ChrisAttebery]

Hello,

It's been a long time since I've built a PC. My current machine is an i7-920 with 12GB of RAM and a GTX 760. It's getting old and Lightroom is running out of RAM on a regular basis. So it's time for an upgrade.

My main use for the machine will be Fusion 360 (CAD/CAM) and Lightroom. I edit video occasionally. I rarely play games anymore but my son is into PUBG and Fortnite. If I built a new system I might be tempted to play with him on occasion.

I'm not looking to do any overclocking.

I'm an NVIDIA employee so I have a GTX1070 FE sitting on my desk waiting to be installed.

I'm not 100% sure that the MSI Z370 PC PRO will support the 960 EVO NVMe SSD. If not, please let me know which motherboards I should be looking at.

Any input would be appreciated,


Chris


Intel Core i7-8700K https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117827&ignorebbr=1
MSI Z370 PC PRO https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813144112&ignorebbr=1
SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147594&ignorebbr=1
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232176&ignorebbr=1
Corsair Carbide Series 100R Silent Edition https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139058&ignorebbr=1
CORSAIR VS Series VS600 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139197&ignorebbr=1
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099&ignorebbr=1

 

[DaveSimmons]

Since you don't plan to overclock:

The 8700 non-K is cheaper and only 100 MHz slower for turbo. At stock speed it's 65 watts TDP instead of 91.

The cheaper coffee lake chipsets were released today, you don't necessarily need to spend over $100 any more (Newegg has all types) - https://www.anandtech.com/show/1260...e-iris-plus-desktop-chipsets-and-vpro#chip300
(Though a plus for z370 is they've been out since last year so they're not bleeding edge.)

 

[whm1974]

Please don't shout!!! You are hurting our ears.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Sorry about that, I think the text size changed because I was cut and pasting. Better now?

Please don't shout!!! You are hurting our ears.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Thanks Dave I'll take this into consideration.

I did some more research and I mistook NVMe to be an interface. Now that I've read into it more I realize that the 960 EVO has a PCIE 3.0 x4 interface and should work with the MSI motherboard I've selected without any issues.

Since you don't plan to overclock:

The 8700 non-K is cheaper and only 100 MHz slower for turbo. At stock speed it's 65 watts TDP instead of 91.

The cheaper coffee lake chipsets were released today, you don't necessarily need to spend over $100 any more (Newegg has all types) - https://www.anandtech.com/show/1260...e-iris-plus-desktop-chipsets-and-vpro#chip300
(Though a plus for z370 is they've been out since last year so they're not bleeding edge.)

 

[lakedude]

It's getting old and Lightroom is running out of RAM on a regular basis.

Normally I'm not a big fan of wasting money on too much RAM, however in your case you might think about getting more. A jump from 12 to 16 isn't much of a jump.

OTOH your main board has 4 slots so you could just add more as needed.

 

[lakedude]

Last I looked Amazon had the 8700K a bit cheaper. Microcenter is also famous for having low CPU prices but for in store purchases only.

 

[whm1974]

Normally I'm not a big fan of wasting money on too much RAM, however in your case you might think about getting more. A jump from 12 to 16 isn't much of a jump.

OTOH your main board has 4 slots so you could just add more as needed.

Has the OP thought about getting 32GB of memory instead of 16GB?

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Thanks for all of your input. I placed my order this morning. Newegg had a coupon for $20 off Win 10 Pro and had the same memory in Blue for $18 off so I saved $38 off my original build. I swapped the power supply for this modular unit. Hopefully that will make the build a little cleaner:

CORSAIR CX-M Series CX650M - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139148

I did some research and everything I read said that 16GB should be more than enough to run Lightroom unless you're working with really large files. I'm shooting 24 megapixles so I should be in good shape. I can always add another 16GB later.

I decided to stick with the 8700k. That way I have the option to OC the machine in the future.

 

[whm1974]

Thanks for all of your input. I placed my order this morning. Newegg had a coupon for $20 off Win 10 Pro and had the same memory in Blue for $18 off so I saved $38 off my original build. I swapped the power supply for this modular unit. Hopefully that will make the build a little cleaner:

CORSAIR CX-M Series CX650M - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139148

I did some research and everything I read said that 16GB should be more than enough to run Lightroom unless you're working with really large files. I'm shooting 24 megapixles so I should be in good shape. I can always add another 16GB later.

I decided to stick with the 8700k. That way I have the option to OC the machine in the future.

Enjoy your system after you build it, and glad we could help.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Just wanted to say don't get your hopes up, I too went from the same CPU actually, to an OC'd i5-6600K and 16 GB RAM. And Lightroom is still slow as crap! It's just a terrible piece of software. Now that Adobe is moving to subscription I'm looking at switching to something else at some point, which incidentally might be faster too.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. LOL!

Seriously though, I've been looking at Puget Systems benchmarking articles. I realize it probably won't be life changing, but I'm at the point where I can't do anything in LR until all of the pictures are imported and the previews are built. If I do the picture I'm working on will black out until its done. Also, Exporting more than a handful of pictures causes the system to run out of memory on occasion.

I have my catalog stored on my WD SATA II platter. The upgrade will allow me to move it onto the PCIe x4 SSD. That alone should improve my LR experience.

I guess we'll know soon enough. The parts are supposed to arrive tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have LR up and running on the new system by Monday.

Just wanted to say don't get your hopes up, I too went from the same CPU actually, to an OC'd i5-6600K and 16 GB RAM. And Lightroom is still slow as crap! It's just a terrible piece of software. Now that Adobe is moving to subscription I'm looking at switching to something else at some point, which incidentally might be faster too.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. LOL!

Seriously though, I've been looking at Puget Systems benchmarking articles. I realize it probably won't be life changing, but I'm at the point where I can't do anything in LR until all of the pictures are imported and the previews are built. If I do the picture I'm working on will black out until its done. Also, Exporting more than a handful of pictures causes the system to run out of memory on occasion.

I have my catalog stored on my WD SATA II platter. The upgrade will allow me to move it onto the PCIe x4 SSD. That alone should improve my LR experience.

I guess we'll know soon enough. The parts are supposed to arrive tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have LR up and running on the new system by Monday.

Yeah, I was probably a bit harsh, and extra salty on LR.. Well over a year since I used my 920 system. Forgot how sluggish that is. Props for sticking with that so long! It'll be way better overall, an amazing upgrade! And even slightly better in LR

 

[CuriousMike]

Lightroom is slow; they've recently made some inroads, but it's still slow.
And there can be mysterious slowdowns when having multiple brushes on an image.

16GB of ram is plenty for a single image.

If you are stitching > ~6 images into a pano, you will hit the disk.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Thanks Mike,

I've never tried working with panos in LR.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

I received all of the parts on Wednesday. I had the machine assembled and powered up in ~2 hours. I spent a lot of time trying to make the wiring as neat as possible. Then I let Win 10 Pro install while I watched TV.

Yesterday I spent most of the day installing the programs that I actually still use and transferring files. I had a couple issues with the way that Win 10 add users and names users directories. I'll leave that for another thread.

Anyway, this morning I pulled 300 RAW files off my 5DM3 and then imported and created previews for them in LR. It wasn't earth shattering, but LR is definitely faster. I'd say 2-3x for import and preview creation. Browsing through the pictures and making edits feels faster too.

The download through the USB 2 port on the camera is the real bottleneck. I stopped by Fry's this morning and bought a USB 3.0 SD card reader. I'll do some back to back testing vs. downloading directly from the camera but I expect it will be at least 3x faster.

 

[CuriousMike]

If you care about download speed from your SD card, let me humbly suggest the "Lexar Professional 2000x 32GB SDHC UHS-II/U3"
It's a card that comes with a reader, and on my machine, it yanks images from card to disk at ~ 200MB/sec. When I purchased it, it was $49.99 so there is some price shenanigans going on.
It doesn't help with write speed in camera ( your camera limits that ), but when you want the images from the card into your computer as fast as possible, it's a good win.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

Well, the SD port in my 5Dm3 will only write at 40Mbps. The CF port can handle 160Mbps so I ordered a Lexar 1066x CF card. I'll order a USB 3.0 reader for it too.

I tried reading the SD card from a USB 3.0 port and it would read at 95Mbps.