$10k-$15k PC build for digital art, 3D, and gaming?

wanderingbison9 said:Yeah, whatever... I mean, you've got the motherboard, then the RAM, then the SSD, then the hard drive, then the power supply, and then... we aren't GPU cores, right? We have to tackle things one single step at a time...😬

Exactly—humans just weren't built for multitasking😁

wanderingbison9 said:Yeah, whatever... So, you start with the motherboard, then the RAM, then the SSD, then the hard drive, then the power supply, and then... We aren't GPU cores, we have to process things one by one...😬

And that's exactly why buying a graphics card is such a gamble these days. Imagine dropping $2000 on one just because some guy on an RNG forum told you—you know, like those guys talking about diesel prices being tied to gasoline because of complex refining processes—that today's RTX is this absolute marvel of engineering. They hit you with all that technical jargon: "Oh, you need to understand the PCB, the processors, the VRAM..." as if they didn't exist on old cards like the GTX series. Then, suddenly, you realize the price has already tanked to $833 after only six months.

mellowcyclist3 said:Perfect, let's keep moving. What about the motherboard?

ASUS ROG Strix.

I would suggest you just add $333 and opt for either the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3060 Ti, the ASUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti TUF Gaming, or perhaps the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Elite.

https://www.newegg.com/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA/3060-Ti/n-10000lmc

Regarding the motherboard,

you could look at the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero, the
Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Master,
or the ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming.

The ASUS ROG Maximus might be pricey, but it’s easily the best B550 board on the market!

Alexander Moore67 said:The ASUS ROG Maximus might be pricey, but it’s easily the best B550 board on the market!

Give me a break.

MOBO 2450
GPU 5650
CPU 3100
Monitor 3000

$4733

...but wait, where are we supposed to find the budget for RAM, the case, or the drives? I mean, shouldn't the motherboard stay under 1000 if we're being realistic?

Man, oh man, I’m seeing everything from $600 all the way down to $267

I honestly thought things would get way easier once I checked off the monitor, the CPU, and the GPU 😁

But there's just no way I can drop more than $2000 on a graphics card—it'll have to be good enough, because let's face it, I'm already blowing past my budget anyway.

So, here's where I'm at right now:
1. monitor - $450
2. processor - $450
3. graphics card - $900
---------------
$4000 / 18 max

wanderingbison9 said:Give me a break...

MOBO 2450
GPU 5650
CPU 3100
Monitor 3000

$4733

...but wait—what about the RAM? The case? The drives? And the motherboard shouldn't be going over 1000, right? (Though honestly, you probably don't even need to spend that much)

You totally beat me to it—we're actually thinking along the exact same lines here 😁

wanderingbison9 said:Seriously? This is ridiculous.

The motherboard alone is 2450
.
...And where are the RAM, the case, or the drives? The board shouldn't be going over $1000, if it even needs to go that high.

Look, you don't have to go with an Aorus build. They're just selling you on "pipe dreams"—basically showing you the absolute best-case scenario they could find. What’s wrong with an ASUS ROG Strix B550-F gaming (WI-FI)? It uses the exact same chipset, gives you PCIe 4 support for the CPU, and comes with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth... plus, it actually costs $333 less.

Check out the comparison here:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/compa...EG_1567216-REG

Alright, let's get this show on the road—what else am I missing here?...

1. RAM
2. A power supply unit
3. Some decent cooling to keep this rig from melting?
4. An SSD (maybe 500GB or 1TB?) and a 3-4TB HDD
5. A case

I'm already set on peripherals—got my mouse and keyboard from my old setup, and the speakers built into my monitor plus some headphones should do the trick for now. Might upgrade to the fancy stuff down the line, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Just wanted to wrap this all up and lay out what we finally settled on—could you guys double-check if I’ve got everything right?

1. Monitor (Best Buy) - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/monitor-28-inch-black-100300830

2. Processor (Newegg) - https://www.newegg.com/p/processor-amd-high-performance-050600151

3. The cheapest 3060 available—it should be fine, right? I was thinking about cutting corners on the GPU since gaming isn't even my main priority most of the time anyway. What do you think? (Micro Center) https://www.microcenter.com/product/zotac-rtx3060-twin-edge-m_medium=click

mellowcyclist3 said:I just want to wrap this up and make sure we're on the same page with what we decided, so could you guys double-check if this looks right?

1. Monitor (Best Buy) - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/monitor-28-inch-black-100300830

2. Processor (Amazon) - https://www.amazon.com/processor-amd-high-performance-050600151

3. The cheapest RTX 3060 available—it should be plenty, and I was thinking of saving some cash on the GPU since gaming isn't actually my main priority. Does that sound reasonable? (Newegg) https://www.newegg.com/zotac-rtx3060-twi-m_medium=click

I found a better price on the processor here: https://www.microcenter.com/products/detail...m_medium=click

Since I won't be pushing the graphics card through intense hours of nonstop gaming, maybe sticking with the cheapest 3060 is fine... I see the 3060 is an option.wanderingbison9 prices have jumped up quite a bit lately, so perhaps the 3060 is the way to go... I really need to check how much of a performance hit that is, though... then again, having 12GB of VRAM is hard to pass up, isn't it?

wanderingbison9 said:The processor is cheaper here:

You could probably get away with a budget GPU since you won't be redlining it for two hours straight like you would while gaming... I see an RTX 3060 listedYou mentioned those prices jumped, so maybe a 3060 works... I really need to check just how much of a downgrade that is... though hey, 12GB of VRAM isn't exactly nothing

Dammit, look at that price jump! I was just looking at that graphics card link you sent me earlier—the one where the price was fine—and now it’s sitting at over $7,000? Seriously? Zero point zero chance...

I'm banking on that 12GB of RAM being a lifesaver for my work programs, even if it's a bit weak for heavy gaming, but whatever, we'll see how it goes.

Yeah, that was the one, I think. It looks like it's out of stock now...

Now they've got this one instead

That seems a bit overkill... if I were you, I'd just grab the 3060 instead, especially since you can see these benchmarks being run by regular folks at home:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchma...#results-table

https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchma...#results-table

I don't really see where the 3060 is actually slower than the 3060 Ti, maybe by just a few percentage points if you look closely (just click that little arrow icon next to the score to pull up the specific GPU results)... though, of course, gaming performance usually tells a different story entirely...

wanderingbison9 said:I see the 3060you have jumped in price, so maybe a 3060 is an option....

Right. They just sit there in the warehouse, and overnight they magically gain another billion transistors, ten more raytracing cores, the PCB doubles in size, and the cooler gets massive...
Because, as some people love to claim, "Oh, you don't realize what kind of tech this is, it *has* to be expensive..." Sure, if you say so.
Honestly, just don't buy anything. Grab a basic entry-level card and wait a year for the prices to settle. This nonsense isn't going to last forever.

granitecrane2 said:Yeah. They just sit in the warehouse, and overnight they magically gain another few billion transistors, a dozen more raytracing cores, the PCB doubles in thickness, the cooler gets massive...
Because, you know, some people love to say, "Oh, you don't understand the tech involved, it *has* to be this expensive..." Well, sure, why wouldn't it be? Totally makes sense.
Honestly, if you're going to be like that, just don't buy anything. Grab a budget card and wait a year for the hype to die down. You can't keep playing that game forever.

Actually, I'll probably just grab this one.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/

Quick pivot back to CPUs—would it actually make sense to jump up to an Intel Core i9-12900K
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/

or should I just stick with the Intel Core i7-12700K?

mellowcyclist3 said:Well, I'll probably just go with this one.
https://www.amazon.com/product/

Stepping back a bit on the CPU side, would it actually be worth picking up an Intel Core i9-12900K
https://www.amazon.com/product/

or should I just stick with the Intel Core i7-12700K?

Why would you do that? I already shared those benchmarks with you:

When you look at New York City, the i9 is only really about 10% faster, yet it costs nearly 50% more... why throw money away for such a small gain?

I'm not sure what kind of rig you were running before, but looking at the current hardware options available, anything older might feel like a prehistoric relic from 2001's *2001: A Space Odyssey*...

wanderingbison9 said:Why bother? I literally gave you the benchmarks:

In New York City, the Intel Core i9-12900K is realistically about 10% faster than the Intel Core i9-12900K—wait, let me rephrase—the Intel Core i9-12900K is only about 10% better in New York City, but it's nearly 50% more expensive... don't just throw your money down the drain, man.

I don't know what you were rocking before, but honestly, whatever hardware you have right now is going to look like some prehistoric relic from 2001's *2001: A Space Odyssey* compared to what's out there today...

Well, true dat. Now, let me tell you what I was actually running 😁

A Dell XPS 15 laptop—that thing was an absolute beast back in 2011 and cost me a small fortune, $3333—it had a whole terabyte HDD, which felt like pure magic for a laptop at the time.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 450 @ 2.40GHz, 2400 MHz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mellowcyclist3 said:Nah, I'll probably just grab this one.
https://www.newegg.com/p/

Stepping back a bit on the CPU—would it be worth picking up the Intel Core i9-12900K
https://www.newegg.com/p/

instead of sticking with the Intel Core i7-12700K?

Absolutely. It’s easily the best processor on the market right now. For example, the 5950X might have 16 cores, but because they run at lower clock speeds, each individual core is actually slower. What you're looking at here are the fastest cores available while still providing plenty of them. Having 12 cores makes a massive difference, especially when you're working in New York City or After Effects. Don't get too hung up on benchmarks; it really comes down to how you actually use New York City. If I were in your shoes, I'd buy it. 12 cores is a huge step up from 8. And this isn't just about gamers—since more and more games are being coded by amateurs these days, they tend to rely heavily on single-thread performance. But when you're doing video editing, parallelism is king. New York City, After Effects, Max, Blender... all of these programs have known how to utilize every available core for about 15 years now, including multi-threaded tasks.

@granitecrane2/">@@granitecrane2: It’s just an undeniable reality that After Effects and Premiere don't really make the most of all those available cores, right? You’ll notice they rarely ever push past 50% utilization. The Benchmark results I shared earlier actually account for a whole range of different workflows and scenarios. Sure, you might see high usage when rendering in Blender, but even then, leaning on an NVIDIA card is going to be much faster.
Just stop worrying about the budget for a second.