A new PC for DT, RT and GIMP

Hardware
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There are already very informative threads on the subject, so I was reluctant to create yet another “what PC should I buy” topic, but I’ve been authorized to pull the trigger on a new machine :smiley: , and I wanted to make sure I am on the right path and that I’m not missing something.

From previous posts, I’m looking at these basic specs:

  • Windows 10/11
  • AMD Ryzen 5 or 7
  • 16GB RAM, expandable to at least 32GB, preferably 4 slots
  • Minimum 512GB M.2 storage (will add to a total of 1TB)
  • RTX 3060 graphics card or better

Here are three systems that I’ve been looking at:

PowerSpec G708 Gaming PC; AMD Ryzen 7 5700G 3.8GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060Ti 8GB GDDR6; 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM; 1TB - Micro Center

This is the strongest choice in terms of processing, graphics, and ability to upgrade, plus its water cooled. It’s also the priciest and I wonder if its more than I need for photo editing.

PowerSpec G511 Gaming PC; AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6; 16GB DDR4-2666 RAM; 500GB - Micro Center

The price is more reasonable, although I’ll need to buy an additional SSD. The downside is that the cabinet is small, so I can’t upgrade with standard 3.5" drives.

HP Pavilion TG01-2360 Gaming PC; AMD Ryzen 7 5700G 3.8GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6; 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM; - Micro Center

My experience with HP is “ok”. I’ve heard that adding drives to HP units is a pain, and I don’t think the build quality is all that great. Plus, NVIDEA recommends a 550W power supply, but this machine is built with a 400W unit :exploding_head:

PowerSpec is the house brand for Micro Center, which is a US based computer shop chain. The advantage of buying one of these systems is that they build them in the store and you can go there directly for service. They are also much more flexible for future upgrades.

I’m up to considering others, but these models look like they cover the range of low-to-mid price gaming PCs for FOSS editing.

I would definitely like to hear your thoughts, particularly if there’s something that I’ve missed. Thanks!

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I recently got a machine with the RTX 2060 and editing in DT has been instantaneous, even with the heavy duty modules. Export happens in a finger click. Maybe worth noting my monitor is 2k resolution. 4k screens might benefit from more oomph.

I’ve got Ryzen 5 5600x 6 core cpu which gives decent speeds for most things I’ve tried in gimp, although some modules in gmic plugin like style transfer can take a few minutes pending the settings, so if you use that a lot, more cores would be desirable.

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I haven’t seen many RTX2060 units lately… is it an off-the-shelf unit or did you build it yourself?

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No its in some new machines or something like that part of Nvidia releasing stuff that the crypto guys won’t scoop up…

I’m in the same boat. I want to buy a new box but the prices for GPU are so crazy

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It’s essentially a custom build that I got guys in the store to build for me. I was actually targeting a gtx 1660 but they were sold out. Luckily price of the rtx 2060 remained similar to prices in 2020. Parts were limited though and they were fast running out of stock before Christmas. Had I waited much longer even more compromises would have been necessary. Not a good market right now.

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@Soupy I was going to ask. Good for you for finding the parts at a reasonable price.

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For RawTherapee, don’t care about the GPU, just get the fastest CPU/RAM speed solution. The more fast cores, the better, fast RAM is also important.

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Yes, the whole crypto thing is totally out of control. An alternate currency without policy control that no one understands and doesn’t seem to serve any social good. I wish that countries could clamp it down.

Good for you. I have complete confidence in building my own system, but I really have too much going on right now to tackle another new project.

Like most things, it’s pretty clear that the PC market is defined along certain price points without much variance within each bracket. But it seems like there are a lot of “gotchas” to watch out for, and that’s what makes the search so frustrating.

Thanks, that’s what I understand. Can you tell me if the core and thread differences between the Ryzen 5 and 7 would make an appreciable difference, and how I might assess RAM speed? Thanks!

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I might actually consider a laptop…some of the new Intel mobile chips are fast and you can get a reasonable GPU in them. These are slower than the desktop GPU of the same number but still plenty fast and the whole thing might be the same as trying to buy a decent GPU…

Then I can just convert my old box into a image server and reuse and or add to the drives that I have or some other purpose .

Pretty tempted to go this route and just set it up to dock to a monitor and keyboard…

EDIT

One contender…

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834233483

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I’ve thought about that route as well. I think there are a number of people here who use them for raw processing. And frankly, I’m not looking for blazing performance, but to move beyond tortoise speed. And reliability. And OpenCL… :wink:

I have to admit that I’m a little wary of going with makers that I’m not familiar with… what do you know about Gigabyte?

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My previous PC ran using a Gigabyte motherboard. I bought it in 2008, and stopped using it in 2021. It had no problems, besides speed (or lack thereof). ‘One of Gigabyte’s key advertised features on its motherboards is its “Ultra Durable” construction, advertised with “all solid capacitors”.’ (Wikipedia) Seemed to work for me.

Gigabyte has been around for a long while. ‘It shipped 4.8 million motherboards in the first quarter of 2015, which allowed it to become the leading motherboard vendor.’ (Wikipedia)

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Thank you. Apparantly I need to get out to my local computer shop more often…

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Same I have had a few of their MB over the years…I always out grew them before they died…not like the bulging capacitors I had on a few Dell or HP machines I can’t remember that is going back a good way though…

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I can’t compare the two, but can run a speed test on the Ryzen 5 if someone tells me how.

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darktable 3.8 user manual - darktable I think the perf sounds like the switch that will log performance…although you get some CPU info in the opencl benchmarking as well…

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This was for rawtherapee.

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I think for such CPU-heavy processing, generic CPU benchmarks are relevant.
E.g. PassMark CPU Value Chart - Performance / Price of available CPUs

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Good point. As an example from the two CPUs that I’m looking at I found the following results from Passmark:

Ryzen 7 5600G
Ryzen 7 5600G891×536 50.5 KB

Ryzen 5 5600X
Ryzen 5 5600X892×542 50.7 KB

So based on the floating point scores of 52MOps/sec vs 40, then the Ryzen 7 would be around 13% faster?

(Edit: I should have said 30% faster, apologies for the stupid error)

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I think many of our tools use ‘extended instructions’ (according to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_test_info.html, that means vectorised computations using AVX512 and other similar instruction sets), so maybe that would be a more relevant measurement.

When evaluating the price/performance ratio, don’t forget to calculate with the total cost of the PC (that is, one CPU being 50% more expensive than the other may only influence the total price by 20%, given that you’ll be paying for RAM, power supply, etc.).

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52 / 40 = 1.3, so 30% faster

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