Back to The Grind PC Guide
It’s back to school season, and for some of us ‘back to work’ season too. Many of the GameTextures team have updated or built new PC’s this summer, thanks to a bevy of deals on pre-built systems and new hardware releases that made our mouths water. Our PC’s serve a dual purpose as workstations for core occupations and as gaming getaways for leisure. We think that it’s pretty likely that yours do too.
Whether you’re heading to school or looking to gear up on the latest hardware for you upcoming professional projects, GameTextures is here to provide a fun and hopefully helpful guide to picking the laptop, desktop, or components that will serve you faithfully for the next few years of your educational or professional career. In the United Sates, now (as in, literally now) may also be the best time to pick up a new computer as well; The President has threatened to levy 10% tariffs on all Chinese goods not already tariffed by the US starting September 1st. The majority of these are consumer and electronic goods, meaning most of us will likely see some sort of price increase. It may not happen (the President is predictable in his unpredictability), but it’s also to be kept in mind. Note: later in the day after publish, President Trump announced that tariffs on consumer goods (what this article is about) would be delayed until December 15th. So, it seems like there is a bit more time to debate your purchase.
Let’s start talking some PC Building Shop…talk.
Should I get a pre-built machine or build my own?
Deciding whether or not to build your own PC comes down to confidence in your ability to do a few different things.
- Can I troubleshoot my own hardware or software issues?
- Do I feel that I can open up my PC and replace components easily?
- How much money do I want to save vs. how much tech support do I want?
If you are confident in your ability to handle the PC’s parts as well as your ability to troubleshoot most issues, building PC’s is not very difficult. To be frank, most people, technically inclined or not, can physically build a PC. The issues arise when it comes to dealing with software and ‘blank slate’ installations.
If you don’t have the time, software expertise, or interest in building your own rig, then buy a pre-built system.
Should I get a Mac or a PC?
An easy question to answer, this comes down to your profession. If you’re going into video editing or design work (graphic design) and you need software that is only available on Macs, like Final Cut, you’re going to want a Mac. If you’re doing anything else at all, especially 3D content work, get a PC. It’ll save you many headaches. If you are fully bought into the Apple Ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, Air Pods, all the services, etc), it makes the decision more difficult. We would still suggest a PC, but it’s a significantly closer call.
Laptop or Desktop?
Laptops have come a VERY long way since Dan got his first laptop. Like many students still do, he thought a laptop was the way to go for school. He assumed he would take it to class daily. It was an order of magnitude more powerful that the PC’s his family had at the time and he thought it’d last a few years. In 2005, he spent a $1,000 on a laptop equipped with a single core desktop class Athlon 64 CPU that was paired with an integrated Radeon Graphics chip with less RAM than any smartphone built in the last 5 years has. It was outdated quickly and completely unsuitable for serious 3D work.
While it still holds true that laptops don’t have desktop class performance when compared like for like, most laptops in the $1,000+ price points are serious machines and are more than capable for game development, coding, and even 3D rendering with software like Vray.
Of course, they are excellent gaming machines too.
Unless you absolutely need to power 3+ displays or need the breadth of ports and overall speed that desktops can provide, you can do well with a powerful laptop as your main workstation today. However, what you gain in portability (most of the time) you lose in port flexibility and upgrade options. When you buy a laptop, Hard Drives and RAM are the only upgradable parts most of the time. Much like your phone, your laptop will be out of date 3 years after you buy it. Desktops allow for upgrades to most parts, making it easier to improve specific ‘weak links’ as the years go on.
It’s truly hard to make a recommendation on if you should get a laptop or a desktop these days. If you travel a lot, a laptop probably makes a lot of sense. If you’re a student, it’s important to think a few years a head too and determine how much flexibility you may need at graduation. Either way, as long as you pay attention to the components in the laptop, it’s far more difficult to go wrong today than it was 15 years ago.
Fun fact: Dan’s laptop couldn’t play Knights of The Old Republic at all. Today, your smartphone can.
AMD or Intel and AMD or Nvidia?
This is the last big question to answer before we dive into some product recommendations and sample builds.
For graphics, AMD or Nvidia is the easiest question to answer; it’s Nvidia. AMD makes some fine products, and if all you want to do is game at a reasonable price, AMD’s Radeon graphics cards are solid choices. However, Nvidia is used as the workstation graphics card in most gaming studios, and it has been the only card some of us have seen used professionally across different creative industries. Currently, it’s the only manufacturer who has a solution for Real Time Ray-Tracing using DXR. When you add in the other middle-ware (Gameworks Hair, PhysX, etc) that Nvidia has available, it’s really the only choice.
On the processor side, things get more interesting. Until the release of the Ryzen line from AMD, it would have been a similar response to the previous question. With Ryzen, and most recently Ryzen Gen 3, AMD has processors that are as good or better than what Intel has on the market for most tasks. AMD also has better prices and a track record of more upgrade flexibility.
Intel on the other hand continues to have solid products every year and are known for their reliability. In gaming specific tasks, Intel’s higher end products still hold a slight performance lead. Intel also commands significant performance leads in the laptop space, so if you’re looking at laptops, an i7 from Intel is the way to go.
You really can’t go wrong with either company for a CPU these days, although choosing an 8 or 12 core Ryzen 3700/3900 will save you a few bucks and get you incredible performance for your dollar.
Let’s have some fun!
We’re going to look at laptops and pre-built systems first. While we’re going to highlight a few specific brands and models, there are a few points to make first:
- We have not received any payment or sponsorship for this article.
- We will use specific devices and link to them, but they are to be examples of what one should look for in a computer. If we suggest an Acer and you find an MSI with similar hardware, sweet! That’s the goal.
- We’ll focus on 3 tiers: under $1000, around $1500, and above $2000. No extremes (under $500 or over $6000).
Laptops
Tier 1
Acer Nitro 5: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NH.Q5UAA.001
(configured with 9th Gen i5 9300H, GTX 1650, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB NVME SSD,1TB mechanical HDD, 1080p display)
Tier 1 laptops will mostly look like the Nitro 5; a GTX 1050/1650, 8 GB of Ram, and an Intel i5/AMD Ryzen (2nd gen) 5 series processor. That’s the trade off you make when you are looking at laptops under $1000 bucks, the hardware won’t cut it for overly demanding work. The good news is that this is still a pretty respectable machine. You may find laptops in this range with less GPU power (often an AMD Vega or a GeForce MX chip) and more CPU power if your work demands more of the latter.
The nice thing about this specific model? It has a fast SSD for main programs and Windows as well as a big 1TB drive for everything else.
Tier 2
MSI GL63 8SEK: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GL63-8SX/Specification
(configured with 9th Gen i7 9750H, RTX 2060, 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1TB mechanical HDD, 144hz 1080p display)
Tier 2 laptops really step up the available hardware options. Dan has a preference for his Acer Predator series, but we wanted to present a different manufacturer here and the MSI GL 63 8SEK fit the bill. It is on the higher end of our Tier 2 price range at a hair over $1500.
Most of these laptops will come equipped with an i7 processor from either the 8th or 9th generation of Intel CPU’s (and the performance difference between the two is marginal). GPU’s will continue to vary but you’ll likely be looking at a range of options that include last year’s GTX 1060, 1070, or this year’s RTX 2060. Most of these machines will have 16GB of RAM and a varying array of hard drive configurations with some mix of a small SSD and large mechanical HDD.
For most serious work in 3D, development, or visualizations, this is the tier to try and buy a laptop from. You still make a few sacrifices (heavier machines, RAM amount, screen color accuracy) but the machine you walk away with is an overall mobile powerhouse.
Tier 3
Razer Blade 15: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade
(configured with 9th Gen i7 9750H, RTX 2080 Max-Q, 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 240hz 1080p display)
When you’re looking to spend over $2,000 on a laptop, the world of super powerful thin and light laptops opens up. If you want something that can travel, is built like a tank, and has the power to keep you working and gaming for years, this is where to go. We’ve chosen to highlight Razer’s Blade 15 laptop here, as they are known for being a bit like the Apple of high end Windows laptops.
In this price bracket, the only real differentials will come down to screen resolution and refresh rate. 144hz 1080p panels are standard here, but you can shell out even more for a 4K screen if that is your choice. Just keep in mind that most 4K panels operate at 60hz.
The laptop as configured here is not cheap, it comes in at $2,999 direct from Razer. However, you can save plenty by dropping down to an 8th Gen i7 and still keep just about everything else that makes this machine so drool worthy.
Pre-Built Desktops
Tier 1
Omen Obelisk: https://store.hp.com/app/slp/omen-gaming/desktops
(configured with 8th Gen i5 8400, 8GB Ram, 1TB Mechanical HDD, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB Intel Optane Memory)
Coming in at $979 when excluding a back to school sale, HP’s Omen Obelisk is a solid example of a gaming PC that’s under a grand, if only barely. Much like the Acer Nitro 5 Laptop example, this will get you up and running. It can handle an art focused workload decently and can game comfortably at at 1080p resolutions. It’s not built to be much of a render powerhouse so expect to wait around a bit if you’re doing video or Vray renders. Lightmap baking may also be a chore.
This machine was able to be outfitted with Optane Memory at no extra charge, which will help significantly with storage speeds. It’s not a true replacement for an SSD, but it will make that 7200rpm disk feel much faster.
Tier 2
iBuyPower Ryzen 7 3rd Gen Configurator: https://www.ibuypower.com/Store/AMD-Ryzen-7-3rd-Gen-Configurator
(configured with 3rd Gen Ryzen 7 3700x, x570 Motherboard, 16GB Ram, 256 GB NVMe SSD, 512 GB SATA SSD, RTX 2060 Super, 3 extra case fans)
iBuyPower has a good reputation for delivering excellent PC’s to your door for a great price, and their ‘Tier 2’ example PC is nearly perfect for $1512. Laptops in this price range may still miss out on the latest hardware but desktops start to have access to the latest hardware at this price point. It’s fairly difficult to find RTX GPU’s in a laptop for $1500, and we get that here. This is also the first PC we’ve highlighted with AMD’s Ryzen processor at its heart (8 cores and 16 threads), so it’s built for some pretty serious render work.
Tier 3
Origin PC Millennium: https://www.originpc.com/configurator/millennium
(configured with 3rd Gen Ryzen 9 3900x, x570 motherboard, 32 GB Ram, 512 GB NVMe SSD, 1TB SATA SSD, RTX 2070 Super)
You can likely find cheaper machines with equal specifications on other vendors (like the aforementioned iBuyPower), but when one wants to spend some extra money on flair, buy from Origin.
With plenty of power for today and tomorrow thanks to its generous amount of Ram, high end 12 core 24 thread CPU, and two hard drives with plenty of storage, this PC will churn through any workload you can throw at it. An RTX 2080 Super pushed this machine to $3200 dollars, so we chose to drop the video card spec to keep it under $3000 ($2858).
High end models should make as few compromises as possible. Ideally, RTX 2080 Super or Ti graphics cards should be sought after, especially if working at 4K resolutions.
DIY Tips
Building your own desktop computer can be a daunting task for the uninitiated. Between picking parts, manually putting them together, and installing software, building your own PC is often seen as a difficult task. It really isn’t though, and we think that if time permits, enthusiasts should consider taking the plunge. The biggest benefit to a DIY approach to PC’s is cost. One can generally save a few hundred dollars (or more) when doing it on your own.
It would be nearly impossible to lay out ideal builds for each budget. Plus, our list of pre-built systems can also be good indicators of the type of hardware to target for your budget and preferred experiences. If you’re interested in reading more about PC parts and what each part does, check out the following links:
- https://www.anandtech.com/
- https://techreport.com/
- https://www.techpowerup.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips
What we can do is give a few general tips learned over the years we’ve spent building PC’s for both gaming and work purposes. Some of these tips may either save or cost you some money, but they will absolutely save you hassle in the future.
- Don’t skimp on a Power Supply. Dan learned this the hard way with his first build. It was never 100% stable and would occasionally crash for little to no reason, yet the memory checked out. He also overclocked the CPU and GPU and because of the cheap power supply, both parts likely never got the power required to maintain those tweaks.
- Be intentional when picking parts and check it’s all compatible. It can be tempting to overspend on components, but it’s worth asking what you’re going to be doing with your new PC and at what resolution and refresh rate you’ll be doing it at. Make sure it’s all compatible too. Some motherboards and CPU’s won’t support some types of RAM.
- Plan for at least one GPU upgrade. In Dan’s experience, GPU performance increases at a faster rate than CPU performance does, especially since 2012. Consider the following: His first PC went through two graphics cards (x1800GTO and an HD3850) in as many years (2006–2007). After a significant overhaul in 2009 (which also included another GPU, HD 4870), he made another GPU upgrade in 2011 so he could make use of DirectX 11 in Unreal Engine 3 after seeing the Samaritan demo. 3 years later (2014) was a brand new PC featuring a GPU in that lasted two years before it was replaced in 2016(GTX 770 to a GTX 1060). That makes it 6 GPU changes to 4 CPU changes.
- You probably don’t need water-cooling unless you live in the desert or hate noise. Unless you are very sensitive to noise or you live in a hot, harsh climate, you can skip out on water cooling. If you’re serious about getting the absolute best overclock out of your components, water-cooling may be helpful.
- Overclocking isn’t super risky, but it’s not to be played with if you haven’t done your homework. Conventional wisdom states that overclocking your PC will fry all of your components and destroy your hard work, and it IS POSSIBLE. However, if you read up on how to overclock properly, which often is done slowly and on a single component and a single variable at a time, overclocking can be an effective and generally safe way to get a bit more life out of an aging PC. Read and watch tutorials that are specific to your hardware and play it safe.
A word about picking parts
When you are picking parts for your new PC, it’s important to think about how the entire machine works together, and how that will play with your workload and display resolutions. This isn’t something most of us thought much about until Digital Foundry did their excellent analysis of the RTX 2080 Super. You can see that below.
For the TLDW crowd, CPU’s and GPU’s have to talk to each other to render frames in a game, and depending on the resolution and settings, one will have more work than the other. At 1080p, the CPU will usually slow down the GPU. At 4K, the GPU is the weak link.
This can get a bit more confusing for the crowd using high refresh rate monitors. One would assume that the more powerful a GPU, the faster the frames will render. But if you look at the Digital Foundry written review (or alternatively, a review like this one from TechPowerUp), you can see that more often than not the highest end graphics cards are generally hitting similar performance numbers to the lower end cards at 1080p. This happens because high end, super powerful video cards are waiting for information from the CPU at low resolutions, and the CPU being used (either an overclocked i7 or i9) can’t give the video card enough data. For system builders, this means that one should consider targeting hardware that is a step or two above what is usually recommended for your resolution, but might still be slower that the best of the best.
Prior to 2016 or so, the rule for system building was “get the fastest you can”. Now it’s all a balancing act; get the fastest you can for the price, keep your resolution and refresh rate in mind, and plan on at least one upgrade down the road.
Final Words
For the enthusiasts among us, planning and executing a new PC build is a thrilling and rewarding experience. It’s a chance for us to blend the act of building with our hands and working with our heads. We strategize our builds to deliver exactly what we need and plan them out for the maximum upgrade ability we desire.
It’s just lots of fun!
For everyone else, knowing what to look for in a PC can be daunting, especially if this is your first major PC purchase. It’s our hope that using the 6 pre-built PC examples we’ve shown can ease that stress a little. By looking at your budget and seeing what tier you can afford, hopefully this back to school or work season can be filled with fun and wonder as you blaze through making Substances, listening to Tool, while dreaming about playing Fortnite at 4k in the evening.
How else are you going to use a 12 core processor?
