PC for WFH (academic simulations) and light gaming

[mikeyh30]

I'd like to upgrade from my current laptop to a desktop PC, and have a few requirements:

Required:
NVidia GPU
Budget <£1100

Desirable:
Balance spend on GPU and CPU (both are important to me)
iGPU as well (to run display from iGPU and CUDA on dGPU)

I liked the look of the 1050 Ti but it's out of stock, so picked the 1030 for this build, any alternatives?

Looking for suggestions:
Case
COOLERMASTER SILENCIO S600 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G Eight Core CPU with Radeon™ Graphics (3.8GHz-4.6GHz/20MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 1030
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 PORT (1 x TYPE A, 1 x TYPE C) USB 3.1 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 19 working days

Edit (it incorrectly said ~£1300 before):
Price: £1,014.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/03hchk3359/

 

[Bhuna50]

A few questions Im sure the experts will have:

What monitor do you have?

Also, I note you are saying you only have a budget of less than £1100 yet your build posted is over £1300 - does that mean there is more budget? What is your absolute maximum?

You mention light gaming - what sort of games?

 

[mikeyh30]

A few questions Im sure the experts will have:

What monitor do you have?

Also, I note you are saying you only have a budget of less than £1100 yet your build posted is over £1300 - does that mean there is more budget? What is your absolute maximum?

You mention light gaming - what sort of games?

I have an AOC 24G2U.

Apologies for the confusion with the budget, I initially pasted with the 2060 as the graphics card, then changed it to the 1030, but forgot to switch the budget. I do want to stick to £1100.

The gaming is not really a priority for me tbh, I'm currently gaming on an NVidia 950m, which plays everything I'm interested in, KSP, Terraria, Total War Shogun2 etc.

 

[Bigfoot]

Do you have any other drives, as 256GB is very small nowadays? Light games won’t need 32Gb of RAM. What applications are you using for work? Will they benefit from 8 cores. It seems odd to pick a CPU with in-built graphics and then specify a separate low spec graphics card. With a low budget it is important not to overspend in one area at the expense of another.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I have an AOC 24G2U.

Apologies for the confusion with the budget, I initially pasted with the 2060 as the graphics card, then changed it to the 1030, but forgot to switch the budget. I do want to stick to £1100.

The gaming is not really a priority for me tbh, I'm currently gaming on an NVidia 950m, which plays everything I'm interested in, KSP, Terraria, Total War Shogun2 etc.

The GT1030 isn't a gaming card and far far weaker than the 950m which is.

 

[mikeyh30]

Do you have any other drives, as 256GB is very small nowadays? Light games won’t need 32Gb of RAM. What applications are you using for work? Will they benefit from 8 cores. It seems odd to pick a CPU with in-built graphics and then specify a separate low spec graphics card. With a low budget it is important not to overspend in one area at the expense of another.

I have another 500GB SSD.
Yes, you're probably right about RAM, I'll try 16GB instead.
Also in retrospect, 6 cores might be better.
I want the in-built graphics, as when I run CUDA tasks currently, while using dedicated GPU for display, my current laptop becomes near unusable. With the 2 GPUs I can run a CUDA task in the background and continue using my PC.

The GT1030 isn't a gaming card and far far weaker than the 950m which is.

I didn't realise this, thanks for letting me know.

Taking into account your suggestions, my updated build is as follows:

Case
COOLERMASTER SILENCIO S600 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Six Core CPU with Radeon™ Graphics (3.9GHz-4.4GHz/19MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
GIGABYTE B550 GAMING X V2 : DDR4, USB 3.2 - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 Ti - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 PORT (1 x TYPE A, 1 x TYPE C) USB 3.1 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 19 working days
Price: £1,117.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/Y00afAhVuC/

 

[SpyderTracks]

I want the in-built graphics, as when I run CUDA tasks currently, while using dedicated GPU for display, my current laptop becomes near unusable. With the 2 GPUs I can run a CUDA task in the background and continue using my PC.

Basic display output doesn't take any rendering power, what you're experiencing is a limitation of the GPU, having on board graphics wouldn't help at all with that.

What CUDA processing are you doing? We need to know what the PC is being used for to be able to spec something suitable?

 

[mikeyh30]

Basic display output doesn't take any rendering power, what you're experiencing is a limitation of the GPU, having on board graphics wouldn't help at all with that.

What CUDA processing are you doing? We need to know what the PC is being used for to be able to spec something suitable?

I'm not sure I follow what you mean, as that hasn't been my experience. I've been using https://mumax.github.io/ recently and found that if I was running my display server on my NVidia GPU and then ran a simulation, then my laptop would be quite unusable. Running my display server on the integrated GPU, but the CUDA task on the NVidia GPU, then I can use my laptop as normal.

I think mumax will just use as much compute as is available, which is why I expected the same experience even on a higher spec PC.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm not sure I follow what you mean, as that hasn't been my experience. I've been using https://mumax.github.io/ recently and found that if I was running my display server on my NVidia GPU and then ran a simulation, then my laptop would be quite unusable. Running my display server on the integrated GPU, but the CUDA task on the NVidia GPU, then I can use my laptop as normal.

I think mumax will just use as much compute as is available, which is why I expected the same experience even on a higher spec PC.

Sorry, what do you mean by display server? Is that another software package?

It's very normal to run CUDA tasks on a GPU and the monitors as well, there's nothing unusual about that. A lot of people are running full hardware accelerated GPU rendering labs or data science rigs, and they don't have an iGPU as no mainstream processor has one as there's no requirement for one.

If your laptop was struggling, I'd suggest that was something to do with the setup, but outputting a basic display takes no processing power whatsoever.

On a laptop you can't run both iGPU and dGPU at the same time anyway, it's one or the other controlled by nvidia optimus.

My guess is, it was actually configured on the iGPU rather than the dedicated GPU, and therefor ground to a halt.

 

[mikeyh30]

Sorry, what do you mean by display server? Is that another software package?

It's very normal to run CUDA tasks on a GPU and the monitors as well, there's nothing unusual about that. A lot of people are running full hardware accelerated GPU rendering labs or data science rigs, and they don't have an iGPU as no mainstream processor has one as there's no requirement for one.

If your laptop was struggling, I'd suggest that was something to do with the setup, but outputting a basic display takes no processing power whatsoever.

On a laptop you can't run both iGPU and dGPU at the same time anyway, it's one or the other controlled by nvidia optimus.

My guess is, it was actually configured on the iGPU rather than the dedicated GPU, and therefor ground to a halt.

I'm running ubuntu, so I'm referring to the x display server, sorry that I didn't specify earlier.

This was very helpful, and I think I need to go back and check on the setup that I have everything done correctly.

What I do know is that on my laptop things now work smoothly, and I interpreted that to mean that different tasks were being carried out by different GPUs; maybe I'm wrong and everything is being done on the dedicated GPU (it can't be on the iGPU though, as the simulations need to be on Nvidia). I'll go away and have a think about that, and once I figure out what's going on I'll then be able to define my requirements more clearly.

Thanks all for your help.