> The Perfect $3K PC > Conceptual Artistry > Multiple 4K Streams

COMMENTS

$3,000 Build Queries

First off let me say I am a huge fan of MPC as I have been reading for about four to five years. Now let me explain why I’m writing.

I am 27 years old and have been incarcerated in the MDOC since 2011. I say that to give you an idea of how much tech I have actually missed out on completely. Reading this mag is the only way I have been able to keep up with the times, even though I’m unable to experience it yet. Next August I am coming up for release and frankly, I am in need of some assistance.

I am looking to build a PC of my own that can handle intense gaming as well as streaming. I was strictly into MMOs, my go-to ones are Runescape and Worldof Warcraft, but I want to get into CS:GO, and League looks and sounds pretty epic.

For the rig, I wanted my budget, for just the tower, to be about $3,000 give or take. I don’t really have a preference of Intel or AMD, but I’m not going to lie—AMD is looking like the future. I also couldn't really care less about RGB lighting, if you ask me it’s a waste of time, money, and space. The easier the build the better, as this will be my first complete build, and I would love it to be as futureproof as possible.

I really appreciate your time, assistance, and everything you do to keep MPC in print, so fellow nerds, like myself, have something to look forward to every month. Even if my letter doesn’t make it to print, I hope you could still find the time to reply and give me some advice, but if you ask me a $3,000(ish) gaming build based solely on performance instead of all that RGB crap would be interesting. Before closing, I would like to also thank everyone at MPC, because without all of you, I would still think my gateway is the bees knees.

PS. Could you also suggest a dual-monitor setup for said machine as well?

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: Hi Lucas, thanks for writing in, so firstly just to answer the second part of your letter that we didn’t include here (word counts are the bane of my existence) r.e. A physical address to write in to for comments, I just want to say I’m looking into it. Your letter did reach us, and quite quickly as well (took 11 days to reach my office) so writing to Future US, 11 West 42nd street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10036, USA and dropping Maximum PC and my name in there somewhere does work.

I don’t know if that’s an official address we can use on a regular basis, it might just be a one-off. I’m going to chase that up with my line managers and see what the situation is, and then next issue, in comments and in the editor's intro, I’ll also add a physical address as well for people like yourself who don’t have access to the internet. We can incorporate that in somewhere in the page design on a permanent basis so everyone knows for the future.

As for your query, that’s a good question. That’s a lot of cash set aside for a rig, so you’re definitely in a good place for that—especially if you want to get into streaming. I’d recommend an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, Corsair iCUE H150i RGB Pro XT 360mm liquid cooler,

Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard, 64GB (4x16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX

DDR4 @ 3200, 1TB Corsair Force MP600 PCIe 4.0 SSD (for your OS and games), 2TB

WD Blue 2.5-inch SSD (for your recordings), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super (or a 2070 Super, and plump for a bigger HDD), a Phanteks Evolv X ATX chassis, and an EVGA SuperNOVA G3 850W power supply. Right now that should bring you up to about $3,014 or so. I’d then pair that with two 27-inch Acer VG271U Pbmiipx monitors, they feature a 2560x1440 res at 144Hz, with a 1ms response on a VA panel, which will get you started in CS:GO if you want to go that way, although eventually you’ll want a higher refresh than that, but for every other game they’d be perfect, and come in at $305 each: https://bit.ly/30ThPHI

One thing to point out: By the time you’re released I imagine things will have changed a bit, as Ryzen’s 4000 series should have launched, along with Nvidia’s 3000-series cards. So your best bet is to get back in touch closer to the time on our Discord or here! We’ll be happy to help out again then.

Concept Artist

Dear Sir, I would like to build a desktop PC for my daughter who is becoming a concept artist. I could just go out and

buy a gaming system, but

I’d rather put my money on a great build and have fun doing it. Would you have any recommendations on a past build that would point me in the right direction?

–Otis Campbell

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: This sounds like a really interesting project. I don’t have a specific build that comes to mind, but there’s a lot of similarities between that and the ITX system build we’ve done this very issue, and for one good reason. I actually do a lot of Photoshop design work in my own time. I started out my PC enthusiasm way back in the day through designing custom Worldof Warcraft UIs in 2007. I used to be known as Shiny Heart on wowinterface.com and built the Fundamental UI series. That’s neither here nor there, but it’s given me a good appreciation for the hardware requirements necessary to maintain that Photoshop hobby of mine. And I still dabble in it from time to time, although mostly building CVs for family and friends, and also photo manipulation.

For concept art in particular it’s obviously significantly different to image manipulation and UI design, but a lot of the hardware requirements are the same. I’d recommend high-speed, high-capacity memory more than anything (I miss having 32GB). It doesn’t matter too much what you go for processorwise as long as it’s at least a six-core, I’d say. Ideally you want six to 12 threads, and about 32GB of 3200MHz memory, and some really quick storage as well in the form of a PCIe SSD, and then a fairly decent GPU too—and by that I mean basically anything along the lines of a GTX 1650 or above. That’ll make things really snappy and responsive. Perhaps something like this https:// bit.ly/3iAduza inside of an

NZXT H210 ITX chassis. That keeps it small and portable.

The bigger thing I’d recommend, especially for a concept artist, would be to really look into peripherals and a decent monitor as well. Wacom’s Intuos Graphic Drawing Tablet is a fantastic solution for those looking to get into translating their physical artistic ability into the world of digital, and it’s fairly cheap at about $80. It does take some time to adjust to, but I’ve heard good things from folks who’ve used them at Future. As for a monitor, a decent IPS screen would be a good choice, and there’s a ton of flexibility with that. I’d recommend at least running a 27-inch 2560x1440 monitor. Refresh rate and response times don’t really matter here, so you could pick up an Asus ProArt Display PA278QV for about $286 or so, although prices for a screen like that start at $220 anyway. It all depends on how much cash you have available really. Photoshop

loves memory and quick storage though—always bear that in mind.

Super Home Server

Hi Zak, I hope all is well.

This is Kurt Kuhn, the guy who is looking to do a major upgrade for my personal server and PLEX. I have been doing this since 2000, using LaCie drives in the past, and now Drobo. I believe I have something like 92TB in operation of content, and still building with 4K now. Feel like ‘spec’ing’ out a system with me? Then recommending a builder?

My wife and I caught COVID-19 on July 5, and it has been a challenging month (some spent in the hospital), which is why I was delayed starting this process.

What do you believe the best processor would be to have multiple (maybe six) 4K streams happening at the same time? I am thinking of a Threadripper… What is the top dog these days?

EDITOR ZAK STOREY AND THE DOC RESPOND: Hey Kurt, glad to hear you’re on the mend! 92TB, wow that is a huge amount of storage, I imagine internet bandwidth is more likely to be the bottleneck than anything in that scenario, especially if you’re not streaming locally. Usually high-performing single-core performance does better in transcoding and streaming tasks like that than more cores. Although I’ve got to admit that’s an area that’s outside of my zone of expertize, so I’ll let The Doc chime in here.

The Doc’s humble QNAP Ts-251+ can handle multiple streams easily if there’s no transcoding involved—i.e., the devices streaming from the server can play the Doc’s H264 streams directly. But let’s assume transcoding will be involved—a good rule of thumb can found on this handy Plex page https://bit. ly/3fXYfyc that recommends a processor with a Passmark score of 12,000-17,000 for a single 4K stream (assuming it’s being transcoded).

The key problem is potentially the networking bandwidth required to service four to six 4K streams at once. Streaming those over the internet would be challenging enough the Doc suspects —Netflix recommends a minimum of 25Mbps per stream, so first and foremost, are you streaming locally or over the net (like the Doc can with a maximum of two remote streams—neither HD though in this case, thanks to his crappy five to six Mbps broadband upload speeds)? But it may be an issue locally too. You’ll need to look into whether a single (or even dual using link aggregation) 1Gbps Ethernet port is good enough, or whether you’d be better served upgrading to 10Gbps if most of those streams are staying local. Whatever happens, your server needs a direct line to the router—no wireless networking involved!