Advice for PC build

[Steven]

Hi.

Thanks for the amazing site. I am building my first PC and it has brought my knowledge up to speed very quickly.
I have a similar build planned to a few recent posts on the forum but I have a couple of specific questions.
I am a designer and I am building my PC as a workstation. I use Adobe (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, After Effects) and also C4D/Redshift and want a mix of snappy viewport/rendering.

CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
CPU Fan - Dark Rock Pro 4
GPU - RTX 3080
Motherboard - MSI X570 Unify ATX
RAM - Corsair Vengence LPX 64
Storage - ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD
Power Supply - Seasonic Focus GM-650
Case - NZXT H710
Monitor - BenQ PD2700U 27inch 4K

Q1 - Will this 650 PSU be enough for my build including the RTX 3080? I can't find enough info on power for it right now.
Q2 - Do you think the 3950X is better for my needs than the 3900X? I can afford the 3950X but wondering about best performance across all my disciplines.
Q3 - My last computer died on me so I was thinking of buying and building all components now but adding a temporary GPU until I purchase the RTX 3080 on release/next month. Could you recommend a minimum spec and cheap GPU (hopefully under £150) that is compatible with my build that would allow me to use Adobe Illustrator only for now.

Any other recommendations for my build welcome.
Thanks for your time,
Steven

 

[Alex Glawion]

Hey Steven,
Great build! Yes the 650W should be enough for a single gpu, even the 3080. It is supposed to draw around 320W, so 330w for the rest of the system should be fine.

None of your listed workloads would greatly benefit from 16 cores, you can easily get the 12 core 3900x and probably wont notice a difference. If you were to use cpu render engines like cinema 4d standard or physical, then yes the 3950x is great, but with redshift you really dont need it. After effects too mainly benefits from high core clocks and not many cores anymore.

You should be able to get a 4gb 1050Ti for even less than that and will be able to use Illustrator with projects that are not too complex.

I see no issues with the build, go for it!

 

[Steven]

Ok Amazing. Thanks Alex, really helpful.

I have one more question about the RAM if that's ok. The X570 Unify specifications says it features a dual memory channel. I'm not 100% sure what this means. I was planning on buying 64GB RAM. Does this mean I should only use two slots? Or is there a benefit to either 2X32GB or 4X16GB?

Thanks

 

[Alex Glawion]

Mainstream platforms such as x570 or z490 have dual channel support, while hedt platforms have quad channel or even more (in a server environment). This just means that the bandwidth is doubled or quadrupled. For dual channel RAM to work you need at least two modules but can also use 4 modules with 2 modules on each channel. For quad channel on hedt platforms you would need at least 4 ram modules, but could also use 8, with 2 modules on each channel.

You don't have to worry about setting up anything for the channels, just be sure to get at least 2 ram modules. 2x or 4x doesnt really make a difference apart from having some free slots for later expansion.

 

[Steven]

Perfect. Thanks for explaining that.