My 9-year-old desktop is retiring this year: replacement thoughts?

[Kevin Mather]

Title says it all. I’m stuck with moving to Win11 (not thrilled, long story I’ll skip). The current GTX1060:3GB is out of gas, and no real upgrade path left.

I’ve been shopping around for mid-level-ish gaming desktops. I get the feeling that almost anything with RTX50xx, 32GB RAM, modern CPU will be pretty nice for Blender and video editing. (I don’t really want to spend a lot for VRAM > 8GB or ultimate CPU.)

[Grady Pruitt]

Blender and a lot of the video editing software programs out there actually can take advantage of VRAM (which is the RAM for the video card)  for processing. If you’re wanting a lower end, 8GB would be okay if you’re trying to keep costs down.

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi @techworker1 ,

If I were you, I would go for as much VRAM as you can afford. At least 8GB.

As far as I know, the difference between the 40xx and 50xx is mainly gaming optimisations in the 50 series. And (for instance) a better SuperSampling won’t do you any good in Blender and Video Editing. And I’d prefer 12GB DDR6 (in the 40 series) over 8GB DDR7, but that depends on the complexity of your Scenes (if you run out of VRAM, it’s speed doesn’t matter anymore).

Too bad you’ll have to switch to Windows11, but you’ll be getting an enormous boost anyway, by upgrading from the old 1060.

[Kevin Mather]

Thanks all. So I guess now I am leaning toward one with:

• AMD Ryzen 7 8700F 2024
• NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 5070 (12 GB GDDR7 dedicated)
• 32 GB memory; 1 TB SSD storage

I hope this one will last another 9 years…

[Martin Bergwerf]

That sounds good!

[Kevin Mather]

Purchase was made today! Very fast and quiet. Lots of boxes to move and dust to settle yet… 😉

[Wayne Dixon]

Congrats on your new machine Kevin.

Now just don’t ruin it and put Windows on it haha

Can he stick the landing?
I’m going to start a chant

Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux.
Wait why isn’t anyone joining in?
Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux!

Ok fine…..I’ll be over here on my high horse….by myself then.

[Kevin Mather]

I actually started preparing for migration more than a year ago. I dual-booted my old machine with Linux and hoped that would be the path forward. Blender and video editing worked fine (as well as routine activities of course). Unfortunately all my music production toys, and a few other items, are tightly tied to Windows. Music production is possible on Linux, but at present a bit messy and sketchy (another story).

I’m actually a big Linux fan – have used it professionally and personally for several decades.

[Author]

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