New Windows PC? CPU/GPU combo for excellent performance?

[OlaJ]

Framing budget: Max €3500, preferably under €2500.

I’m planning on buying a new PC, and would like to take advantage of GPU acceleration in the Affinity suite, and also get great performance with DaVinci Resolve (free Windows version) for video editing. My current setup is so old (bought in February 2013, Intel Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50 GHz; Win 10 Pro; 16 GB RAM; GeForce GTX 660) that GPU acceleration isn’t available in the Affinity suite, and DaVinci Resolve runs painfully slow.

I have my eyes on the new Acer ConnectD 300 (Intel Core i7-10700 CPU @ 2.9 GHz (turbo 4.8 GHz); Win 10 Pro;  32 GB RAM; GeForce RTX 3070), which in Sweden will cost about €2100. Would that be an excellent and price worthy choice? Why, or why not?

Or should I go for a custom built setup? And should I then go for AMD or Intel as CPU, and which CPU/GPU combo gives most bang for the buck? Any other considerations, such as motherboard, RAM, SSD, etc? Is CUDA support important, or is OpenCL/OpenGL support enough? If someone has a parts list for a custom built PC to share, that would be very much appreciated – and probably of great help to others too!

Edited March 21, 2021 by OlaJ

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

currently nobody could answer your question . CPU will always be important for Affinity, and GPU support is not yet fully mature in 1.9.1.979. The required software changes may impact GPU performance unpredictable at this time.

Just spend a reasonable amount of money now, and be prepared to swap your PC in 2-3 years. The expected  Apple M2 could be another game changer - or failure. Apple M1 easily outperforms older PCs for far less money. 
Instead of  buying high-end PCs for lots of money and use them 5 years, you might get better results swapping your PC every 1-2 years and using middle-class. 
 

With high end, you get 30% more performance for 100%more cost, which will become mainstream 6 month later. To stay ahead of mainstream you need to swap more frequently

 

[OlaJ]

Thank you for good reasoning about buying a new PC. I’ll keep looking around, and may consider buying something “good enough”, instead of trying to max out everything. Since CPU is important, should I go for AMD or Intel? Friends I’ve asked say the newer AMD CPUs give more bang for the buck than the new Intel, especially when it comes to video editing, but Affinity suite performance is important too. I’ve seen there’s some issues with (some?) AMD GPUs, and wonder if that is a problem also for their CPUs?

[NotMyFault]

AMD CPUs rock. After i386, i486, i486DX2, Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium Pro, lots of corporate mobile Intel Laptops, a last private Core i5, i finally switched to AMD Ryzen. indeed mutch better bang for the buck.