Hardware for Affinity

[Catshill]

I am planning a new computer and monitor system for my office. I have three questions in terms of the 1) CPU, 3) the GPU and 3) my choice of monitor.  I would welcome opinions and thoughts.

1) After considering an Intel i5 I've now decided on a Ryzen 5 7600C combined with 32Gb of 4800MHz memory. Are there any issues with running the Affinity suite with AMD Ryzen processors?

2) Advice on these forums and elsewhere appears contradictory. A couple of posters have suggested that it makes sense to get a £400 graphics card (such as the RTX 3070). However, I have read that graphic design only needs a modest GPU as 90% of the workload is done by the CPU/RAM. Given that I won't be gaming or doing much video editing work does a £100ish card make more sense. My PC manufacturer has said for the work I am doing the onboard graphics of my MBD (Asus TUF GAMING A620M-PLUS) is perfectly adequate. Who is right?

3) I currently run a pair of old 22" DVI panels. i. I started looking at a 32" ultra-wide monitor but I've been reading that ii. two separate 24" monitors would be better. If I went down that option would sub-professional (< £300) monitors be ok. Professional graphic monitors are out of my league.  iii. so now I am looking at using a 42" 4K OLED TV as a monitor. The LG C2 is a popular choice. Does anyone else run a similar set up.

 

Thanks for reading.

[v_kyr]

1) CPU wise usually there shoudn't, though I would go for 64 GB of RAM for a Win desktop system. Since having enough RAM in reserve is always a good thing to have!

2) As that's an expandable desktop computer mainboard, you can give the onboard GPU first a a good try and testrun. And if you find out that it isn't sufficient enough, you can always place (slot-in) a more powerful GPU then on demand.

3) It's overall a matter of taste here, I often used 2x 24"/27" monitor setups for development purposes, as that's what customers often provide as dev hardware for project related work. But in the company office mostly using a 38" curved ultrawide LG monitor. - Personally I would go with a curved ultrawide monitor here, as those offer a lot of customizable screen space, do need less cables and power supplies ... etc.

[Return]

TBH don't use a tv as screen.
I would go for the nvidia gpu as this is better supported in the affinities, amd not so much as the drivers aren't up to par.
I bought an i5 with rtx3060ti + 64gbRAM with 2x 1TB ssd drives recently.
I do have 2x 24"monitors hooked up on 2 displayport connections.
At least make sure that the psu is sufficient to support the screen(s) and other hardware.

If you still have the older pc I would go for a 2 monitor setup and hook both pc's to them.
2xdisplayports for the new and 2xhdmi for the older pc.
You can switch between the pc's screen usage to make use of both pc's.

 

[Catshill]

This was the system I ended up with. It works really well with the suite and is totally silent!

1 Dell 34" Ultrawide Monitor P3421w
1 AMDZZ346 3.9GHz AMD RYZEN 5 5600G 6 CORE CPU (TURBO 4.4GHz)
1 CPUZZ229 DEEPCOOL 200W CPU COOLER (DUAL FAN) - AM5/AM4
1 MAINB012 Gigabyte A520M DS3H Motherboard
2 MEMOR970 CRUCIAL 64GB DDR4 3200MHZ CL22
1 OEMZZ140 MICROSOFT WINDOWS 11 PRO LICENCE E-KEY (64-BIT)
1 PCCAS468 ITEC MIDI PC CHASSIS - ATX,mATX, 120mm FAN, SILENT CASE
1 PSUZZ070 750W DEEPCOOL SILENT POWER SUPPLY (80+ BRONZE)
1 SSDZZ127 2TB CRUCIAL M.2 nVME SSD DRIVE PARTIONED OS C AND DATA D