Looking for some advice on a PC build for Unreal

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Hello everyone!

I’ll try to keep this short so I don’t bore anyone, but I figured I’d provide a little background so you know where I’m coming from. I just recently signed up to the forums here because I’m beginning a new path in life, one which includes a plan to become a game developer once when all is said and done. I live in Sweden and have identified a 2-year course on game development (including an internship) that I feel would suit a beginner like me and will hopefully put me on the right path going forward.

However, I won’t be able to apply for it until next year, so the plan is to learn what I can on my own for the next 10 (ish) months and try to create some sort of portfolio in the meantime. But for that, I need a completely new PC (with a budget), something I haven’t really looked at for about 15-20 years at this point.

After doing some reading on specs, tips, advice, reviews, recommendations, etc., to try and catch up with PC hardware and what would work for me in this situation, I arrived at the conclusion that something of a “mid-tier” build that works for both Unreal and gaming in general would probably be a good first step, as I can’t afford the 4090s or Threadrippers of this world, but also want to somewhat “future proof” myself as best as possible… at the very least until I’ve finished the course in roughly 3 years.

There are 2 (+1) components I’ve been looking at that I’m currently struggling to figure out (CPU, GPU and motherboard) and would appreciate some help/advice on:

  • i7 14700K with an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB
  • Ryzen 7 7800X3D with an RX 7800 XT 16GB
  • Motherboard… any recommendations for both blue and red choices?

I’m not attached to any of these brands, I just want something that’ll work for me. But generally speaking, and for Unreal Engine specifically, are there any advantages/disadvantages to choosing certain brands over others? Would mixing and matching these in any way, shape or form be a mistake or can they work in harmony? I’ve seen lists of pros and cons and read/heard so many varied opinions on this that I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

Any tips or advice on this would be greatly helpful and appreciated, so for anyone taking their time to respond with insights, I thank you in advance!

/Kemszey

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Hello Kemszey, Welcome to the Forums. (And your new life path :smiley:)

Always happy to chat PCs. There’s no issues with ‘mixing brands’ - I’m running an AMD 3700X with a 4070 Super.

I think the GPU will be the most important component. Any 300-400$ GPU should be solid for the next few years. (And on the topic of Future-Proofing yourself, as long as you get a decent power supply (750W or more?) you’ll be able to confidently swap a newer GPU without worrying about power limits)

Similarly, any CPU around 300$ would be good for many years to come.

With motherboard, just look at what sort of USB inputs you’d want. There are different ‘chipsets’ so I’d just do a bit of research to find out if there are any features/differences you care about.

Check out https://pcpartpicker.com/ for more ideas/info/inspiration as well!

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Hello Astrotronic, thank you for the warm welcome, much appreciated! :smile:

Also, thank you for the information. After all the “research” I’ve been doing for the past few weeks I arrived at the same conclusions you talked about. And even though I often found that mixing the brands into a combo never seemed to be an issue, I wasn’t quite sure how truthful that was for working in Unreal specifically, so I very much appreciate you clarifying that.

I’ve settled on some things for the build, such as the case, RAM (64GB DDR5 6000-CL36), storage (2 M.2 NVMe drives at 1TB and 2TB), PSU (750W like you suggested) and monitor (1440p).

As for the CPU, and after some more research, I’m leaning towards either a Ryzen 7 7800X3D or a Ryzen 9 7950X3D (all benchmarks I’ve looked at point to both being great for gaming, but the 7950X3D being a bit better for productivity workflow, which would probably be great for UE due to more cores… am I thinking about that right?). There is a bit of a price difference, which is why I’m still undecided. And due to these options, I’ve looked at an MSI B650 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard with the appropriate AM5 chipset as it seems to have just about anything I need now and possibly want for a few years to come.

And the GPU? Well, this has probably been the hardest choice up to this point. As I was putting together the build, I’ve switched multiple times between the likes of a 4080 Super, to a 4070 Ti Super, to a 4060 Ti Super, to an RX 7900 XT, to an RX 7800 XT and a few others. The one thing I’m fairly sure about is that I don’t want a GPU with less than 16GB VRAM… the entire internet told me that. :smiley:

Just need to find a good combo so I can stay within budget but also try and get something I won’t have to worry about changing or upgrading for a few years.

Any tips or advice on this (especially anything that could bring the price down) would be most welcomed! Thank you!

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For cost-savings I’d go with 32GB instead of 64GB. (2 sticks of 16GB, then if you find that you’re filling up your RAM, you can easily add more later) (You can monitor RAM usage in the windows task manager (CTRL + SHIFT + ESC))

Also, you could start with just a single NVMe drive (I’d go with 2TB though).

1440p is the perfect resolution IMO. (4k is too much/requires more rendering power)

UE is NOT a multi-threaded application. More cores will only make a difference when compiling shaders. (Something that generally only needs to happen once per project)

I was just traveling for a month, and I stuck my 4070 Super in my Mini-ITX with a 6th-gen Intel i5 (a CPU from 2016) and I was able to comfortably use the editor. So I think a lot of people don’t realize how little the CPU matters…

I’d say any motherboard that’s on the top of Amazon’s ‘Best Sellers’ list should be good. (That one is high on it) - Intel likes to change their socket all the time, but going with AMD / AM5 socket should leave the door open for future CPU upgrades.

For the GPU, I’m biased towards Nvidia. They seem to be better at releasing driver updates, and DLSS 2.0 is legitimately good. I feel weird spending more than ~600$ on a GPU, maybe 800 if I’m feeling flush with cash. I don’t have any opinions on 12GB VRAM vs 16.

Now I’m wanting to see pics when you build it… :smiley:

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This has been some very useful information, I’ll tell you that!

I actually started the list with 32GB, then went up to 64GB. I’ve watched some more benchmarks focusing on the RAM for both UE and games after your suggestion and yeah, seems to be a good enough first step. The 64GB RAM I was looking at was on sale, but pushing this down to 32GB might give me some budget back to put somewhere else.

CPU and GPU. I must’ve misunderstood the situation about the cores, which means the 8 cores of the 7800X3D should be sufficient at this juncture. Couple that with the fact that you ran UE great with a 4070 Super, I have a better idea of what to get!

As for the motherboard, what you pointed out about future upgrades is the biggest reason I want to go with that one. Can’t obviously predict what things are going to look like in 2-3 years, but should I need an upgrade then, I feel more comfortable going with AMD/AM5 now.

And I feel the same about 1440p! I’ve seen a few spectacular nature documentaries in 4K, sure, but as far as games are concerned, I feel the bigger leaps in visual fidelity were taken years ago, so I feel more than satisfied with 1440p at this point.

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the reasoning behind going with only one NVMe? Just wondering because just about every site/video I’ve looked at suggest having a boot drive and a secondary drive. Or perhaps… do you mean having an NVMe boot drive and then a different one for storage?

In any case, this has been incredibly helpful and insightful, not to mention that you more than likely saved me quite a bit of money with the info and advice you provided, especially on the CPU and GPU which were the two components I had most doubts over. So a picture is the least I can provide, but my lack of knowledge and confidence actually building the PC by myself probably means you’ll only see when it’s ready and powered on, as I’m getting help with that part! :person_facepalming: :sweat_smile:

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Glad to be of help.

In the past when NVMe storage was expensive it made sense to have an NVMe boot drive and then a cheaper SSD or Mechanical (Spinning disc) HDD as the storage drive.

Now you can just drop ~150$ on a 2TB NVMe to use as boot and storage. (and then just easily add another m.2 or SATA SSD if you feel the need for more storage in the future.) (Check out https://windirstat.net/ if you start running out of space and aren’t sure what’s taking it up)

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That’s a good point. The fact that everybody was saying “get 2 drives” probably blinded me a bit to other options. Also, when I look over the changes I’ve made to the build based on your suggestions (CPU, RAM, storage, etc.), I realise that if I want to upgrade in the future, those components are the “cheapest” of the bunch to upgrade, compared to if I needed to change the GPU for example. Actually, some food for thought there.

I would like to think I’m slightly more knowledgable than I’m probably letting on, but the moment I signed up for the forums, I realised I was about to walk into an environment where most likely 99% of the people know a hell of a lot more than I do, so I needed to humble myself and just listen and learn, which I have. So again, this has been very insightful and helpful, and I greatly appreciate it!

Thank you!

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