Advice for Upgrading PC for Blender and Unity

Maefind

I am interested in learning blender and unity3D. I am interested in making my own 3D videogames and some short to medium length 3D animated films. I just want to do it as a hobby, not interested in doing it professionally. I am okay with sacrificing making these films with simpler non-photo realistic 3d models and characters or working within restrictions of what I can make in them if it means saving some money. I do not know exactly what budget to set because I don't know how much it would cost minimum to upgrade my pc so that they run smoothly. Ideally, I would like to spend less on upgrading my PC than it would cost to just buy a new PC that can run Blender and Unity3D out of the box. I also don't know if I can save up enough money to pay several thousand dollars on the upgrade. Nor do I know which of my PC components would need upgrading. My pc's current specs are: CPU - AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics, Motherboard - ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. PRIME A320M-K (AM4), RAM - 16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR4 @ 1064MHz, Graphics Card - 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (ASUStek Computer Inc), Monitor - LG FULL HD (1920x1080@60Hz), Storage Drive #1 - 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-08WN4A0 (SATA ), Storage Drive #2 - 465GB Seagate ST3500418AS (SATA ), Case - CORSAIR SPEC02 REDSHIFT ATX CASE, Power Supply - IPSG 430W 80+ FIXED ATX PSU, Cooling Unit - Corsair AF120 Blue LED Tuned for High Air Flow Translucent Blades Nine Ultra-Thin Fan Fins. I would appreciate any input as to which components would need upgrading, or what to upgrade them to for a minimum upgrade focused on performance, or what a realistic budget to set for the upgrade would be.

Aodhan_Gorman

Due to many of the parts in your system being at the same tier of performance it may be more difficult for you to do many worthwhile upgrades without a major overhaul of your system. The biggest thing I see that need improvement for blender and unity would be your video card. This would require a larger power supply as well seeing as many modern video cards are recommended to have anywhere from 200 to even 400+ Watts of power available to them which requires a bit of overhead on your PSU meaning anywhere from 600 to 1000 watts. Upgrading your video card may also result in a bottleneck on your CPU seeing as it only has 4 cored and no multithreading. But a CPU upgrade on a motherboard from the A320 chipset will me more difficult seeing as many of those motherboards have limited power delivery capabilities and even some missing features entirely for the newer AMD CPUs. Taking all of this into account, nearly 2/3rds of your computer is due for an upgrade already which may make a pre-built or entirely new computer be a better value.

3D modeling in general is a very taxing workload and even "budget" systems can cost well into the thousands of dollars. We do carry several prebuilt systems that offer a more capable upgrade path starting around $1000~ish that would not only supply you with a very solid foundation to begin, but also to build up from as well!

Maefind

Thank you. That information was very helpful.

Aodhan_Gorman

You're very welcome! Let us know if there is anything else we can help out with!