What should I Upgrade In My Build For Gaming and Rendering?

FyrePixel

Honorable
Feb 12, 2014
5
0
10,510
Hey professionals of the internet. I have a gaming/working PC that I use for gaming and recording HD 1080p video. I also use it for editing and right now I’m using it for 3D animation and rendering. The renders that I am doing are 1080p mental-ray AutoDesk Maya renders, and last night I rendered 120 frames of animation and started at about 6:15 and ended at 11:00 PM, in the render log. I didn’t mind that it took that long, but it was just a pain in the butt, as I have so many shots to animate and render that I need to either speed it up to 1 hour for 120 frames, or be able to animate while it’s rendering. I don’t wanna turn the quality down, don’t ask me to do that. Anyways, I was wondering what I should upgrade in my PC with $220. Here are my current specs:
8 GB of Premium Corsair Vengeance RAM red at 1600 Mhz DDR3
Intel core i5 @ 3.00 / 3.2 turbo no overclock available.
Nvidia GeForce 760X twin frozr 2 GB(I’m pretty sure that’s good enough)

So I’m pretty darn sure I should upgrade my RAM, so can you guys link me to some good RAM, and you know, best buy for under $220. It needs to be worth it. Anyways, thanks for the help in advance.


Ok here's the next edit:
I have a quad-core i5 running @ 3.00/3.2 turbo-boost technology from intel, I'm pretty sure it has 8 hyperthreads. Or 4. I guess i7 with overclocking would be good, but the issue is that, do I have to add on 70 dollars for a fan? or would the stock CPU fan work? Thanks for the quick reply.
 

Adroid

Distinguished
A newer i7 hyperthreaded CPU would offer you the most benefit. 8GB of ram should be plenty. I would recommend a 3770 or 4770 CPU, but I understand that is over your budget at around 320$. What i5 are you currently using? It's hard to make a recommendation without knowing more about your PC.

Your best scenario would be to buy a 600$ i7 4930K and overclock it, anything under that would be up to your budget.
 
Dear from your description it is clear that you are more into rendering than gaming. which i5 you are using? Here are two options for you: -

Go for i7 extreme edition or even better go for XEON series processors from Intel. Given your workload simple processors won't do much for you. You'll be better off with either extreme or xeon. Sorry for your budget. But what you really need is the besttttttttttt CPU.