Help buying computer for Unreal

As I have used the Unreal Engine for the past few months on a Macbook Pro Mid-2012 retina, I have noticed that I need to get a new computer since the editor simply performs too slow on my machine with a medium-sized scene.

I have done some research and have come to the following specs:

Asus-Z97M-Plus LGA1150 motherboard
Corsair Vengeance Pro Black 16gb RAM 2xGb
Intel Core i7 4770K Quad-Core 3.5Ghz w/ Hyperthread
256Gb SSD
(+ case, 600W power supply, and basic stuff)

For everything, except the videocard (which I haven’t figured out yet), the build comes to $1264 CAD on NCIX.com*

I have two questions

  1. Is it, in your opinion a good price for what I am getting?
  2. Are the specs well suited to Unreal Engine 4, would you spec the system differently (ex. better processor for the money) and which videocard would you recommend? I have a $1500 CAD budget

Thank you very much for your help, it will be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: I am a 3D artist and I am going to be doing my college demo reel in UE4. I’d love to be able to use UE4 without lag.

Great! Thanks for your input. To be honest, I had no clue it was overkill. And since money is a concern, me having to spend less is all the better.

Could you confirm if yes or no my hypothesis that my laptop isn’t powerful enough for good Unreal performance is true? (i7 2.3Ghz, 8Gb of RAM, Nvidia Geforce 650m 1Gb, 256gb SSD) It doesn’t seem to perform very well (10-20 fps in the editor under medium settings), so I’ve assumed that I need a more powerful machine.

Again, many thanks. PS As I’ve been working on an SSD for the past two years, I do see some benefits while loading/saving files that are worth it for me.

well first of all your build is complete overkill yeah i recomend having 16GB of ram but a 17 4770k is OVERKILL you could do just fine with a i5 mid to higher end CPU and you dont really need a ssd unless ofcoarse you’re running a REALLY big scene with tons of assets. i have a 16GB of ram computer with a 770, i7-3820 CPU and a 2TB hybrid drive and i run like clockwork at full settings its perfectly fine but still overkill go for a mid to high-end computer and you’ll be set there’s no sense in spending the extra cash for no real benefit

The Graphic card is too slow. That’s why it is putting you down to only 10-20 fps. You can change the graphic settings in the UE4 Editor. But if you want it in full details, you need a better one.

I guess for a long living graphic card you could buy a GeForce GTX 970. I just bought mine and it runs the Next Gen Games with 40+ fps. So Unreal will run well too. 16GB Ram are ok. The CPU is way too big! You can buy a slower one there if you want to save money. A SSD is great to improve speed and i would recommend everyone to buy one to speed up windows.

Hi, I can just tell you what I got, and it works good, projects compile fast, I am currently developing for mobile thou, so I haven’t done much testing on anything very complex yet.

AMD FX 6300 six core 3.5 (4.0)
8GB ram ddr3 1600
NVIDIA Geforce GT 630 2048mb

As you can see my system is nothing special and not expensive ,
I have 2 more free RAM slots on my motherboard so I plan to add more, but it doesn’t seem like I need it yet, I am at the moment saving money to buy a good MacBook , so I can start developing my projects for iOS too.

I can recommend the /r/buildapc subreddit (reddit.com/r/buildapc) for this or the #reddit-buildapc channel at freenode.

I’d get a i5-4690k, a z97 capable of SLI, some nice air cooler, a GTX 970 a MX100/840EVO SSD and some nice case like the S340. Not sure about the PSU.