Another Tech Recommendation Thread
Diomede
Posts: 15,168
time to rotate my computer stuff - my real life dedicated ‘puter is dying. Will shift my current 3D ‘puter to be the mundane stats/reportwriting machine, and get a new 3D machine.
please offer recommendations. Hardware budget roughly $1,500 (including tax and shipping). Would also like a pen tablet whether separate or as part of the main acquisition.
right now, I use Carrara, Hexagon, Photoshop Elemente, Howler, and Daz Studio. I am acquiring Substance Painter. Every year, I try at least once to learn Blender. I generally render stills, which are toon/npr, but plan to do occasional animations.
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Comments
If you want a Pen Display Tablet my daughter has a Huion tabet which she is very happy with.
She got the https://www.huiontablet.com/all-products/pen-tablet-monitor/huion-gt-220-v2-148.html
Here is a link to a 22 inch which can be your display as well as your tablet.
https://www.huiontablet.com/all-products/pen-tablet-monitor/huion-gt-220-v2-148.html
They are a competitor to the Cintiq tablets and come from China.
The only issue she has was the pen charging cable was faulty and took 2 weeks to recieve the replacement due to time to ship but customer service was very good.
You can also find them on Amazon.
Pen Displays are a lot easier to work with than the non display tablets as they allow you to work the way you have been taught since young drawing and writing on paper. it makes the hand eye co-ordination easier
I would also suggest liquid cooled if you can fit it in the budget. I have no worries about burning out my CPU letting it render overnight or longer as my temps never get above 60 C which is well under the design spec of my i7 chip.
Start with a smaller amount of RAM 8-16 Gb and just add a bit more later as it is an easy upgrade just buy the exact same version to ensure compatability. that was how I got mine to 32 Gb and have no problems fitting lots of Genisis 2 characters in my renders.
Doug
Diomede, I'm in the same boat, but maybe not as rushed.
I'm guessing that you want something more along the lines of a traditional workstation, with lots of cores and lots of ram.
For $1500, you can get a monster machine. There are a lot of used or reconditioned dual xeon workstations out there from Dell and HP which can be had cheaply. A good dual hex core xeon system would have 12 cores and 12 threads (basically 24 cores). That's a bunch of buckets.
As you use windows 10, you will have to make sure of compatibility with the older xeon workstations.
But, you don't need to buy a complete system. I have a local computer guy who will assemble whatever components I buy, for a flat fee of $80.
Newer processors with great power - at a lower cost - include the AMD Ryzen 7. The most expensive AMD processor is the Threadripper, with 16 cores and 16 threads. But at $850 all by itself, it will push your budget to the limit, and maybe a little over, when you figure in the costs of the motherboard, cooling, SSD, HD, at least 16 gig of ram, and a decent GPU.
Just some ideas.
bought a ryzen7 from cyberpower
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/category/gaming-pcs/
was under 1,000 initially. added to bring ram up to 16.
bought a hdd cloner, then swapped the 1tb for a 4tmb.
ssd slot sits empty. too mucho dineros
Thanks, folks. At times like this, I wish I was one of those folks who knows how to get the parts and assemble at home.
now that's a great challenge...
just do it
what could possibly go wrong
The only tricky part is the CPU into the Mother board due to all the small pins.
The store I get the parts from will garentee the CPU if they install into the mother board so that takes the stress of messing that up away. the rest is fairly easy.
They could also put the heatsink on or water cooler and mount it into the Case for a small fee.
Then you just have to worry about the rest of it.
I buy the parts for my computer separately and bolted them as needed at home.
I have a Corsair H100i v2 in my PC - it's a sealed unit watercooler - all the benefits of watercooling, but the ease of use of a fan (and much easier to fit too!)
To be honest, most of the hard work building your own PC is in routing the cables so they look neat while going where they need to. Modern Intel CPUs have the pins on the motherboard, so fitting is simply a matter of placing the chip on the pin bed (there are notches so you can't get it the wrong way around) and closing the retaining clamp.
I've been getting machines built by a one man company in Houston for many years. Here is what we agreed on recently: Gigabyte B250 MB, Intel I7-7700K, 16GB DDR4 2400, 2x2TB Hard Drives, Corsair Case, 650 watt power supply, ASUS GTX 1060 6GB video card, Win10 Pro, card reader, Coolmaster Cooler. The twin hard drives are for Casper's bootable backup software from Future Systems Solutions. It runs fast with Carrara animation renders. He advises not turning it off, since the components are pretty durable, no bulk items, so when not running it "Sleeps" mostly.
Wow, I've never seen it as low as $700. Where was that?
Good advice in general.
Thanks!
Oh, yeah, I can wait. I have two 'puters, one for professional, and one for hobby. Try to keep them absolutely separate. The professional is dying. Can try to navigate having a single 'puter for a while. There are some issues, but not insurmountable.
Even better, 699$ and 30$ off a mobo for a 16-core/32-thread beast, not sure if you are from the USA (AVAILABLE FOR IN-STORE PICKUP ONLY.):
http://www.microcenter.com/product/483132/Ryzen_Threadripper_1950X_34_GHz_16_Core_TR4_Boxed_Processor
Looking at CPU benchmarks and Cinebench scores, which I guess is closest to Carrara and DS, the 1950X has the best render-bang for the buck.
(Make sure to get an air or water cooler that covers the whole base of the TR4 sized CPU.)
3drendro, you are a master shopper.
There is a Microcenter close by, but I am just not ready to get my beast yet.
Thanks!
really need 2 these days.
leave 1 rendering, can still play on the other.
3 even better lol. setup an animation, run it, set up next scene on puter2
switch back and forth to setup scenes.
play on the third.
Thanks, in the mean time, you can look for good coolers.
There is basically one air cooler which is better than most water coolers, the Noctua NH-U14S
But there is at least one proper water cooler that covers the whole TR4 CPU base, the Enermax Liqtech 240 Liquid Cooler
Some tests here: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3089-threadripper-cooler-comparison-full-coverage-liquid-vs-air
It is proving to be more difficult than I thought to use just one computer for both biz and pleasure. Inadvertent disclosure on the biz side would be very bad. Will probably have to take action soon.
Here is a recent review of graphic design oriented stuff if anyone cares to comment.
https://www.creativebloq.com/features/best-laptops-for-graphic-design
.
Threadripper 1950X's (1st generation) are basically now $599 at Micro Center if you buy one with a compatible motherboard.
The Ryzen 2700X 2nd generation (8 core 16 threads) is now out at about $320. Getting fabulous reviews.
Hard to go wrong these days.
The Intel 7960x which is the 16-core with the same Cinebench render score, costs 1400$ at MC and more at other places, makes the AMD 1950X 16-core a super deal.
Basically a complete AMD rig for the price of an Intel CPU.
Thank you for the helpful resources, everyone.
hya Ted I bought this 12 months ago
it goes good - I don't play games - just use photoshop elements and Carrara mainly at the same time - plus a few image editing things eg Oloneo at the same time
Carrara has been crashing when I try to render 90 inches by 120 inches at 300 dpi so I just render in 2 sections
$2600 oz so probably much cheaper there
have a look at the render times for that test render posted a while ago https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/228556/carrara-benchmark-scene-and-results/p1
AMD Ryzen 1700X 8C/16T CPU OC
ASUS Prime B350-Plus motherboard
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Turbo Cooler
32G DDR4 Kingston Ram
256G SSD M.2 Intel 6 Gen PCI Express + Seagate 2TB HDD
ASUS 8G GeForce GTX 1070 PCI Express
Cooler Master MasterBox 5 + 650W Power Fractal Design
22 Speed DVD RW ASUS
Built in Gigabit Lan USB 3.0 SATA 3.0
Windows 10 Home 64
2 X 2TB HDD Seagate No Raid.
HI Diomede :)
firstly,. I've never bought a computer,. just the bilts i want,. all the parts are designed to fit together with common sense,. (no previous electronics of construction knowledge required)
it's the way PC's were designed to be used,. upgraded easily by the user.,. whereas Apple chose the opposite route,. buy the new one, throw away the old one.
so,. I may not be the right person to offer advice on buying a computer.
buy a case and build your own,.. would be my advice
I need to upgrade my motherboard/cpu and ram soon-ish,. so this thread offers some interesting thoughts.
I currently have a dual boot system (work/play),. i also have a couple of external drives to Store "important" files,.. one for each system.
hard drives are relatively cheap,. and switching between systems is just a reboot,. plus you can still access files and folders on both drives from whatever boot you select.
Liquid cooling,
I have a sealed loop unit (silent knight) which fits onto the cpu, and has a central fan and fins to keep things cool.
despite the obvious fears associated with having liquid and electronics in the same area,. i'm really happy with how it works,. no problems,.
the problems i've read about seem to be ones where there is an "open" system where coolants can be added by the users.
Hope it helps :)
Thank you, Headwax and 3DAge for this advice. I am overly cautious about building my own. Afraid I will cross wires and blow up the neighborhood. But I will consider giving it a go. It is the one for pleasure, after all. There are plenty of helpful resources available.