Recommendations for best PC

fiddleother

I use a Mac and I average a couple hours rendering a single picture, a full day or more to render 10 frame animations. Since my low end Mac does not allow for alterations and upgrades I’ve decided to go with PC. Any suggestions on what would be the best commercial (as opposed to built) PC capable of dramatically speeding up my rendering? I’d like to keep it around $1500 if possible.

thank you.

kenshaw011267

At that price point you're going to be better off avoiding the high end builders.

If you live anywhere near a Microcenter you might check out their store brand, Powerspec, the prices are low and the quality is decent.

vonHobo

I spent $1500 on a Alienware Desktop Aurora R7 at Best Buy a few months ago and I'm very happy with the speed and performance. 

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/alienware-aurora-r7-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-1tb-hard-drive-intel-optane-memory-epic-silver/6155310.p?skuId=6155310

They have a version of the same desktop with a GTX 1080 now too for a few hundred more.

I did however, purchase another 16GB RAM after purchasing the desktop, to bring it to 32GB... so I guess total cost would be $1800 after the memory upgrade.

You don't have to upgrade the RAM, it just makes life easier if you have to do something else on your PC while rendering.

 

fiddleother

Great input! Thank you.