I want to blow cash on a new Daz PC build
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Posts: 396
Background: Due to an unexpected family passing, I had to immediately fly back home to the other side of the planet, and could not pack my Daz rendering PC. I now want to buy a new powerful and small PC that I can take on long flights.
I know Daz3d quite well but I dont really know computers, all I really know is that while my big old machine was reliable, pretty much everything needed to be better. I don't feel like learning to build, so I just want to buy one off Newegg or something.
Question - What do you all think of this one? https://www.newegg.com/msi-meg-trident-x-10td-1282us/p/N82E16883152686?quicklink=true
Or maybe any of these? - https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100897449 601357672 600014656&cm_sp=Tab_Gaming-Desktops_3-_-VisNav-_-RTX-3000_3&PageSize=96&Order=5
My budget is pretty big, so go nuts, but I do like "value". Trying to find something small yet powerful, money isn't really an object right now.
What's your dream machine, or what would you recommend?
And thank you!
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Comments
I'd recommend going with an online build house, such as OriginPC or CyberPowerPC (there are tons of others)...always that over buying off the shelf...if you can't do it yourself.
If money is no object then you definitely want to have one built. IMO Origin PC is one of the best. We've had 6 desktops and a couple laptops built from them and never had a single problem or part go bad in them. We had replaced stuff in them but not because they went bad but because they needed upgraded.
Strange you mention Newegg yet say money is no option. Getting a powerful PC that is small is your real problem. Mac laptops can be very powerful but your Daz glass will not be full. The truth is great graphics cards need water cooling and extra fans and a decent processor and ram and a decent sized case not to mention storage for hoarding Daz assets, and renders. And if you don't believe me google Daz Forum for problems some have with rendering the Corgi (dog).
After a long journey with over two dozen computer devices I would highly recommend you do your own homework. Find the best motherboard or system capable of upgrades. Stay away from proprietary systems and vendors the that require you to ship the product back for repairs. Go local. I have dealt with Cyber Power & Falcon (the latter builds Google servers) for custom builds but those had to be shipped out when anything went wrong. Make your own recipe. Find a local builder who will agree to do house calls for repairs or upgrades.
the issue is the small, take on flights part since small and ideal for DS and Iray are two seperate things
I'd avoid NewEgg. they haven't been reliably filling their orders.
Well, don't need to look any further to be honest...
https://www.boxx.com/systems/mobile-workstations/goboxx-slm
Easy to work with folk. Not that you'll need it, but tech supports about 3 phone rings away. Or later that day e-mail.
What I've been doing lately to keep renders going when I'm not in front of my computer is I installed TeamViewer on my PC and my iPhone so I can control my computer with my phone! So I know judging from your situation here that's not going to be possible since the computer you left is not by you, but what you could do now for the future is get a beast of a PC and a cheap laptop, connect the laptop to the computer via TeamViewer and work on that on the plane and leave the new PC at home. I know my gaming laptop I can't run Daz without it plugged into a power supply, but if you're just running the app on the laptop, you wouldn't need the juice to run Daz since it's actually running on your main rig at home! I went on a trip a few weeks ago but was working the entire time!
Ooh, this is a cool idea, I will look into it, thank you!
These laptops are pricey but they do look pretty sweet, thanks for the tip!
I bought my current system from Cyberpower PC ... they have the worst tech support I have ever dealth with. The 1st thing they tell you is to ship the system back at your expense, even when under warranty. They also use proprietary parts ... they will not help with overclocking or setup of BIOS, etc. The system as far as use is great though.
Gotta say...if you don't have the skill/knowledge to build your own system, I probably wouldn't recommend messing with overclocking in the first place. Leave that to the builder nerds, lol.
The one time I had to contact CyberPower support was when I had a system built and couldn't get it to boot into the OS. In addition, one of the exhaust fans wasn't spinning. This was right out of the box. Turns out that the M.2 drive the OS was installed on had become unseated (which I think is kinda hard to do if it was installed properly in the first place), and the fan in question had come unseated from the motherboard header (again, I find it hard to buy that it had come off during shipping if it'd been connected in first place). This all leads me to believe that there is a question surrounding their actual testing of the systems they put out. Anways...I called support and reported the issues. Thankfully I knew enough to be able to tell him exactly what the problem was, and fix the issues myself.
Also wanted to note that if you go through their configurator, you can, and absolutely should, swap out their generic crap parts for name brand components. Especially the PSU. Always name brand, top-end PSU.
true on messing with overclocking. I built my own systems for years but quit when I got lazy and have been buying off the shelf. The thing I didn;t realize was that ram is sold as being whatever speed, such as 3200, but the BIOS defaults to something much lower, so it is that you need to overclock to achieve that advertised speed. Even though they sold me 3200 ram, they would not help in configuring it correctly. It still will not oc ..something with the motherboard. what a waste.
Anyway, to stick with post, be careful where and what you purchase. Do a lot of homework prior to jumping off the cliff throwing out your $4K or whatever a decent system costs now.
I'll also cime in here with Digital Storm. I've done a few workstation builds with them and could not be happier.
I second Digital Storm. I'm getting ready to have a new computer built by them once my next check comes as the one they did for me a couple of years ago was magnificent.
Yeah, I honestly don't mess with RAM speeds either. Any time I enable the XMP profile to clock it at the higher speed I get instability, so it's just not worth it to me to deal with.
...being one of those "build it yourself nerds", I never bother with overclocking whether it be memory, GPU, or CPU. . As I am not into games I just don't see the need for it, and as I am on a tight budget, I like to make sure the hardware ha a long an healthy life.
"The candle the burns twice as bright burns half as long."
--Eldon Tyrell, Founder/Owner the Tyrell Corporation.
A big budget is something I dream about having, and I could put together a pretty hefty workstation using slightly older server/workstation grade components.
I've had good luck with XMP profiles on my machines. Yeah, it can depend on what features the Motherbord provides for using preset profiles and if they're up to date. And it can depend on whether your CPU is Intel or AMD. Also, some memories come preconfigured to work better for AMD systems. Especially if being overclocked. They could probably be made to work by manually tweaking the various parameters, but that's what XMP was supposed to eliminate.
But when I say "overclocked" I don't mean that I try to run the memory faster that it's designated speed. I'm just using the XMP feature to raise the base standard clock rate (2133?) to 2666 or 3200 or whatever MHz the rating of the RAM is. Overclocking beyond that is that dark place I dare not look.
thats what I'm trying to do, get 3200. XMP doesn;t work at all. System won;t boot. I had gotten it set with the help of the memory manfacturing tech support, but had a power outage and I had to reset the BIOS. It will not work after that for speed increase at all.
...indeed Motherboard specs will list the various common memory speeds but some of the numbers are followed by "(OC)", these are "extreme memory profiles". For example the specs for my P6T (yeah, running on old tech yet) it lists 1060 and 1333, as the "standard" profiles while 1600 (OC) and 1800 (OC) are the extreme ones. True it is not really overclocking. as it is not pushing those modules above their rating.
While it would be fun to go wild with this, you have two serious problems that are going to cause you endless pain: Trying to use a small form factor, and wanting to ship this PC on a plane.
The idea of shipping a PC on a plane is the biggest problem here. I would be absolutely terrified of this idea in almost any form. There are so many things that can go wrong here, and travel is usually not good for PCs. There are small form factor PCs out there, even some pretty beastly ones, but I still don't know how much I would want to trust airports with expensive and often delicate hardware. Most PCs are simply not built to be portable.
A large video card can become dislodged during transit, and can bend the pcie bus. Pretty much any component in the PC can get tossed around. And don't even think of any kind of glass.
Not to mention airport security may give you a hard time wondering its in the box.
But there are some options out there. Obviously, one would be a laptop. But laptops tend to have their own restraints. Another option might be streaming your desktop, but this can depend on the quality of internet, routers, and distance. I have personally done this, and sometimes it is great, sometimes it is less so.
A third option is to use an external GPU with either a laptop or mini PC. This way you do not need to worry about a laptop or mini PC's limited power, you can use any GPU you want and it would be uncapped.
So you could get a laptop, and then use an external adaptor to do the heavy rendering. You will need a power brick just for the GPU though, and if you want to use a powerful GPU, you will need a very powerful power brick.
There are some wild mini 3090 builds out there. Check this one out. It is also noteworthy that the person who built this does a lot of rendering, not gaming.
Here is a 5 month follow up on a very similar 3090 build (now using water cooling it seems) where he cleans it. This is another thing to think about, cleaning.
However, even though this small PC looks great, he mentions GPU sag in the first video. GPU sag is where the weight of the GPU causes it to slowly hang lower off the pcie. The reason why I mention this is because this indicates that the GPU can be moved around....which is something that can happen in shipping. You will need to make sure the GPU is extremely well secured, more secured than one normally would be. If you can add a bracket to hold the GPU do so.
You could show these videos to a PC builder and see if they can build a similar box for you. And make sure it is something that can survive being shipped around.
...I would never ever trust anything that expensive and fragile to airline baggage handlers. A folk musician friend of mine travelling back from a gig form Canada a couple years ago and someone from the ground crew accidentally drive a forklift into a luggage cart for his flight, piercing the case and destroying his the guitar that he had for many, many years. When he tried to file a claim with the airline, all they were willing to reimburse him for was the case, not the guitar. Airlines have become pretty chincy these days. Also, TSA agents do random inspections of checked luggage and will literally rip bags open and treat the contents roughly. There have been stories of people looking for their luggage only to discover all their clothing and personal items in a cardboard box with the damaged suitcase.
Airlines have also been instituting stricter carry on rules so the "box" needs to conform to their overall size restrictions. Some airlines also charge for carry on items or prohibit them altogether (like the "el cheapo" discount carriers or flying "basic economy"). Another thing to be careful about is some connecting flights may be on small regional aircraft where overhead carry on items cannot be handled. Away check your itinerary before travelling.
While I don't consider a notebook the best solution for a primary rendering system if you do a fair amount of travelling and want to work on your scenes while on the go, that would be the best option as they are easier to take on board and designed to be carried around. True you do get less for your money compared to a tower system, but no headaches or worry involved that transporting even a mini system along with a display and keyboard can cause.
If mobility is an absolute requirement, then you have no choice but to go with a laptop, because you sure as hell won't be dragging a desktop on to a plane with you and putting it in an overhead storage compartment, and I can guarantee you something like that will get damaged when its tossed around in luggage at some point. If you think UPS/FedEx/USPS is bad when it comes to handling packages, you should see what goes on in the luggage department at airports.
I've seen some of those clips on YouTube. Snuff films for baggage!
...indeed
The one where they are dropping the bags from the stairs was the same airline that destroyed my friend's guitar.
Although nothing is more disconcerting than looking out the window while you are still at the gate and see this:
No thank you, I'll stick to Amtrak instead.
If your looking to spend some cash on a desktop replacement this Sager (link) at Xotic PC is a really good option. Sager laptops (also Clevo) are build by one of the main Laptop manufacturers. Top quality at really good prices (your just not paying for branding/advertisement, the parent company builds a large percentage of the brand name laptops). I got my current laptop (MSI GT76 Titan) custom build by Xotic and have been very happy with it. At the time, I couldn't get a Sager/Clevo with 128Gb RAM, so I went with MSI. My previous laptop (that still runs fine) was a custom built Clevo from Prostar Computers.
LOL, that picture reminds me of when I got out of basic and then was in AIT. Soon as I got my off lockdown I ordered me a desktop and stuck it in my locker during the day. However, my drill sergeant, during one of the inspections of my quarters threw a fit when it was (VERY easily) found in my locker but they could not force me to ship it home because it wasn't against regulations. 2 entire months pay it took to buy that cheap *ss computer (it was a Packard Bell, but a computer is a computer, component wise).