Best place to design & build new computer for DAZ
LeatherGryphon
Posts: 12,085
I think I really need to bite the bullet and finally spring for a new computer. I don't want a monster machine, but I do want a desktop with a modern bus architecture, lots of slots, adequate cooling, more than adequate power for a decent graphics card even if I have to skimp on the graphics card for the time being. I can't keep up with current and near future design criteria I need an expert who can put them together for me. Price is an object, I have a limited budget but I want something that's designed by profesessionals who know the details of compatability and quality. Who provides such services? If I have to I'll get a premade machine from one of the big computer warehouses but I'd kind of like to specify a custom or near-custom machine. I'd like to pick and choose my options.
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https://www.ibuypower.com/
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/
I have had mulitple PCs from both with no issues
More expensive, but more high end also
http://www.digitalstorm.com/
...odd that on their top end model, DigitalStorm doesn't offer multiple Xeon configurations or Quadro options save for dual GP 100s Was looking for dual 12 core Xeons and dual P5000s.
OK, lowering my expectations.
How about this machine? https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-128gb-solid-state-drive-2tb-hard-drive-recon-blue/6189101.p?skuId=6189101 I'll have to eat clover soup for the rest of the summer but on the surface it looks like it would satisfy my needs with perhaps some possible upgrades if necessary later. How old is this design? I'm curious about CPU features, bus speeds & compatability with newest board types. And reliability of Dell hardware & service these days. Is the GTX 1060 Graphic card OK for Iray DAZ rendering? 
It apparently has no optical drive but I have a brand new DVD drive still in its box somewhere around here and I have a BluRay reader that I could transfer from my current machine if I wanted to.
I've always had HP machines, never had problems with them except expected old age problems. Dell used to be great machines and great company but I've been hearing differently lately. True?
I would never choose a Dell or HP machine if I had to, way to proprietary and limiting, especially with any upgrade path.
if you don't mind me asking, what is your budget?
Unfortunately I don't think there's every been a sliver bullet in terms of the "best" place to get a PC. Dell, HP and others have been around for decades for a reason. They're generally pretty good, keeping in mind that any vendor has a certain percentage of duds because hardware isn't perfect and some stuff will fail. So it's guaranteed if someone says "oh, HP is the best I've never had a problem", someone else will say "WHAT? it's junk !!!" based on the fact that they had 1 in 10,000 units that had a problem. Or, they did something goofy and caused a problem.
Personally, I tend to buy my own components and plug them together. It's not rocket science, and you can copy what's out there and just buy the same parts. However, this can end up being more expensive than going with a Dell or whatever. And keep in mind you can customize with most of these vendors. So it's just a matter of going around and seeing what everyone has. Just remember if you use a pre-made unit from someone like Dell or Best Buy or HP, etc., they tend to make them non-upgradable for the future in order to save costs. That can be a huge pain when you want to add a GPU and you can't fit it and have to toss your MB and case and power supply.
As far as your questions...
No, optical drives are pretty much irrelevant nowadays since just about every software can be downloaded, and you can fit tons of stuff on a thumb drive. A GTX 1060 is fine, I have one on my backup machine. Of course it's not as fast at the 1070, etc, but you get what you pay for.
You may not need a fancy 356 core processor, since few apps actually use that, in favor of a GPU. Personally I'd focus on system RAM, GPU, and hard drive for most users. Again, it depends on what you're going to use it for. Make a list of your most important apps and see what hardware they require
This is where I've gotten my last 6 Computer LX you get to pick absolutely everything that goes into the computer. Fantastic quality and have never had any issues with a computer from them. Good warranty, fast delivery.
$1200 is stretching it.
...they still offer W7 Pro as an OS option and yes, their prices are very reasonable. I like that. The one downside is only 2 drives. Normally I'd go with a 500GB boot SSD, a 1 TB Library SSD, and a 2 GB enterprise/data centre quality storage HDD.
If you order over the phone you can request more than 2 HD
Is your old computer completely unusable? Or have you promised to give it to someone as a hand-me-down? Because if not, you can probably salvage most of it and save money on an upgrade. CPU speed isn't really critical (in Iray) as long as you have 4 cores or more. You can get by with less, but that may be a bottleneck to performance. System RAM is important. If you already have 8 gb, you can survive with that, but 16 would be better. GPU is going to be the biggest factor if you're using Iray.
What's your current setup?
...CPU speed is still important for other operations as well. It can also be handy should you have a low to mid range GPU card (like a 1060) and rendering dumps to the CPU and physical memory.
I do agree that 16 GB of system memory is now the "new" minimum for this sort of work. I have only 12 (well 11 available after W7 and system utilities) at the moment and when rendering in CPU mode, I often find it dumps to much slower swap mode, as due to Iray being integrated into the Daz programme, I have to keep it and the scene open during rendering which can tie up a significant portion of my system's memory resources. For 3DL that was more than enough, for Iray, not so much.
On the HDD/SSD thing...
Always remember that you can add another, decently sized drive later, if you are looking to pinch pennies for now. I'd recommend an NVME SSD for the OS/Daz stuff, and a HDD for storage (backups, data files, etc.). I'd suggest not going smaller than 512GB on the SSD, 1 TB is better, but your budget will dictate that. If need be, you can put off the 2nd drive for later.
The reason I recommend an NVME SSD is that the M2 NVME drive interface is very fast (much faster than SATA), and those are now 'standard' on a number of motherboards these days.
If you are just getting started with Daz, 512GB of storage space will last you for a bit, but you WILL need to get a second drive eventially.
Drives are fairly easy to install, hence why I'm recommending this. The OS is a bit harder to install, so you are better off just getting a decently sized SSD for that in the first place.
Also, there's always the USB/External HDD option for backups, if you are afraid of doing your own install, which again you can pick up later as your budget allows. Decently sized external HDDs are fairly cheap these days. But if your desktop system has space for more HDDs/SSDs, that may be preferable for everyday use.
As for ram 16 GB is recommended, 32 GB is better if you can afford, anything over 32 GB is overkill. If your desktop choice comes with 4 DIMM slots, think about getting 2 sticks at 8 GB each in your install, so that the other two slots are available later should you wish to upgrade to 32 GB later when your budget allows.
Finally, on the graphic card, if you are doing Iray (the majority of us are), yeah more VRAM good. 8 GB is a good choice, but based on your (implied) budget, you may need to settle for a 6 GB card. I personally wouldn't consider anything less than 6 GB if you are doing Iray, unless you can't squeeze a 6GB card into your budget.
Try to make sure that the motherboard of the system you are looking at has two or more PCIe-16 slots. 3 would be nice, 4 is nice too but the gain between 3 and 4 graphics cards isn't as significant as 1 to 2 (almost twice as fast), or 1 to 3 (3 times as fast). 4 times as fast with 4 cards sounds cool, but in reality you only decrease your render times by another 8.33% (25% vs 33%), plus your system might not have enough PCIe lanes to fully utilize 4 PCIe slots, at least at the price range you've implied.
Really if you can eventually end up with a pair of graphics cards, plus maybe the integrated graphics to run your monitor and viewport separately while you are rendering, that may be all that you will need. Again, looking to the future here.
...good suggestions. Yes dedicating the main GPU to rendering is the way to go, particularly if you are stuck with W10.
You might consider this CyberPowerPC computer with an up grade to the 6 GB GTX1060 (instead of the 3GB one): https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Fathers-Day-Special-I
It is currently on sale and with the GPU upgrade comes to $1262 which is close to your budget.
Edit: the only custom PC I ever bought was a CyberPowerPC I got three years ago and I have been quite happy with it.
Mine is 5 yrs old and have had to replace the power supply just weeks ago and I replaced the GPU just for Iray.
Well if you want the newest PC tech at the most reasonable price you have one choices, ACER. Go to Amazon and search. The upgradability is limited but you say your budget can't afford a $1000 PC so a $1000 video card if you buy one, you will probably only buy one. And that computer only has space for 1 video card. The PC I link too compres with 256SSD or 2TB HD and 12GB RAM which can be upgraded to a maximum of 32GB RAM.
i5 - $499
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B073YHNPC6/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_36?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
i3 - $359
https://smile.amazon.com/Acer-Desktop-i3-7100-Windows-TC-780-ACKi3/dp/B071DM6TWM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1529171186&sr=8-4&keywords=asus+desktop
unfortunately no ACER i7 that I could find which would reduce CPU render times by 25% - 33%.
ASUS seems to have left the cheap, entry level PC market although you can find old 6th generation intel PC from ASUS on Amazon they are overpriced.
Compare similarly spec'ed HP computer - $550
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XDQLT7Q/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_168?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1
And if someone tell you you can build an entry level PC cheaper than those ACER models, you can't. It is true it's pretty easy to build a highend PC cheaper than you can buy pre-built though.
I put together a price list to build an entry level PC using an intel 7th Gen i7 CPU or using the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G (has built in AMD Vega GPU on the AMD CPU) and that price was about $750 for either.
I could buy a cheaper CPU like the AMD Ryzen 3 2200G or an 7th gen intel i3 or intel i5 and I could reduce the RAM from 16GB single stick to an 8GB but that would really be a bigger waste of money because that would drop about a 50% improvement in CPU/GPU speed and I'd only save about $100 for a cost of about $650.
I could further buy the cheaper power supply and cheaper case to save about $50 each on both of those to big the price down to about $550 but again if you are going to build a PC it makes sense to buy a rock solid case & power supply so you don't have to waste money on them again and that will be about $100 for the case and $100 for the power supply.
Storage I am buying a 512GB SSD at $120. I'm not going to find a cheaper worthwhile option because a regular HD is not an option.
Motherboard you want a gaming motherboard that has wifi and can handle at least 32GB RAM and 64GB is better - because one day RAM prices will be cheap enough again to have 32 or 64GB RAM. The RAM is not something you have to replace if you buy the highest capacity single sticks they have. Corrently a single stick 16GB DDR 2400mHZ RAM costs about $175 so you don't have the opportunity to save money there because buying anything less than a 16GB single stick if you build a PC yourself would be a waste of money.
Of couse if the next big improvement in PCs is that SSD are sped up and integrated as a new type is streaming storage RAM then you might have to save for a new motherboard and SSD storage to take advantage. I think intel's version is called optane.
CPU is the problem, my current main machine is a nice machine but it is about 5 years old now and the CPU is one of those early Intel i5 with only 2 cores instead of 4 and the socket doesn't permit adding a better chip (or at least it didn't when I checked a years of so ago).
Also, I always like to have two decent machines available. My current spare is way older than my main machine. It was originally a WinVista that's been upgraded several times (Win7, Win8.0, Win8.1 to Win10) and now has lots of problems that are making me tear my hair out so I'm giving up on it.
I planned on moving my current main machine into the spare role and getting a new machine for the next 5 years.
My current main machine started out as a Win7 Home and has been upgraded to a Win7 Pro. I'd like to keep it that way. It's jam packed with oodles of touchy software. It's also maxed out on memory capacity at 8GB. It's just time to put it out to pasture.
..i3s and i5s don't have hyperthreading which may be an important factor for other applications. Also you can designate cores/threads to different tasks thus spreading out the power of the CPU among different programmes if you do a lot of multitasking. .
The other matter is any Intel CPU from Kaby Lake on requires W10 (there are people who have been able to get AMD's Ryzen CPUs working with W7 and considering the OP's expertise, this may be another possibility). W10 Home Edition is the worst as you cannot defer updates (which could help avoid bugs) and does not offer the administrative options that Pro Edition does. Last week in ZDNet there was an article about MS purposely letting some bugs go through in a given update/patch and tackling them later. Being able to defer for a month or two would likely allow for those fixes to go through. Also again, as W10 reserves a portion of VRAM, a low cost system may have mediocre on board graphics (or barely adequate PSU if you decide to use a second lower power card) for the display should you consider dedicating the main GPU up for rendering which would bypass W10 WDDM.
Personally I like the offerings on the Computer LX site as they also have a W7 Pro option.
I think you'll find that with most software developers that is fairly common, and nothing out of the ordinary. You have a LONG list of stuff to work on, and you spend time working on the code, and then you spend a lot more time having it tested so it doesn't blow up everyone's machines, and in the meantime more stuff gets added to the already long list. But practically you usually can't cover everything in an update, especially with something so complex and widespread as Windows. Unless, I suppose, you never stop developing and never release an update. And that's pretty much the case with any complex bit of software. It depends on how long the list is, how many resources you have, and how long it takes to code and test, and the relative priorities of the issues.
After I retired from corporate computer stuff I "hobbied" at fixing other people's computers, I resolved lots of customer's software issues and viruses and pilot screwups but I found from my experience that almost always if there was a an actual hardware problem it was with an Acer or an "e-Machine" either that or a lightning strike. Personally I've always bought new HPs and I adopted a couple of old Dells for myself. Only problem I've had was with hard drives over 6 or 7 years old and a fan a couple of times and a powersupply once. My current primary machine is an HP is 5 years old and it's been maxed out so I've reached a performance wall, but it works fine. However, my spare machine is an old HP Vista machine (upgraded several times to make it Win10) that has an intermittant problem that's driving me up the wall. Too many upgrades, hardware too incompatible me thinks, either that or some 10 year old component is fading. I have no bias against HP machines but I always bought the upper middle or high end of their offerings. But I've seen a lot of low end HPs that worked for years and years in typical home consumer situations.
I would also recommend talking to one or more of the custom computer houses first before you buy off the shelf. You can contact them with your budget needs and intended use, and they will have someone work with you to try and build the best system for your budget.
Building primarily for Daz and Iray is not like building for video games. In most systems, you can bottleneck your software when you skimp on certain things. A slow CPU can bottleneck what your GPU can do, and the reverse is true. But like I said, Daz Iray is NOT a video game. The program runs in fundamentally different way from video games. A video game is constantly swapping data in and out in its effort to feed the display 30, 60 or more frames per second. But Iray is not doing that. The entire scene is loaded to the GPU, and pretty stays there. That is why the scene must fit into a GPU's VRAM in order to use the card.
So what this means is that the GPU is THE most vital part of all. If you look through the benchmark thread, you will find a few people who installed new GPUs into very old computers, like Core 2 Quad old (that's about ten years.) These machines ran the Iray benchmark in pretty much the exact same time as completely new machines with the same GPU installed. So I don't think there is any more to prove there, the GPU is all that matters. The CPU does not bottleneck a single GPU setup. The only time it did matter was for multiple GPU setups. Then a better CPU mattered. Just food for thought. I would not skimp on the GPU for a machine focused on Daz. If money is tight, then I would skimp on the rest of the machine instead. An SSD is sweet, but expensive. Odds are your Daz library far exceeds an affordable SSD. But I will say it is nice to have a small SSD just the OS and key programs. RAM is expensive right now, so if there is something to save for later, this it. You can get 16gb for now and expand it later. That will save a hundred or so easily.ebay - HP 870-213w OMEN Gaming Desktop Core i7-7700 3.6 GHz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD + 1TB HD 1070 Graphic card ( 8G ) = 1000 bucks
I got this one .
Thanks for all the information, opinions, and options. But in the end, I decided I needed a new mattress for my bed worse than a new computer.
Maybe new computer next year (which is what I said last year.) 