The Forum Needs a Dedicated Hardware Section

outrider42

There are too many hardware threads scattered all around the site and they get buried quickly. There should be one place to find hardware discussion. One place where people can ask "Is this good enough for Iray?" One place for benchmarks, one place to talk about graphics cards, one place where users can talk about their pimped out Iray machines, one place to talk about what the next gen might be, ect.

Why? Page one of the Commons has two threads with the exact same name "new PC". And another about cyberpower. All three are asking the same question, and there are countless threads like these buried in the depths of these forums. Go to the Technical Help section and you find several threads about GPUs, and just general discussion about hardware. But the forum section is a HELP section that is supposed to be about Daz Studio's software, not a general hardware discussion.

It would make sense to have one place for all this stuff, and maybe people will find answers easier without needing to post a new thread. Of course that will still happen, I'm not so naive to think it wont. But people can be directed to that section. The Commons isn't really a good place for hardware topics, and the Technical Help section should be more about the software side than hardware. Existing hardware posts can be moved over as they are "unearthed" over time.

As a reminder, the forum software has a terrible search feature, which makes it doubly difficult to locate these topics. Many people do not know they can use Google to search the forums, and that is another reason to have a high profile hardware section that people can find. Its right there, next to Technical Help.

This might even get more people to browse the rest of the forums once in a while. It is no secret that the Commons are the most frequented areas here. Some people almost exclusively stay in the Commons, I do that a lot myself. Once informed that all hardware discussion has its own place, these people might browse into different sections once in a while and discover things they did not expect.

WendyLuvsCatz

a lot of those threads are look at my new PC threads 

outrider42

And so those threads could be consolidated to one place. Maybe even one or two dedicated "look at my pretty rig" threads.

Sven Dullah

outrider42 said:

There are too many hardware threads scattered all around the site and they get buried quickly. There should be one place to find hardware discussion. One place where people can ask "Is this good enough for Iray?" One place for benchmarks, one place to talk about graphics cards, one place where users can talk about their pimped out Iray machines, one place to talk about what the next gen might be, ect.

Why? Page one of the Commons has two threads with the exact same name "new PC". And another about cyberpower. All three are asking the same question, and there are countless threads like these buried in the depths of these forums. Go to the Technical Help section and you find several threads about GPUs, and just general discussion about hardware. But the forum section is a HELP section that is supposed to be about Daz Studio's software, not a general hardware discussion.

It would make sense to have one place for all this stuff, and maybe people will find answers easier without needing to post a new thread. Of course that will still happen, I'm not so naive to think it wont. But people can be directed to that section. The Commons isn't really a good place for hardware topics, and the Technical Help section should be more about the software side than hardware. Existing hardware posts can be moved over as they are "unearthed" over time.

As a reminder, the forum software has a terrible search feature, which makes it doubly difficult to locate these topics. Many people do not know they can use Google to search the forums, and that is another reason to have a high profile hardware section that people can find. Its right there, next to Technical Help.

This might even get more people to browse the rest of the forums once in a while. It is no secret that the Commons are the most frequented areas here. Some people almost exclusively stay in the Commons, I do that a lot myself. Once informed that all hardware discussion has its own place, these people might browse into different sections once in a while and discover things they did not expect.

I totally agree! Would make it much easier for everyone

kenshaw011267

Would work for me.

HoMart

+1

kyoto kid

...I'm on board.

FSMCDesigns

I'm all for it for the fact it will keep hardware posts out of the commons. With Iray and addons becoming more and more resource intensive, more and more users are struggling to get scenes to render and as such are looking for solutions, so I see it as a good idea to have a dedicated forum, even if it is a sub forum in the technical help forum.

3anson

plenty of forums all over the web that are dedicated to hardware, no need for yet another one here, lol!

outrider42

3anson said:

plenty of forums all over the web that are dedicated to hardware, no need for yet another one here, lol!

That doesn't stop anybody from posting now. And there are hardware threads scattered all around the forums. What I'd like to see is one space for these. So if you don't like hardware topics, you can avoid them even easier by not going to the hardware forum! The hope is to clean up the forums a bit and make this information easier to find.

Plus it only makes sense that Daz users would ask one the Daz forums about what hardware to use. Iray is very niche, and while other forums might talk hardware, very few ever cover Iray. More over, someone who has a Daz account, which all Daz users do since you need one to install it, why should they create an account on a unrelated forum to ask about using Daz Iray? The gaming forums aren't going to know, because what makes a good gaming PC is not quite the same. Even other render forums are not going to have perfect advice because Iray is not like other render engines.