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...+1
If you go with a custom build house, as I mentioned, some still offer a W7 Pro "Downgrade" which will save a few zlotys.
..OK in reading through this and poking around on the net a bit what I get is:
The MB on your existing system is an ATX board with and X58 chipset, LGA 1366 socket, and six DIMM slots that support up to 24 GB of DDR3 memory in tri channel mode. That sounds similar to the ASUS P6-T I have in my system. According to my research the actual MB in your system has an HP IPMTB-TK MB which only supports 1066 MHz memory (the P-6T supports DDR3 1333 and 1600 (the latter in overclocked mode). It also does not support the Extreme i7 (6 core/12 thread) CPUs.
The CPU is either an i7 920, 930, or 950 most likely with the stock Intel cooler.which is adequate for general work, but for 3D rendering or gaming I would consider sub par. On my system I installed a large aftermarket CPU cooler with heat pipes and there is also a large 240 MM case fan on the left panel.
While the specs mention 2 PCIe 2.0 x 16, the IPMTB-TK MB spec sheet lists only one with a x4 and an x1 slot for audio/television, so a bit of a contradiction there.
Based on the specs for the HPE-180t, on their site, the PSU in your system is only 460 W. Sufficient for a GTX 1060 but not much more.
For GPU it has your model most likely came with a a Radeon HD 5540 (1GB) which pretty much o par with my GTX 460 so your PSU has the risk of running close to peak a good part of the time while gaming (the older Radeon cards tended to be rather power hungry and ran hot).
While I couldn't find the exact specs for the case, in looking at images apparently it only has one single small fan, which for 3D rendering or gaming I would consider inadequate. In comparison the system I built has seven fans, (including the 240 mm one I mentioned above). When rendering it tends to run in the mid to upper 60s (C).
Your system is not "un-rescuable" though finding replacement parts could be difficult (for example I am still having trouble finding a compatible 24 GB memory kit). Even with 12 GB, I am running into memory issues where render processes often dump to swap mode. It is also good to have double the system memory of whatever GPU card you choose, so for example, if you were to get a 6 GB GTX 1060, you'd want 12 GB of system memory (3 x 4 GB or 6 x 2 GB). This would also allow the board's tri channel memory mode to kick in.
My major concern however is adequate cooling. While maybe fine for an office use, this system has woefully inadequate cooling for prolonged gaming or 3D rendering (which could be part of the reason why something might have burned out). Also in in viewing interior pictures I noticed that the components seemed to be crammed pretty tightly together offering less "breathing room". This is one reason I chose a full tower case along with having easier access to upgrade and service it.
As I also am on a very tight budget I would lean towads saving what you have and upgrading, however it is easier with a "white box" (generic) build like I have than with an off the shelf system.
My diagnosis, probably a new system would be better, at least 16 GB of memory which is relatively affordable. Try to stay with an i7 though as it has hyperthreading while the 4 core i5s don't (basically they are little more than a "souped up" Core 2 quad).
You don't need to purchase a new copy of Windows if you create a Microsoft account.
Last version of Windows I bought was Windows 7, I think in 2009, and that is big money savings since then as I had been spending up to 200 CFH/USD for all the prior versions if I bought a full version of Windows and not an upgrade version which I usually did because a 2, 3, 4 year old activation key is not something I put away in a bank safe deposit box or something.
As far as building PC I'm about 50% decided to build a PC with a Ryzen 1800/1800X if I can do that for less than $700 in a few months. Otherwise I will go with the Acer 7th Gen i5 with 4 core (and apparently only 4 threads depending on with retailer you believe, waaahhh!), 2GB HD, and 8GB RAM for $425.
...these days I'd never go below 16 GB of system memory even with say a 6 GB GTX 1060. Again, I have 12 GB and find more than a few render jobs dumping to glacial swap mode.
A Ryzen 1700 or 1800 would be a better choice than an i5 just because of the extra dozen processor threads. The question I have is how much support will they have for their competitor's GPU cards? Also, the configuration of the PCI slots on most Ryzen boards still leaves me wondering if multiple non SLI cards will all get the X16 throughput or if everything will be down to x4.
I did say that. Wow!
Buy the Ryzen 1700 instead of the 1800x. You will save $140.00 which you can use for a better GPU with very little loss of cpu performance.
Check out http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700/3916vs3917 to see how little difference there is.
Sorry, got two posts mixed up...
There is also a Ryzen 5 1600 / 1600X - 6 cores & 12 threads what you can built the whole PC except the discrete video card of your choice for less than $600. And if you want to cut even more costs the Ryzen 5 1500X has 4 cores and 8 threads and will knock about off the Ryzen 5 1600X price to make the PC you build come in at $500. The $500 is not including HHD or SSD, mouse, keyboard, or monitor but does include RAM, MB, CPU, RAM, PS, ATX Case which fits the bill for most PC users. The video card will bring the price up to $1200 - $1300 if you buy the newest nVidia GTX TI1080 that runs at $700. You could buy the cheaper type nVidia card like that are using in the CyperPCs that have the Ryzen 7 CPU in them. The CyberPCs are selling from $950 & up.
Since the self-build PC above would need some sort of discrete video card you can add at least $100 to the price of the build if you don't have a video card you can use so raise the minimal build price to $600 - $700 for Ryzen 5 1500X / 1600. That's not bad for future upgradability as the most likely thing you'll be upgrading prior to a 5 year period would be the video card. Better and cheaper AMD CPUs are liable to be released in the future too that are compatible with the AM4 socket motherboards.
Compare that to the $449 Acer Intel Gen 7 i5 PC (which is still a great deal) I was considering and the PC you build using new AMD tech such as the Ryzen 1500 / 1600 have twice or more the CPU power has RAM expandable upto 64GB and will be CPU & GPU upgradable for 5 years or more.
For those trhat won't upgrade to Windows 10 though you are out of luck because Ryzen is Windows 10 only, no Windows 8.1 or earlier.
Maybe Intel is going to need to unlock the hyperthreading on their entry level CPUs to compete.
The advantage of building your own system is the ability to upgrade at a reasonable price. I presently have an Asus M5a97 2.0 motherboard, Fx-8120 8 core cpu, 16 gigs memory, 128 gb ssd drive, 1 terrabyte WD hd, 500 gb usb backup drive, and an EVGA 1050TI SC gpu(factory overclocked), running Windows 10 Pro creator upgrade, and a Thermaltake case with 4 240mm fans, and a 600w power supply. I plan to upgrade to a Ryzen 1600, Asus B350 motherboard( I always buy Asus motherboards), 16 gigs DDR4 3200 memory for a total cost of less than $450.00 from Newegg. This upgrade will have an effective speed increase of 72% not counting memory speed increases. I plan to keep the 1050ti until I can afford a 1060 or better, I also have future plans to upgrade to the Ryzen 1700. The 1050ti gets it's power from the motherboard, and the Ryzen 1600 uses 64 watts. The advantage of the 1600 over the 1600x is it comes with the wraith spire cooler and is $30.00 cheaper. The 1600x does not come with a cooler.
When I look at the options on cyberpowerpc for customizing a 'gaming' computer, I am overwhelmed by the options for case and cooling. The possibility of my building such a thing myself looks pretty grim, and I'm not sure I would even get a build-to-order system right. It's all pretty frustrating.
You can buy a prebuilt Ryzen 7 1700 Cyber PC with entry level nVidia card on Amazon for about $950 so you could do that. Or if you wait I'm sure they will have Rynzen 5 at 1400, 1500, and 1600 CPU builds even cheaper.
My question is I have not been able to find a Ryzen AM4 socker motherboard with builtin WiFi & Bluetooth?!
...If you get a system with an low VRAM GPU card (4 GB), system memory will be important as you will have render jobs that will dump to the CPU. Also keep in mind that W10 reserves (effectively locks out) a larger percentage of VRAM than W7/8.1 does so you won't have the full memory of the card available. This is why I suggest no less than 16 GB of physical memory so you don't risk the process going into swap mode if it does fall to the CPU because then it is also competing for system memory with that which the the open scene file and Daz programme are using.
For example say the Daz programme and your scene take 6 GB of your system's memory. If you have only 8 GB total on the board (subtract about 1 GB from that for Windows and system utilities leaving you with only 7 GB), that means you have only 1 GB of physical memory available for rendering. When that is exceeded the process will "swap" to the virtual memory partition on your hard drive (which is extremely slow) until the process is done.
This was not an issue with 3DL (unless you are using UE) as much as it is with Iray because of the greater number of calculations required to handle "real world" lighting.
You need not worry about Windows 10 VRAM usage, it's done to prevent video cards causing BSODs, which is a must really. You'll get about 3.6GB RAM but no matter what you do there will be an upper limit to how big a scene your video card can lode Windows 10 or no Windows 10. Simply buy or choose a video card in the system you buy with more memory and enjoy the vast improvements of Windows 10 and modern HW & SW technology.
You do need an nVidia video card though if you are going to render in DAZ Studio. You can hope that advanced rendering in DAZ Studio is ventually enabled for these new AMD video cards that can stream in textures from storage as if storage was RAM thus increasing the seeming virtual size of your video card's RAM but that is not even known to be in DAZ Studio's future roadmap for enhancments.
...I'd rather take my chances with W7 to have more available VRAM for rendering. Generally when a BSOD happens in this instance, it usually has more to do with the video drivers, not the card itself. Most of the time, just updating the drivers will solve the issue and sometimes such instabilities are caused by MS updates that create conflicts with the drivers (which is why I don't care for W10's force fed updating).
As has already been mentioned, the reason for the reserved VRAM in Win10 is so hot-plugging a display into a video card won't crash the driver or BSOD the machine.
I personally think this isn't really a requirement. If you need to add a display, shut down windows, plug it in, restart. In this era of SSDs and sub-minute boot-to-desktop times, this isn't a big issue. Losing up to a quarter of your VRAM as a 'just in case' measure is, IMHO, stupid.
The thing is, you don't want a gaming computer; they share some aspects with a rendering machine, but are quite different.
If you want it to do both, you are going to have to compromise a little somewhere, or at least overspec for gaming.
I know it is not my thread but since here are good questions regarding hardware discussed ... :)
My "old" PC (Intel i7 4790k, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 970, 2x Samsung SSD)
has a lot of Problems at the moment.
- USB ports have sometimes problems when connecting to external
hard drives, the mouse often starts to get jerky than or is disabled.
- Diferent Blue Screens in recent time. Restarts over night ...
- Onboard Soundcard gives Messages that a Cable was pulled... but there is nothing connected
...
I think the Mainboard has a defect capacitor or near a blowing capacitor what can cause this
art of problems.
Since the CPU is "outdated" and therefore a mainboard change is no longer worthwhile is a new PC the best solution.
Currently I tend to two slightly modified Configurations.
1.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600x (6 cores) (faster in most applications than my old i7 4790k)
Mainboard: Gigabyte AORUS GA-AX370
CPU Cooler: Enermax Liqmax II 240 (Water Cooling)
RAM: 32GB DDR4-2400
Graphic: Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB
SSD: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2
Cassis: Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow
power supply: be quiet! Power Zone 650W
2.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700x (8 cores)
Mainboard: Gigabyte AORUS GA-AX370
CPU Cooler: Enermax Liqmax II 240 (Water Cooling)
RAM: 32GB DDR4-2400
Graphic: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB
SSD: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2
Cassis: Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow
power supply: be quiet! Power Zone 650W
3.
CPU: Intel i7-6800K (6 cores)
Mainboard: MSI X99A
CPU Cooler: Enermax Liqmax II 240 (Water Cooling)
RAM: 32GB DDR4-2400
Graphic: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB
SSD: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2
Cassis: Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow
power supply: be quiet! Power Zone 650W
In addition comes my "old" Nvidia GTX 970
OS: Windows 10 Pro
I think the Intel System has the possitive factor with the max 128GB RAM,
more PCI Lanes for eventuelly more Graphic Cards later...
What do you think would be the better configuration.
Is it possible to buy a video card for am old desktop. Somehow on my dell the video card lost two apparently important things that I do not know the name of and I do not think the motherboard has a built in video card.
My HP cannot see the CPU probably because the thing that the CPU in has some bent connectors.
I do not see how to use HP video card with Dell mobo. Right now getting a new computer is too expensive but I might be able to fix something up.
@Twilight76
I think choice 2, but with a Ryzen 1700 instead of the 1700x, it can be overclocked to almost the same speed and you save some money.
@Twilight76 Whichever you go for, I'd try to get the 1070 instead of the 1060 GPU. The difference in price is WELL worth the additional VRAM and performance for Iray.
Depends on how old is your desktop. It is always possible, new or not depending on the motherboard. So we need your computer model or better the motherboard itself.
If you put some screenshots of the gfx card and motherboard we may identify the hardware
If your HP's CPU has bent pins you can still use it (how did you do that ?) . If you have broken pins that's an other story. Just straighten up the pins delicately and put back the processor
The PSU or drivers could also be faulty. If it's just a capacitor that is also relatively easy to replace.
Let's agree to disagree here, but it depends if you want to go iray or if you want more CPU power for 3delight
If going for Iray, I'd personnaly go for a motherboard with PLX chip like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JKCHEOY/?tag=pcpapi-20
With that motherboard you could put 4 gfx cards running at 8x but no M.2 SSD as your 16 lanes will already be used (and not really usefull in my POV. Sata SSD are sufficient)
With the money saved, buy a GTX 1080 and upgrade your RAM
Eventually buy a CPU water cooler if you want to overclock and get more CPU power
The big drawback is the 32 GB limit with your actual CPU. So the question is wether you plan to go over 32 GB RAM.
I would wait a bit before spending too much on a new computer as PCIe 4.0 motherboard should come out (end 2017 - 2018 ?), and that is a big game changer in term of bandwidth and PCIe lane needed
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pcie-4.0-power-speed-express,32525.html
Thx for the infos about PCIe 4.
A lot of nice changes are planed there but i think this will take another 2 years minimum to get new chipsets / Graphic cards for the consumer market
Will probably put my Christmas money aside for possible new hardware purchases 2018.
Those are tiny pins and my vision is not the best.
I took the CPU out to see how easy it is to replace and the CPU fan fell on the connectors.
I have a MSI x370 Gaming Carbon Pro motherboard. With 1 video card, it's x16. With two, it's x8 on both. With three, it's x8, x8, x4 and you lose a m.2 connector (there are two m.2 connectors).
x8 is good enough since they're PCIe 3 and you can't detect any speed difference on current video cards between x8 and x16. But the x4 is PCIe 2. So it's actually one quarter the speed of the other two PCIe connectors.
Also, SLI doens't affect the PCIe speed. You can crossfire or SLI on my motherboard. The x370 will let you do that. Other chipsets will only do crossfire.
I am looking at video cards but it costs about seventy five for expert installation which I think is too high to install a video card. It costs about seventy three to install new memory so that would be about one hundred forty to install a new video card and memory into the old Dell. Too expensive for me! I rather use that money if I had it on something else.
I know how to install memory and did not need any help removing the damaged video card. The video card was acting up before I removed it.
Edit the dell is a desktop not a laptop.
Dell is 4600. I think the ram I am getting will work but not sure about the video card.
The ram was right for dell but not the video card.