Computer Part Sites?
mambanegra
Posts: 594
Hi All,
I'm a mac user who is on the verge of giving up on the sad state of apple (I had my machine hard reset twice trying to play civilization VI...the problem seemed to be backup...and needing to run "disk repair"...but....didn't hard resets go out back in the late 90s?)
Anyway, I know I saw some great website suggestions on one of the forum threads here for comparing hardware prices across various websites. I'm open to either a prebuilt machine or building it myself (built one years ago). My main focus is a big case that would allow me to add two cards (one for display, one for a great GPU).
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Comments
Was it pcpartpicker?
That doesn't 'look' like the one that I remember seeing, but it looks pretty nice! Thanks for the link!
Anyone have any personal recommendations? I'm open to AMD for the processor (sounds like those are good processors) but will ultimate go nVidia for graphics for reasons obvious to most folks in these forums.
It helps people if you give an idea of your budget.. how much can we spend? :)
well, I'd be happy for something in the 2000 ballpark, but can plan on future upgrades. My plan is to plan for adding a really nice 2nd GPU, probably next year.
So yea, big case is a good start, decent PSU (I personally like Corsair ones). Fairly decent CPU (6-8 cores), 16/32/64Gb's of RAM.
If it's just rendering, then you want to go fairly big on GPU.. if it's content creation in general, then look to have a decent CPU too. NVME boot drive would be great, then add mechanical disks for storage (again can be expanded as you need to).
I'd also invest in decent (Noctua are my personal preference) fans if you're going aircooling too.. full custom water-loops are also great for rendering machines theough.. though add another $800-1000 for that side of it.
Just rebuilt my daily work machine myself - and to be honest, I think pre-builts are great if you want the safety net of not having to worry about maintenance of it.
I recently got my new pc from PCspecialists (in the UK) and cannot recommend them highly enough their customer service was excellent and very patient with me; they build from your specs.
The case I choose was this one
https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Carbide-Series™-Air-540-High-Airflow-ATX-Cube-Case/p/CC-9011030-WW
Its pretty spacey having had problem with my old one overheating I wwanted one with good air flow and room to put in another GPU if or hen I can afford one.
We got most of our parts from Newegg, we're in the US.
I went with a used Dell Precision last time, and will probably do it again. You can get some bargains on them particularly if you know your way around the inside of a box, and they are built like tanks. You can put together a pretty heavy duty computer with two year old technology for $2,000 that way.
I buy from Newegg, Amazon, and ebay (for used/surplus). There is at least one ebay seller that refurbishes dual-cpu HP servers, and you can get one with two XEON E5-2670V1 8- core CPU's and 64 GB of DDR3 RDIMM, for less than $800 (shipping included, and a one-year warranty). That is less than it cost me to buy the parts individually to build basically identical units, although I did buy new motherboards and new Corsair or EVGA power supplies, with used CPUs and server ram. I have not dealt with these refurb folks myself, I found them too late. You would have to get the graphics board separately.
These older servers are great for rendering, but can be slower for applications that only use a single CPU. I will find out how they work with Daz Studio soon.
If you are interested, search on ebay for "HP Z620 Workstation"
Woohoo, Jack's wearing a cat-hat, bring on the fun !!!!
well i do not know about building from the ground up, but for finding parts, especially for old pcs, ebay has always been the best and most cost effective for me i really do not trust sites that are in "the business" - generally folks just trying to get rid of clutter are the best bet for getting good stuff cheap.