How Does One Choose a Windows PC Computer ?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,219
in The Commons
Every computer I've ever bought has been an Apple Mac of one kind or another - since they began making them. Now I suppose I need a Windows PC with an nvida card just to do iRay renders. How do you choose which Windows PC to buy? With Apple there is usually about 12 choices. With windows machines it looks like there are 1200 choices. Is there one brand that is overwhelimingly superior or reliable?
Thanks!
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There are a million threads here about getting a new PC, so they can give you more detailed info. With PCs it's not about brands, but the hardware installed in them. With Iray, you will need a good CPU, lots of DDR and a top of the line Nvidia graphics card.
Well I'd argue you don't need the best CPU to render Iray as it basically does nothing when the GPU renders. The GPU is KING for Iray. You can dump on other things, but your GPU choice will ultimately decide how fast you render. You could stick a brand new GPU into a piece of junk and it would render almost exactly as fast as that same GPU in a totally top of the line machine. Period. The only exception being that the power supply is enough to handle it.
You can browse the benchmark thread in my sig for a general idea of just how fast different machines can be. You can take the benchmark yourself so you can better grasp just what those numbers mean. Iray scales pretty well, so if a certain machine is 10 times faster in this bench, odds are high it will be 10 times faster in most other scenes. Then it is a matter of deciding on VRAM and what your budget is. But the GPU is your main concern first, design everything around your GPU first.
Everyone has their "favorites" (processor, motherboard, etc, etc). My only advice is make sure you get a HIGHLY rated power supply that's large enough to run everything in your computer, get as much ram as you can afford and make sure you're well ventilated :)
Laurie
HP has never failed me, period. Spend more in the beginning or spend even more in the end.
See - I don't understand any of this. HIGHLY rated power suply that's large enough - my power suply is plugging it into the electrical outlet in the wall. But I take it this means something else.
The power supply is what is in your case and that runs your hardware. Different hardware have different requirements
I would buy the cheapest new model year entry level desktop you can that can support your desired GPU and then buy the GPU.
example desk top:
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-TC-885-ACCFLi3-Desktop-i3-8100-802-11ac/dp/B07CYGHL92/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1546051357&sr=8-4&keywords=desktop+computer&th=1
example gpu:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GHVWMBS/ref=psdc_284822_t2_B07GG9L5X1
One thing power supply dictates is which graphics cards you can use. Some of the better graphics cards need a larger power supply. (I guessing this is to power the fan or fans to cool off the card.)
I don't know about all pre fab computers but if you go Dell, you want an XPS not an Inspiron. Inspirons have a smaller power supply than the XPS models. PCU is 290 watts on "home" Inspiron vs 460 watts on the XPS. (Site says there are some Inspirons with 365 watts...gold bezel so I'm assuming really high end ones.) Inspirons also generally have either intergrated graphics cards or something pretty low end installed. The XPS line has better graphics cards installed from the get go and has more customization options available. Due to the higher power supply, you have more options if you want to install a different graphics card at a later time.
I personally, don't like HPs ...but to each their own. If you are doing pre fab, I'd recommend going to a bricks and mortar store and actually touch and feel. See what feels good to you. Then, I'd leave without buying; go online and buy. Amazon or buying direct from the manufacturer is what I'd recommend. Buying online allows you to get exactly what you want... not just what is in stock. It also gives you the ability to price compare at several retailers. It is better to wait a week or two to get what you really want than to get a quick sugar rush by bringing home something just because it is on the store shelf and you figure you can make do with it.
Don't forget to get a set of speakers. ;) Maybe throw a good mouse and backlit keyboard into your cart while you are at it. ;)
RAM is important. Get at least 8 GB.
with Apple everything is licensed and readymade basically
with PC its a smorgasbord of parts getting something prebuilt is probably best for a first machine
they are cheap enough you actually can own several
For RAM you need at least as much as your VRAM, preferably twice as much. So if you go for a top of the range GPU like the 1080Ti then 32GB is best, although you might get by with 16, as long as nothing except DS is running on the box.
I'm sorta looking into this too. I was looking at gpu's at avadirect in a build i'm configuring and they have a gtx1060 6gb 1280 cuda or a gtx1070 ti 8gb 2432 cuda with price difference being $250. For iray, does this seem worth it? Would the 1070 render 2x as fast or not really? I ask as a mac user who knows little if anything about specs of gpu cards?
If you have a PC-assembly-wizz in your family who builds his/her own computers, then you can save yourself a lot of money by going shopping with him/her and having him/her doing the assembling. Just make sure to be very clear about the requirements around the graphics card (high-end NVidia) and what you need it for. Computer savy people usually advise against these high end cards, even if they LOVE installing and playing with those pretty things. These cards are simply way overpowered for gamers and totally unnecessary for someone who mostly uses the computer for internet or watching movies.
SSD drives are fast, but they're also less durable than regular hard drives. Every single write to an SSD slightly degrades its durability. They're also generally smaller in capacity and way more expensive. So, make sure you get a massive regular hard drive instead, with all the storage you need for your assets.
RAM is the easiest thing to upgrade on a PC. You'll really want at least 16GB, preferrably 32. But, if there's anything you need to skim on, and you can plan ahead for your self to upgrade sometime later, then I'd pick RAM to skim on, take the 16GB and replace it with 32 GB (or if you have enough slots for it, simply add another 16 GB bank) later.
I'm going to disagree over the statement of the GPU being king.
It is certainly vitally important; but until scenes always fit on the GPU other factors come into play.
A well balanced system is best, although I certainly agree that a fairly crap system will render about as quick as a top line system if they have the same GPU - although there are caveats; the scene takes longer to load, the computer becomes unuseable; and a more extreme possibility the piece of crap system is being pushed beyond its limits and takes the graphics card down with it.
Yes design everything around the GPU first, but not to the total expense of other considerations
I always recommend getting more RAM than people usually have at your chosen price range of machines
Its so cheap to have more, yet very important for general performance, and helps to future protect your machine.
Dont get less than 16 GB even for a cheapo machine. You will probably want more, maybe 32 GB.
High RAM may not directly help for iray, but it will make your general use of your computer and windows nicer.
don't be like me, buy pro not home premium
I am only able to use 16GB of RAM so don't bother updating
it was probably my biggest mistake 6 years ago
First off, unless you absolutely have no other choice do not buy a prebuilt PC. Building a PC from components you choose and buy yourself will be far cheaper and the result will be vastly better for your needs.
Building a PC is easy and can done with a Phillips screwdriver and an afternoon. There are plenty of guides on the web showing how.
On the specific components needed for Daz, the minimum cpu I'd recommend is either the ryzen 5 1600 or 2600 or recent generation I5 chips. As to RAM you need at least 16 Gb and if you get a 2080ti you'll be better off with 32 Gb. On the gpu front you have to get either a gtx or a rtx card. Preferably get one with at least 8 Gb of VRAM. Going under that will mean you'll be able to render smaller scenes without going into cpu mode. You'll probably want to devote a large amount of your budget to your gpu.
Two final components merit discussion. The power supply needs to be of good quality and of sufficient wattage to power the whole system with room to add additional components. I recommend a unit with an 80+ gold or higher certification and roughly double the rated wattage your system requires. The reasons for this are complicated and can be found in many places on the web of you're interested. Finally the case you need, most cases sold today are garbage. Cases without ventilated front panels should be avoided. I prefer to not make specific recommendations but in this case I will, take a hard look at the CoolerMaster H500P Mesh case. IMO it is the best case released in the couple of years.
You can use Windows 10 Pro (and others) for free; Microsoft allow this, they just disable some features. You may or may not prefer to pay for the full version to get the features - try before you buy.
Agree if buying Pro is a better option despite the extra cost.
The price difference between home and pro is minimal get pro.
It depends on what you do, but in many cases the other parts are quite trivial in the overall scope of rendering and using Daz Studio. Even if it takes 1 minute to load a scene to the GPU, is it really worth dropping the extra cash on the balanced build if money is tight? Different people have different limitations, and I think what so very many people here completely forget is that many people have limits to what they can purchase. Obviously if cash is not an issue, then spend the money on a better all around machine, that should be a given. But if money is tight, which it probably is for many people, then focus on the one part that will save you the most time, and that is the GPU.
Like this, if you drop down from a 1080ti to a 1070 to save money and get a better CPU, your renders will take almost twice as long and you lose 3GB VRAM. So is that really worth it? IMO not really. Its only worth it if you plan on doing other things besides Daz Studio Iray. And if you talk to people who have done these junk PC upgrades, some will tell you that the PC is in fact still usable during renders even with an old CPU. Just don't use the CPU during renders. I've only got 4 CPU cores on an i5 that dates to 2012 myself, the i5-4690K, and no hyper threading. I have no issues using my PC when rendering. In fact, ever since I upgraded to the 1080ti my PC has become more usable. You have to consider all the things that the GPU does just to to run Windows. My CPU was never the bottleneck, my 970 was. I have built my PC literally piece by piece over several years, swapping out junk for newer (at the time) parts, and I can very safely say from my own experience that the GPU is King for Iray. The hard drive might load the data, but it cannot render it. And you'd have to purposely be buying crappy hard drives to give yourself a real problem. Storage is cheap and it is only getting cheaper. You can also add new storage any time. The same applies for RAM. These are easy upgrades, you don't need to buy it all at once...this is the beauty of PC. So you don't have to drop it all at once. I also only have 16GB RAM. I had planned on getting more, but then RAM prices doubled, so I put it off. And now at this point I figure I'll just put off that upgrade and build a new machine anyway. Even so, I have not felt oppressed by this 16GB of RAM. I have had far more constraints on VRAM first, like the 970 has
And as my 6 year old CPU is only 4 cores, I think it is easy to assume that nearly any newer CPU would be far better suited. AMD Ryzen has made many great strides, and as such you would have to dig real low to get a truly bad one. You can spend just $200 and get 8 cores and 16 threads, which would be more than enough to handle most tasks, instead of trying to convince somebody they need a $600 i9 which also needs motherboards that cost more. I spent $200 on my i5 back in 2012, it is incredible to think how far Ryzen has pushed the market in just 2 short years. But GPUs have become more expensive, at least the Turing cards have.
Don't get me wrong. I am planning on building a new machine in 2019, and I plan on it having a nice base. I am waiting to see what AMD does, and it might be wise for other people to at least wait until AMD announces their next Ryzen lineup. There are many wild rumors about the next Ryzen, and if they are even partially true, then some exciting things are coming next year. CES is just around the corner, so let's wait until then to see what they have. I do play games, so I for me I do want something that can do that well enough, but at this stage of my life I think the rendering comes first. Since I do game, that does require a little more balance. However my machine is more than fine for everything 1080p, so that's not an issue until I move to 4K.
Right. Time to get some hard data going on in here.
In PCs, like in most things, you get what you pay for. I'm currently speccing out a new build, and here's my advice to you:
Fauvist: You've owned a lot of Macs in your day, but ultimately you're dealing in an expensive radiator-cap upgrade situation. Because of this, I'm going to make a couple of assumptions:
1) You have a significant budget to work with. For hardcore, long-term Mac users, this is pretty much a gvien. Apple typically charges double what an identically-specced PC costs.
2) You aren't particularly well-versed in how one of these things goes together.
The first is pretty much what it says on the tin. The second is more interesting overall--it means I get to teach, and I *love* doing that. Let's get down to business.
First: Never, EVER, buy an off-the-shelf unit. Those things are made in what I like to refer to as Military Vogue- What you get is a thing that barely does the job now, made by the lowest bidder. Building a machine from a pile of cardboard boxes looks scary, utnil you realize that there are several YouTubers that make a living building machines, reviewing hardware, and other such things. BUT! Caveat Emptor: Listening to just one is WORSE than doing nothing at all. Watch three or four PC buildin videos from different places, and nothe where they're similiar.
Second: For a Rendering machine, you want to look at what the gamers are getting. Not going to be perfect, but it'll be a start.
Third: There are some places you can scrimp, but they're few and far between. You want to spend as much as you think is reasonable for the following:
CPU: I prefer the Intel i7, as it does fairly well in terms of adaptability. Can't speak to the i9 yet, so not going to recommened that yet. Find an i7 with six or eight physical cores that's not going to sting too bad. Motherboard to fit, with the higest RAM capacity you can find. 16 is a bit low whese days, 32 is about where I feel comfortable. Some boards will carry loads more, of course ;)
Video: You're going to need (at least) one of the existing 1080 cards (The Ti is really spiffy), unless you want to be replacing it inside of a year, AMD is right out, for obvious reasons. As for the new 20xx series, I'm hearing that the're not as nice as the number would have you believe.
Case: Get what you want, even if it looks like the it got beat with an ugly stick. You want a power supply starting between 850 and 1550WIf you're powering video cards, you'll need it.
Two Solid State drives: a smallish one (500GB is fine) for a Boot drive. Get another, this time 2TB+, for content installs. A mechanical drive wou't go amiss either, to backup things like content downloads and such. An optical drive might come in handy, as well. If you do that, get an M-Disc-capable BDRW with quad-layer capacity. 120GB per disk for media guaranteed to stand up for longer than your kids kids will be alive. Probably longer.
Most of the rest is cheese. Jusr don't resue the kb/mouse. They (probably) won't work. Cheap kb is okay. Networking should be onboard, but get a card if you want wireless. Assembly won't be too bad, if (and only if), you RTFM.
There's a start. It's my intention to use this pattern myself this coming year- my money going where my mouth is. ;)
Also, Win10Pro. The price difference isn't massive, and you can put off automagic updates for months on end if you so choose. Totally worth it.
A lot of the earlier posters are assuming that you're going to build your own, which seems like a lot to expect of a Mac-using newcomer to Windows machines. I recommend deciding on a GPU and then finding a stock computer online that includes it. My most recent two machines are Dell XPS series, but the current one is a few years old and I don't know what they're like now.
Do not buy a prebuit machine for Iray. It will be your biggest mistake. Build one or better still have one built. Buying a prebuilt will be akin to skiing downhill in slippers.
I actually had mine built
still regret the Home premium though
Some really horrid advice being given in this thread.
First if you live in North America do not buy a power supply rated higher than 1200 watts. Household circuits cannot handle it. As a matter of fact unless you want to put your monitor on a different outlet from your PC don't go for 1200 either. There is no reason to go over 850 watts unless you plan to go to a multiple gpu setup or have lots of hard drives.
Second do not buy any Intel cpu. The only reason to buy Intel is if you're a gamer and absolute top gaming performance matters to you. Everyone else should buy AMD. While you can certainly get the R7 chips this an area where you save some money. The R5 2600 is a great cpu at a great price .
Third case absolutely does matter. Get a case with terrible airflow and that high end graphics card you just spent a lot of money on will thermal throttle and cut its performance significantly.
Fourth there are no new 1080's or 1080ti 's left. There are lots of benchmarks of the released 20xx cards. They are truly great rendering cards. Get one of you can.
Fifth there is no reason to buy a new kb or mouse as long as they are in good shape, assuming they are USB. Although if you're coming from Mac you might a real mouse with the proper number of buttons, a scroll wheel and other features rather than that useless thing Apple had been trying to sell recently.
SSD outlast HDD because they have no mechanics that eventually break much sooner on average on HDD than an SSD would wear out from repeated R/W cycles.
I do live in NA, and you underestimate what a 15A breaker is capable of.
Your point is half-taken with the case- You do need good airflow, but in my experience, you can still do that easily under $100.
I don't find many Mac peripherals on USB anymore- Most are firewire.
The 20xx card benchmarks I've seen don't seem to be giving much of a performance boost over the 10xx series, of which I found NEW 1080Ti cards available in less than five minutes. Spendy, but they can be found. Easily.
As for the Intel v AMD wars, don't go there. There are ups and downs to both setups, and in my experience, modern Intels can still edge out an AMD chip. Particularly when the AMD isn't paired with an AMD video card.
In the use case where you do get CPU and video card from AMD, you do see an improvement in performance. Problem is, he needs to us Iray. Therefore my suggestion (and admonishment) to get more than one opinion before making a decision.
The thing you did NOT disagree with, it seems, is buying off-the-shelf.
One more thing on the power supplies that I missed the first time around: Regardless of wattage, you will want to make sure it's rated for power spikes. If you're in some strange place where the power is "dirty", or is prone to power failures if a flea sneezes near a transformer, it'll be the difference between being able to reboot your machine and having a $2500+ paperweight.
You apparently didn't notice I winked after the keyboard and mouse comment. That was like treat yourself while your on that shopping spree...not it's a must have.
You don't need a new keyboard or mouse but it's nice to not be tied by a cord to the tower. If or how much of an issue this can be depends on your computer table and tower set up. For me, the corded mouse is too restrictive and awkward to use just because of the USB port I elect to use and where my tower is situated relative to where my mouse needs to sit. You don't need a backlit keyboard but it's nice to have if you like to compute in the dark. BTW, gaming mice are nice because they have a nice hand feel, extra programable buttons, and track faster across the screen...but again not necessary just nice to have.
I know several people who work with DS and render in Iray on a Mac. It seems there are Macs with NVIDIA cards. If you don't like Win and don't really want to use it, why not research the various Mac options?
An extreme example if you like; a system without a nvidia graphics card will render; it might be slow, and a poor experience. Go out and buy a couple of 2080ti, or a hell even a couple of Titans or more hell still, Quadros. Sit them on the desk as they wont 'fit/work' in the trivial components. Very, very expensive paperweights - the other parts are far from trivial and are essential to the system. It is important to ensure the components will work together and support the system you are building now; it is also well worth considering what upgrades might be done in the future. Budget constraints have a baring, and can if not careful cause issues.
I have no idea, what is of value to the OP; it is up to us to give the OP options, and explain our reasoning.
Personally I would recommend avoiding Intel if your main concern is rendering, with or without some gaming. (If you're primarily a gamer, maybe there is an argument.)
Totally agree; I might upgrade my Threadripper - which incidentally does a decent job of rendering when my 980ti becomes the previously-mentioned paperweight.
OT, but somewhat relevant: I've had scenes drop to CPU, swap back, then drop to CPU again - amusing (and annoying).
USB extension cables; USB hubs. No batteries to change.
I prefer cabled devices; they don't get in the way with just a modicum of planning.