How Does One Choose a Windows PC Computer ?
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...other than my graphcis software, Windows and system utilities, I don't have a much else that goes on the C: drive, hence why I find 240 - 256 GB more than sufficient. I usualy am at about 35% of the drive's capacity with all that. As I'm not into games that's one load I do not have to worry about on the boot drive. If you are an avid gamer and/or use other non graphics related softare, then yes a larger Boot drive would be necessary.
I don't load any content to C: save for items that don't install via the DIM, and then only temporarily. After installation I tansfer the Zip installers to backup media. Like I mentioned, I never use the Windows "documents" folders (don't use Connect).
kenshaw,
Of course you can cite exceptions to anything. I'm merely suggesting that instead of people waving their hands and saying "oh, it could be a HUGE problem" with no data to support it other than some non-specific paranoia, you actually look at the facts and then decide.
Which is why I suggest that, for example, people spend $30 on a power meter that measures ACTUAL TOTAL power used by your computer (or any other appliance) in real time. Put actual numbers to it instead of assuming and guessing. That's the prudent thing, isn't it?
And if your 15A breaker is tripping at 10 amps, why not replace the source of the problem...the breaker? Or plug your PC into another circuit.
And again, even at 10 amps, how many people really have enough equipment to come even close to 1,000 watts? I have a fairly high end system with 2 GPU's and can barely get to 450 watts. And as you can see, at idle, with a few apps open, I'm only drawing 87 watts.
Why not replace the breaker in an apartment they don't own? Because that violates the terms of the lease? Because even if it is your own home your home insurance requires the work be done by a n electrician which means it will cost several hundred dollars? Because even if neither of those are the case you're in a structure so old it isn't a modular breaker box and still requires an electrician to do the job properly and safely.
I know this stuff but where I live in order for my home to stay up to code when I replaced my houses breaker box it had to be done by licensed electrician. You might want to check out the rules where you live before messing with your homes wiring.
... And the UK is different; Europe (the rest of it) too I expect.
Ring Mains (the sockets) circuits in the UK are usually 32Amps; the total RCD system around 80 Amps ( but can vary from 60 to 100). Appliances here can be up to 3kw, and the system can support multiple appliances of said rating - would get expensive on the bill though, so we try and avoid that.
I'm pointing this out as folks live in various places and may read this without realising.
There are still a lot of 1070 & lower chips in the pipeline so companies will still be bulding 1050, 1060, & 1070 series cards for awhile for the budget market. However, all of the 1080 chips are pretty much gone unless some trays are found in a warehouse somewhere in Asia
so whle midrange and budget card should be availble for most of this year, any 1080s will be either insanely expensive or used (or both). They won't ramp up production of 2060 & 2050 chips until the older inventory is used up (they over produced 1060 & 1070 chips for the mining market and now have a glut of GPUs they have to sell).
And on electrical circuits. National Electrtical residental code has been 20 Amp 12/2 grounded circuit minimum for years & years (since the mid to late 90's I believe) so unless your home or apartment was built before that, you sholld be okay with any power supply you want. Also unless you have multiple GPU's, CPU,s, and 6 or more hard drives (spinning discs, not SSDs) you usually won't pull your PSU's full load unless something is wrong (unless it is puny 300 to 450 watt PSU).
There are no 1070's at microcenter or Newegg. As far as I can tell that means there are none left in the retail pipeline. any for sale are returns or ones held back by unscrupulous retailers and being sold at inflated prices. 1060's will so go away as well.
NVIDIA recomends 600w for a total system power for a single 1080 Ti, the 1070 can draw a max of 150watts on its own, the 1080 ti a max of 250 watts on its own. So your looking at 650 watts to 850 watts for the total system power for 2 cards depending on the cards in question. Also remember you only have 80 - 90% of that power full time during long renders depending on the grade of the power supply.
HDD's and Fans draw power also. So someone with an array of HDD's and several extra fans might draw a couple hundred extra watts also.
I can see 1000 Watt Supplies being reasonabe.
If you have 3 2080 ti or 1080 Ti cards in a system you might need 750 Watts just for your graphics cards.
OK, I want to get a good laptop for running DAZ3D and rendering, I am very new to this, so I am asking for help. I have an HP ENVYx360 64 bit, 16 GB RAM I beleive. I can't even get the walkthrough tutorial figure rendered on this thing. I let it sit overnight and everything. What can I do to make DAZ work with this current laptop and or what laptop do I need to get to effectively render quickly? Please help!
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 8GB $319.99 $299.99 after $20.00 rebate card
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125875
I did a simple search on Newegg and there are 8 other 1070s, and that's just on the first page... I didn't count all of the 1070 Tis. Plus there are tons of GeForce GTX 1070s on Amazon.
This is a good example of why you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. ;)
Your system is prabably Dumping to CPU only render which takes an eternity to render. When an IRAY scene wont fit in the GPU's Video RAM it dumps to CPU only render. The MX150 graphics that comes on an ENVYx360 is woefully inadiquite. If it was a desktop you could just slap a new powersupply and GPU in it and call it good. The MX150 has 2GB video RAM, quarter of which is prabably consumed by the operating system for running the Video Display. For Iray rendering you need more. 4 GB Video RAM is DAZ recomended bare minimum. I think 6 or 8 GB Vid RAM is more realistic.
I ran DAZ on a 6gb DDR 3 ram asus 5571cm desktop with a similar quality 2 GB Video card. Even simple renders can take 8 to 16 hours. Add an actual scene and lightning instead of just an HDRI and you can be looking at a full day or so with just a 2GB GPU. When I relaced the GPU with an NVIDEA 1070 Ti, it was like night and day, Render time issues became a thing of the past on most scenes I would build. Render times that used to take me 8 hours were done in 10 minutes.
Also remember it needs to be an NVIDIA Graphics Card, Iray wont render on non NVIDIA Cards.
must have restocked. Tried to buy one for a client pver the weekend. they were sold as was Microcenter.
Thread trimmed in the interests of civility. Please make sure comments are addressed to the substance of the post, not the poster.
So in the interest of moving from feelings and speculation to some hard facts, and maybe calm some fears about power supplies, I checked the manufacturer specs for all the devices in my PC, which is a relatively high end PC with a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, a GTX-1080ti, a GTX-1070, an SSD, 3 hard drives, and 3 case fans. I then compared those expected values to actual readings.
As you can see in the chart below, the total expected watts consumed by the whole thing should be around 83 watts when the computer is at idle. And as I showed in my other post, the actual bounces around 86-88 watts (depending on stuff like if the hard drives are spinning, etc.). So it sounds like actual vs. expected at idle is reasonably close.
I then listed the expected values with the GPU's a full load, and left the other values at their "idle" numbers, since usually the hard drives and CPU arent running at max when the GPU's are rendering. And the results show an expected of around 450 watts. Attached is a measurement of actual watts by the entire PC with a render going and both GPU's at 100%, and as you can see the result is around 380 watts total. I believe I've gotten up to around 410 watts, but of course that varies based on what else is going on. Not quite as much as expected, but if you give it a ballpark of around 400 watts it should be a reasonable expectation.
And then if I assume that the CPU is also running flat out while rendering (which never happens), expected is more like 500 watts.
So if you look at ACTUAL numbers, it's reasonable to assume that a reasonably high end computer might require something like 400-500 watts when running at maximum. Of course you have to adjust that if you have 2 x 1080ti's or something.
Now you're free to add whatever margin you want, but in terms of facts I think that most people would, like I say, be in great shape with a 600-800 watt power supply. And I think you'd be hard pressed to justify with facts anything in the 800 and beyond range. Unless of course you have significantly more equipment installed.
Fauvist, I can totally relate to your thread and could have asked the same question myself. See all the endlessly complicated and confusing discussion above? There's another reason why you bought a Mac, as you have explained already yourself.
Is iRay really worth all this bother and expense? Not for me, as I'm currently pretty happy screen recording the Viewport. :-) 5 minutes of animation "rendered" in 5 minutes. I take the output, dump it in to Hitfilm (free video editor) add some other layers, animate the video layers, adjust some colors, etc. Ok, so it's not professional level quality, but it's not bad, and it's fun, and sure beats dealing with iRay. All of this on a used seven year old 27inch iMac that cost me less than a grand.
None of this may work for you, but just saying, maybe there is some other way you can use DAZ that doesn't involve all the PC complications above?
That said, I recently had a very similar discussion on the iClone forum. Some helpful fellows advised me not to try to run iClone (Windows only) in Bootcamp on a Mac. They said the only reliable solution was to buy a PC. So I asked myself if iClone was worth $1500-2000 (software and hardware) to me and quickly concluded that it was not, although it does look like a great program.
In my case, I may soon inherit a PC, which would be a nice solution. But if that doesn't work out I'm just going to do everything I can in 3D on a Mac, which appears to be quite a lot, if I am flexible about where I aim my creativity.
Another solution might be to buy a 2nd cheap Mac and use it as your iRay processor. If it takes 3 days to render your scene, so what, as you're still busy doing cool stuff on your main Mac.
Good luck!
Oh, and I forgot to mention amps...
I also included the expected amps at idle and full/max load, and worst case for my machine is around 4 amps. So for a 10-15 amp circuit you should have no problems. Unless, like I said, you also plugged in a toaster oven or a microwave on the same circuit...
To any and all whom it may concern, please note the very first sentence in the thread.
That sentence suggests the OP has never in his life desired technical complexity, a billion possible solutions, or building his own computers. So while some of the suggestions above may indeed be good advice, there's a good chance they aren't that helpful to this particular person. What might be more helpful are links to sales pages for specific PC computers which you judge to be sufficient for iRay renders, and from a reliable vendor.
Yes, yes, I know, pre-made PCs are bad, wrong, incorrect, a poor choice, too expensive etc. Could all be true. But that likely doesn't matter for the person you are trying to help. Please read his posts. He has specifically said that in the past, for many years, the only decision he really had to make was what credit card to use. He chose to be in that position. Over and over again for years. And probably still choses to be in that position, given this seems to be what the opening post is requesting.
It seems many above are largely ignoring the person they claim to be serving, and are instead using the thread as a platform for showing off how much they know about PCs. There's no big crime here, but perhaps it's time to try another course? You know, we're on page 4 already.
Which is why I suggested the OP describe what he/she is looking for, but, as often happens, that never came. So people are left to discuss the topic in general, realizing that these threads live on, and even though the OP might not benefit, others may. Data is good. We can all learn something. I (at least try to) learn something every day. It's a good thing.
And yes, these threads invariably result in many trying to "show off what they know about PC's", even if they know very little.
Welcome to the internet.
...well for Iray, unless one picks up an older Mac Pro (pre "Trash Can" version that still has an Nvidia GPU, and/or will allow you to swap one in) Mac users are out of luck as the new offerings are all AMD GPU based and some cannot be upgraded or have components changed by design. So you are stuck with either slow boat Iray rendering on the CPU or going back to 3DL (though there have been a few improvements lately from vendors like Wowie, Kettu, and Parris). I would also mention LuxRender but the original engine (accessible though the Reality 4.x Plugin) has been abandoned and Lux development has moved on to what they now call LuxCore (no news about Paolo updating Reality for the new engine). There is also AMD's Pro Render though I haven't seen much about that yet.
There is also word from Otoy that through the Vulkan API they are working at getting Octane to render on AMD GPUs. That sounds like the best solution for a fast photo real render engine, particularly since there will also be a free subscription track available this year.
That is basically the bottom line and why some have been advocating moving to a Windows PC .
Can you run a space heater on high? Then you can run a 1kw PSU no problem. Pretty simple way to test anyway.
As far as efficiency it isn't night and day. You are talking maybe 2% between a 50% load and a 80% load. Probably closer to 1%. I wouldn't build a box that could load a PSU more than 80%. No sense in tempting fate a few years down the road. Price wise a 750w is probably the sweet spot. Bought an EVGA gold 750w for $40 AR on BF. Never really see nice 1kw units for less than $100 or so.
The Ryzen 7 1700 can draw 65 Watts when fully throttled according to AMD Specs. Your chart states 15.
Depends on the 80+ rating. The higher the rating the higher the difference between 50% and 100%, 80% isn't part of the standard. there is also a difference between 115V supply and 230V supply. Over Gold it is more 2%. That is a lot of wasted money over the life of a PSU if you run the PSU at 80+ load all the time.
Once you're buying a 1k watt PSU you're really not trying to stay under $100 usually you're more worried about the 80+ rating because in the long run your operating cost is going to be your real cost not that initial price.
I haven't seen any posts from the OP in the last two pages. I hope we did not run him off. If the OP is still watching the thread, here is a link to a Techradar article for some of the best Gaming PC options which should also all be decent render rigs amd most of them have configuration options so the OP should be able to have a render rig built that should servi him for awhile with a high end Nvidia GTX/RTX card. What ever he gets if he is used to buying Macs, he should not have an issue with getting a 2080TI. He just has to remember that the 2080Ti will not be officially supported until the 4.11 update is released (4.11 is currently in beta). It does appear that several builders still have some 1080 series cards in stock so that may be an option too.
https://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/10-of-the-best-gaming-pcs-you-can-buy-in-2015-1304263
I would also suggest doing a search on Google for "Gaming computer vendors". A bunch iof National builders popped up in the search. HTH
If your system is typically running 382 Watts at full render on a rendering PC you will want a 850 Watt Gold or Better supply to run it. Running a power supply at 100% capacity for long periods of time is a good way to burn it out early. Since power supplies are most efficient at 50%, that means at 50% it will last longer. 850 Watt Titanium power supply running at 50% would be 850w x 0.5(50% of max capacity) x .94 (80+ Efficiency at 50% draw) = 399.5 watts. So your titanium 850 Watt power supply is at its best in balance of durability and efficiency proving for a draw of 399.5 Watts. The same 850 Watt titanium supply at 100% draw is only provinging like 765 Watts.
Looks to me like 850 - 1000 watts at gold or higher rating is a good range for a 2 High End Vid Card, 3 HDD, 3 Fan System. You might never hit the the top draw on your entire computer but you also dont want to hit near 100% capacity on your power supply either.
Hi ebergerly, here is what the OP is looking for, in his own words. He's trying to narrow the available options from the 1200 down to the 12 that he is used to.
There probably isn't one brand that is "overwhelimingly superior or reliable" but he might be directed to one or two brands that most people might agree are credible PC makers. So for instance if he could be advised that Dell (or somebody else) is a credible PC maker, and then his budget could be identified, that would narrow the field considerably. Such an analysis might have quickly focused the discussion on which of 4 or 5 machines would best serve his desire to use iRay.
But ok, yes, this is the Internutz, and it's a "get what you pay for" operation. I would agree that nobody is obligated to attend to the OP's actual situation.
Speaking more broadly, while we Mac users are a minority of computer users, there are still millions of us. And some of us are coming to realize that PCs are the better platform for 3D, if only because that's the platform most 3D vendors are choosing to develop for. It would be in the interest of these developers to create a one page presentation that suggests a handful of specific PC models at various price points. That is, they might attempt to mimic the Mac shopping experience. Again, there is no obligation, and if 3D developers wish to ignore millions of potential customers that is their choice to make.
For those concerned about costs due to power supply efficiencies, you might want to check your electric bill, see how much you're paying (cents per kilowatt hour), then guesstimate your actual PC power usage per month at full load, and figure the actual difference in $$ due to efficiency differences. I believe I posted an analysis a while ago showing its pretty much negligible.
By the way, if you're truly concerned about wasting $$ due to inefficient appliances, you waste FAR more over the life of the device for stuff like refrigerators, or setting your air conditioner thermostat 1 degree different, or even leaving a 40 watt lighbulb on when you don't need it on.
I agree with this. I have run Daz on an HP, an ASUS, and an Alienware R7. All 3 are capable of lasting a long time. It will be fine as long as your PSU and GPU are adaquite and you have 16+ GB of RAM. While you may save money building yourself, if you never built a PC the extra money spent may be worth it due to factory warrenty. The Aleinware R7 offers 850 Watt Power Supplies in both air and water cooled options for those who want multi GPU support. An R7 Can fit 2 2080 Ti or 1080 Ti cards in it.
The only thing to make sure of is the system in question has an adiquit PSU, NVIDIA GPU, and 16+ GB of RAM. These are also coincidently the same concerns as any good Gaming Computer so I would start with their gaming computer lines. AMD vs INTEL is not really as much an issue as most on these forums make it out to be. You would be fine with either an Intel i7 or a Ryzen 7.