Example configuration:

something like the below or similar / better (uk pricing from a few weeks ago):

• CPU: Intel Core i7-13700KF ~ £ 420 (or similar from AMD)
• Mainboard: MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4 ~ £ 220
• RAM: 32 GB DDR4 Ram: ~ £ 120
• Storage: M.2 ssd 2 TB: ~ £ 200
• GPU: RTX 3060 12 GB: ~ £ 390 (minimum)
• PSU min. 700 watt: ~ £ 100 (min. 1000 watt for 3090 or above)

Total: ~ £ 1450 (I have taken middle prices from idealo not the cheepest ones - a few weeks ago)

CPU fan: ~ £ 50
(a high end model like the Noctua NH-D15 would be ~ £ 100)

plus case, case fans etc.

Notes:

CPU:
The i7-13700KF is extremely fast, has 18 cores and offers max. 24 threads. I use it in my new build and can say it is a lot faster in daily operation than the AMD Threadripper 3960x I used before. If you don't need the build-in GPU you can go with the i7-13700K (not ...KF) which comes without gpu and is a bit cheeper. Alternatively an Intel i7-13600K or KF is a bit slower, has a few cores less but is cheeper.
Regarding the build-in GPU. If you attach the monitor to that one, and use a current Windows 10 build you save a few 100 MB of vram. The latest Windows 10 interations do not reserve as much vram in general anymore but on top they reserve even less, if no display is attached to the gpu.

Mainboard:
It is a DDR4 not DDR5 board and has one lan port 2.5 GB speed. If you need two lan ports or 10GB speed, expect higher board prices (as I wanted a 10GB connection to my NAS, I simply bought a 10 GB lan card for 87 € and put it in a free PCI slot - this was way cheeper than to go for a board that comes with 10 GB build-in).
DDR4 ram is expected to depricate in the next years. This might become relevant for your 6 years time frame. If you go with DDR4 (Ryzen 5 is also DDR4) buy the needed ram timely to not get hit by limited supply in the future. Alternatively go with Ryzen 7000 series or buy an intel board with DDR5 support (e.g. MSI PRO Z790-A WIFI DDR5). But board and ram will be more expensive.

Regarding the Intel LGA-1700 socket: Rumors say, the 13th gen of Intel CPUs is the last one to use the LGA-1700. It is expected that the next gen of Intel CPUs will require a new mainboard with a new socket.

AMD: Same situation with AMD. Ryzen 5000 series uses socket AM4. The new Ryzen 7000 series uses socket AM5. So, if you buy a Ryzen 5000 CPU now you can't just replace the CPU with a Ryzen 7000 in the future. You need to replace the mainboard as well.

If you prefer to have a simple upgrade path (just replace CPU) it might be better to go with Ryzen 7000 and not Intel 13000 or AMD 5000. Ryzen 7000 uses AM5 socket and AMD wrote they will support AM5 at least until 2025 with new CPUs. Disadvantage is, that Ryzen 7000 needs the more expensive DDR5 ram and the AM5 mainboards are also more expensive than the older DDR4 boards with socket AM4.

RAM:
min. 32 GB and see mainboard (better 64 GB).

Storage:
If you want to use it for many years you might want to read about experience with long term use before buying something. I personally have good experience with Samsung and Crucial SSDs and M.2s but that was just luck maybe.

GPU:
The RTX 3060 12 GB is considered the sweet spot of processing speed, vram and price theese days. Alternatively there is the RTX 3060 Ti. It is faster but has less vram and costs more. In case of a decision I suggest to always go for more vram instead of more speed. Or better: try to get a used 3090 with 24 GB of vram (I use this one and it is hell of fast and has plenty of vram - good for DS and stable-diffusion).
Or wait for the lower end RTX 4xxx GPUs. The 4090 would be nice but in my opinion the price is just to high. For that money one can get two used 3090 and combine them via a NVLink. This way you get a similar speed but with combined 48 GB for textures. (for two 3090 take a good PSU).

PSU:
Don't go for the cheepest models. The most simple models tend to fail more early than higher end products and they could struggle with power demand peeks form the PC (CPU and GPU can request way higher watteges from the PSU than their official TDP values suggest - those peaks are only lasting a few milliseconds but very simple PSUs might cause a PC shutdown or blue screen because of it - it is rare, but it happens). Some vendors offer extended warranty for their higher end models. E.g. I got a 10 years warranty for a Corsair AX1600i PSU (it offers 1600 watt which is fine for multi GPU configurations - but it is expensive - I got it during a sale).

Power cosumption and cooling:
The 13700KF at default settings in my board and at a high load (Cinebench R25 benchmark) consumed nearly 250 watt. That creates is a lot heat to be handled by the CPU cooler. But, those CPUs (Intel and AMD) and mainboards are set to very high voltage values at stock. In my case I just went into the MSI bios and lowerd the "CPU lite load" setting. As a result the CPU is now at 194 watt under Cinebench R25 with no reduction in speed and stability. Temps went down from around 90 degree C to around 75 degree C (watercooled system).
The RTX 3090 is similar to this regard. Default was 330 watt in Iray rendering at around 1950 MHz clock speed. I lowered the clock curve to a max. of 1800 MHz and reduced the allowed voltage quite a bit (can simply be done with the MSI afterburner tool). Result: before around 330 watt, after 245 watt. Speed wise it does not make a relevant difference in DS.

I went with watercooling to not run into cooling / throttling issues. The system can render for endless hours without any heat issue on GPU, CPU or other components. Temps don't reach critical values which hopefully helps for components to last a few years.

If you go the intel route with LGA-1700 socket and build the system yourself, google for "LGA 1700 bending issue" before doing so. A lot of overheating, throtteling, bluescreen issues have to do with it (it's about a bend of the CPU when attached to the board so that the cooling plate does not have good contact the CPU die - this causes bad heat transfer to the cooler and results in overheating of those CPU areas that are not well covered).

lou_harper said:

I wonder what was the point of 8.1 with 9 coming out so soon after. It just introduces another element of incompatiblity.

Hear, hear, I like the fact that G9's much more content creator-friendly, but the base is too bare-bones, literally, as her bends are severely underdeveloped, I'm gonna stick with G8.1 until KHImage studio comes out with another natural bend morph package for G9!

That doesn't mean that G8.1 is not without fault, as G8.1 was/is horrific for creating limb morphs unlike G8; as G8.1's morphs are asymmetrical, meaning you cannot simply mirror limbs without mirroring the opposing symmetry from the body, so when dialling the new morph, you're also dialling the opposing symmetry with the character!

I'm usually a champion for new figures, but with G9, it is too bare-boned and quite honestly, a bit lazy, to be honest as Daz employs master digital sculptors, so G9's joints could have easily surpassed anything from the previous generations, which is why it's disappointing that daz held back with advancing the figure's bends for a new generation for 'ole noodle-knees, as we're now reverting back to the days of V4, we don't even have flexion morphs that are prominently and accurately represented with G9.

Noah LGP said:

Genesis 8/8.1 had 5 years of products, maybe it's time to move forward ...

...that's 5 years of catching up for me, pretty at decent discounts. .  

I didn't jump on 8 when it was first released as it was not as much an advancement as G2 - G3 was (different weight mapping and mesh) to warrant buying everything over again, and them in two years when the next generation comes out, having to do it all yet again (8.1 was even less of an and advancement).  Now we have 9, the structure of which has been changed so radically one pretty much will have to buy everything anew (3 and 8 for the most part used the same UV map, base mesh and rigging).  I can even use G2 and even G1 morphs/shapes with G8 (using both Generation X and X-Transfer together) which really expands what I refer to as my "gene pool" and it still makes my previous investments valuable. I also have utility content that cleans up clothing fit issues and converts poses,(the latter on the fly) as well.

I have more than enough hair, clothing, and morph content at my disposal when it comes to working with figures and characters to keep me busy for a long time.  Save for catching up on more G8 items I need, I have moved more towards purchasing props, environment sets, and vehicles which are not "generation depndent.". My misginving as I mentiond a bit above is that with the current sale structure of having to buy a new product to get a discount and ost everything new is G9 based,  getting those discounts is going to be a bit more challenging.  At least there's the two Daz+ sales with the  "Daz + For A Day" offers  flash sales and occasional orange banner offers with no other strings attached save for a coupon code.

Oh and yes, saving up for the system upgrade is also a point, which means keeping content purchases at a minimum. 

Simple!  Just make sure the morph packs exist in the same directory structure from which you launched Janette

Gordig said:

What kind of tutorials you'll need will depend on the type of content. For static props, nothing is really needed except to save it as a prop in DS (File -> Save As -> Support Asset -> Figure/Prop Asset). For rigged props, you'll need to redo the rigging inside DS, so you'll want to look up some rigging tutorials. For clothing, you'll do whatever fitting and reshaping needed to make it fit your preferred character in Blender, then import into DS. You can try rigging with a donor figure, as Felis suggested, but I'd recommend just using the Transfer Utility. I've got a tutorial that is potentially useful for two of these problems:

Ok thanks - that's a start and I really should learn more about rigging ... how hard can it be??

As for textures - I already use shaders a lot so I guess I could apply those but I would need to, at least, create material zones and probably a UV map which is something I imagine to be daunting.

What kind of tutorials you'll need will depend on the type of content. For static props, nothing is really needed except to save it as a prop in DS (File -> Save As -> Support Asset -> Figure/Prop Asset). For rigged props, you'll need to redo the rigging inside DS, so you'll want to look up some rigging tutorials. For clothing, you'll do whatever fitting and reshaping needed to make it fit your preferred character in Blender, then import into DS. You can try rigging with a donor figure, as Felis suggested, but I'd recommend just using the Transfer Utility. I've got a tutorial that is potentially useful for two of these problems:

I couldn't make use of the "captivating" new release sale, because there were only 8 applicable items and they seemed random.

Originally I had a great idea for the Extra 70% off for a New Release over $20. I was going to buy the Fiona 9 Bundle as the New Release, and then get the G8F head morphs (which I've needed for a while) plus the Victoria 9 Intro bundle plus the Gen 9 starter essentials expansion so my Victoria and Fiona could have all their "parts". Overall it was like a $200 cart for like $88.

But the problem I ran into is...do I really want to invest in Gen 9 at this point? When I compare Gen 3 to Gen 8 I can see a drastic difference in style -- Gen 3 looks more cartooney to me whereas Gen 8 looks more realistic. And while Gen 9 characters do look nice, really they just seem like really nice (and expensive) gen 8 characters.

Plus I'm iffy on whether or not Gen 8 stuff will fit on Gen 9s. I tried out some G8 stuff on my G9 Belle the other night. I got Haydina Hair to work on her pretty well, but then I tried an Emo Outfit, which didn't work at all.

I think it seems almost dumb that Gen 8 stuff doesn't automatically fit on Gen 9 characters at first, but then from a business perspective, it would be against Daz's interests to have G8 stuff fit G9 characters, because they probably make a decent chunk of their profit on apparel and hairs and stuff. So I don't see cross-compatibility being high on Daz's priority list.

I don't know if I'm ready to embrace G9 quite yet, is the point, which I think at least one other person has already said. Though I do want to take advantage of this sale, because I need that head morph to make my Nena G8F I got from Renderosity to work properly. :D

I feel like the only way this can be done is A, wait until Reallusion updates CC4's DAZ Transfer tool to accept Genesis 9 (yet seeing that it took them until the next version of Genesis released, I doubt they'd update it until Genesis 10/X or a Genesis 9.1 comes out) or B, wait until we can get some Genesis 9 to Genesis 8/8.1 morph conversion tools for sale on here. Either wait Genesis 9 isn't going to work with CC4 for a good time, sadly.

I can't remember having seen any tutorials in how to import an obj (or fbx) file, for clothing items.

Sickleyield has one for objects.

But what you want is to import the obj, and assuming it fits the base character, you can use transfer rigging, with the character as donor.

But you must be aware that an imported obj, will not have any adjustments e.g. morphs, and materials is very simple and will have to be redone in Daz Studio,

My use case is, I have an animation with a Genesis 2 Female with many keyframes (let's say 50), and I might want to see how the animation would look with different characters that I have made. What I want to be able to do is ideally double click one preset and the materials, hair, clothes, and body/face morphs all swap in while leaving the keyframes untouched except the body face morphs.
I specify this caveat cause this isn't an issue for a scene that is just a still image but in animation, it's common that at every keyframe or blocking pose, you keyframe every variable from the character node on up, so in my example animation scene, G2F will have 50 keyframes where the body/face morphs are baked in 50 times so if I change the face morphs, for example, at frame 0, that means I need to go in and delete the face morph keyframes cause otherwise by the very next keyframe, the character has already reverted to the previous face morph.
This isn't a big deal if I'm only swapping out one character's body/face morphs but if I'm doing this operation several times manually, it's a hassle and even worse sometimes I make a mistake and miss a body/face morph and then find out during the batch render that the face has changed back and ruined the batch render.
Is there a way to automate this? 
 

If the geometry editor doesn't work out, Fit Control Add-On has a Length Lower Shorten morph for skirts, as well as, a few Rear morphs that may be able to help.

Edit the path and label in the Parameters settings dialogue, the gear icon on the slider, the problem then is getting the chnages to stick (there have been several threads on this issue and my standard advice seems to fail). You could resave the morph, but then any update would require you to redo the work.

arthenics said:

Look slike there is a missunderstanding, I don't try to fit clothes or hairs but duplicate/transfer/transform custom 9 figures as 8 figures.

There’s no misunderstanding.
Clone morphs are primarily used for autofit, but they're also useful to transfer a shape between two figures, as they give you an approximate "source figure" shape for the target figure.

Look slike there is a missunderstanding, I don't try to fit clothes or hairs but duplicate/transfer/transform custom 9 figures as 8 figures.

invisigoth said:

Dartanbeck, when i open transfer utility, i select Genesis 3 Female in the source

but the "Next option down, use the drop-down to select Clone > Genesis 8 Female" i dont have genesis 8 female or male

grab Catherine's freebies 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/491296/auto-fit-clones-genesis-through-to-g8-reup#latest

Dartanbeck, when i open transfer utility, i select Genesis 3 Female in the source

but the "Next option down, use the drop-down to select Clone > Genesis 8 Female" i dont have genesis 8 female or male

I was following along this post   https://hpclscruffy.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/489116/genesis-8-3-and-2-in-carrara-alt-method ;   for converting clothing, from

i get to  

1. start the transfer utlity
2. The upper left set of options (Source) are where we load the target Figure - so use the drop-down to select Genesis 3 Female
3. Next option down, use the drop-down to select Clone > Genesis 8 Female

but when go to that dropdown, there is no genesis 8

how do i get that option?

Mod edit: merged and then deleted duplicate.

how do i copy and paste my preferred morphs to a separate folder....?

Do i need o dial in the morph then save as a morph preset to a folder of my choosing?

or is there a quicker way like copy and paste?

thank you.

Repo updated. Added a new Tab. You can now delete morphs (dsf files & directories, as well as cached data), which can be handy if something went wrong or you need to 'overwrite' a morph while experimenting different settings.