Spec advice

rained

Okay, so I'm trying to put together a new machine that will do the following:

1. Render scenes like, let's say Urban Future 7 or Jack Tomalin's Winterblack Halls. With a not too-bad-with-some-post-work level of grain without having to leave it overnight. (My old card really was really struggling with the halls, of course it doesn't help that I like to work with low light settings to begin with and that's an uphill battle I know..)

2. Render 1-2 figures with clothes without, again, having to leave it overnight to render. (Honestly I was limping by not too bad all things considered in this department with my old GEFORCE GTX 570 until one day my computer booted up with a CPU fan error and I decided it was time to upgrade.)

3. Photoshop & Lightroom also both have to perform really well as I also do a lot of photography. (my ten year old machine at least was doing pretty well in that department so I'm pretty sure anything newer can only be an improvement.)

4. dForce. My old card couldn't do it at all which has stopped me from buying a lot of stuff I would really like to try out.

5. Not chug quite so much doing iRay previews. Once a character was dressed in anything I was finding previewing started taking several minutes which is a pain in the butt when you just want to check you haven't totally blown everything out tweaking lighting or that a morph looks right once you add texture/light etc... plus honestly just pulling sliders sometimes got a bit slower than I'd like.

Any advice would be helpful. I'm hoping to keep to a budget of about $1500 and most of what I've seen on the forums is either a few years out of date, or doesn't talk in practical terms about *how* a given card performs in what situations. What other people do with it might be more/less than what I'm doing. I don't want top of the line but I want a machine that will hold up for another ten years like my last box did. My biggest question is how MUCH of WHAT do I need? I keep seeing contradictory information on "bigger card!" "more cpu!" etc.. and I'm not clear on what I need for which purpose, and whether a bigger investment in one department or another will make a huge impact for my purposes.

kenshaw011267

Fundamentally this is is both a good and bad time to be building a new system.

There are very exciting new options available but supply is sketchy at best.

A $1500 price point is not a difficult one either. What you want is a balance of a good CPU and the best GPU you can fit in the budget.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor $299 (currently out of stock everywhere)
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($159.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($64.98 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Intel 665p 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($88.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($139.99 @ Adorama) 
Video Card: PNY GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB UPRISING Video Card  (this is just a placeholder. Any 3070 at roughly $550 is fine for this build.)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh w/ Controller ATX Mid Tower Case  (Again a placeholder get a decently reviewed ~$100 case that you like)
Power Supply: Gigabyte P GM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($89.99 @ Newegg) (Again get a 750W PSU 80+ Gold PSU in this price range and you'll be fine)

This comes in right at $1500 before shipping and taxes so sales and Amazone prime are your friends.

It will definitely handle the scenes you describe in far less than overnight as well as Photoshop and Lightroom.

 

rained

Thank you!! This is super helpful, I appreciate it.

rained

Just curious if anyone knows whether the new update has altered the requirements for DAZ in any way that would effect my upgrade plans?

rained

Also Kenshaw if you're still around -- Would that power supply still be OK with 5 hard drives in the box? I forgot to mention I have several internal storage drives I plan to carry forward.