Some tips about my new build?

auermann

Hi guys, how are you?
I'd like to ask your advice: I've been studying DAZ for about three years now, and now that I finally think I can really create an interesting project, I find myself without a computer - I've had some pretty serious problems and in a nutshell burnt it down I'd have about 3,000$ to spend and I'd be interested in a computer (a video card, in this case) that gives me maximum personal freedom and doesn't make me wait 1 hour / 1.5 hours for rather heavy renders (iRay scenes with 2-3 characters and a lot of artificial lighting).

Above all, what I would be most interested in is generating many animations per week with a fairly high quality. I have been using a very faithful 1660 with 6GB of ram for the past three years, but for what I have to do it takes too long (sometimes even 1- days for a 20-second animation).

I thought of buying an Alienware Aurora (Core i9-2TB + 1TB SSD - 128GB RAM - RTX 3090 | 8 Cores @ 5.3 GHz - 24GB GDDR6X but many people advised against it for various reasons. 
Also, many people here have told me that a 3090 with 24GB is great, but that there might be better alternatives.

Would you have any advice for me?

Thank you very much. 

PerttiA

DS + Iray, is all about VRAM and RAM, and when one gets deep enough, it's about storage space and how powerful a PSU one has.

We still don't know, what DS5 is bringing into the table, but for DS4 a six year old i7 is already fast enough

Drives... 1TB SSD for the OS, another one for programs and miscellaneous things and a 4TB external USB drive for the DS Content, would be fine to start with.

hansolocambo

I just bought a new rig, to give you an idea, for about 3300 €. But I already had and didn't need to buy : 3x27' screens, 1 XP-Penx 22-e Pro, Keyboard, mouse, 5.1 surround, Razer Tartarus and hard drives.

So without all those things, the cost of 3300€ covered (only) :

- Asus Prime Z690-A DDR5

- CORSAIR Vengeance RGB 2x16 DDR5 (5600MHz, CL36)

- Intel i9-12900K

- ARCTIC Freezer II 360

- RTX 3090 24GB VRAM

- Cooler Master MB520 ARGB Case.

It gets expensive really quick.

 

What you might wanna go for as PerttiA explained is an i7. It's not even 20% less efficient for x64 multi-core computation than an i9 from the same generation, and it's much more affordable. My precedent CPU was i7-7800x and I can today feel a huge difference in Daz, Marvelous Designer (!!), etc. An i7-12700KF sounds like a good option for your budget. 32GB of RAM is fine. With my 4 screens I always have multiple 2D/3D apps opened and I never suffered slow downs. Go for DDR4 motherboard and RAM if DDR5 doesn't fit the budget (although the speed gap for everything that goes through the motherboard is huge and DDR5 will become a standard). The MOST important, if your aim is to 3D render, is the VRAM. Or you'll render with your CPU cores only, which is fine, but slower of course. Best value for money is RTX-3090 24GB VRAM. I got mine for 1260€ on amazon about a week ago and I see it's already 1200 today. With the 4090 RTX going out prices might drop even a bit more within the 2 next weeks (could be the opposite, one can never know).

Many websites will help you build your rig. Begin by choosing the CPU (i7-12700KF or anything else, the F just states that there is no intel graphic chip which you don't need as you buy a graphic card). And then the Online PC Builder will help you choose what's compatible with that. 32GB of RAM and 24GB (or 16GB if it's too expensive) of VRAM and you can already have fun.

To lower drastically the price : As you go along and slowly start to be sure of what you're gonna go for, READ ! a lot of info for each computer part, from the OFFICIAL websites of each part's constructor. Only way to be 100% sure at the end that everything is compatible and FITS in your computer case (go for eATX to reduce that risk). For example even if my ARCTIC Freezer 360 was supposed to fit in the computer case on the Top, the guy who mounted my computer couldn't fit it up there and had to place the 3 fans of the cooler against the 3 fans of the computer case (which is fine, I just would have prefered them on the top...). Buy your parts online. There can be easily an average of 800$ difference on a 3000$ config depending on where you bought your parts. So buy parts in different online shops and go for the cheapest ones for each part.

DO NOT buy machines already mounted. They will always cost much more than bought into pieces. And you cannot control exactly what's in there. Buying parts is the way to go for thes best raw power value for money. Then find a reliable shop somewhere in town that'll accept to mount the computer parts for you. It's a bit more money at the end but I prefer to let someone who does that 10 times a day take care of it. And it'll cost you less to make someone mount your parts anyway than to trust some online builder with his already mounted PCs.

Don't be afraid to spend two weeks gathering information to be 100% sure that the money was spent in the wisest way when time will come to blow the bank account.

https://pcbuilder.net

https://pcpartpicker.com

https://www.newegg.com › tools › custom-pc-builder

etc.