Thoughts on computer specs
Worlds_Edge
Posts: 2,152
Hi All,
I'm thinking of purchasing a new desktop. I've attached the specs. It will cost right under $4k. I don't know how to personally do upgrades/computer builds so even if that is the cheaper or better route to go, it isn't for me. My main uses are Daz Studio, photoshop, AI and art programs. My current graphics cart is a 1070 so I know whatever new graphics card I get, it will be an improvement. Mainly I need to know did I "pick" the right components.
Thanks in advance.
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Instead of home edition of Windows, get the PRO one.
Ok, I was wondering about that. Thanks.
With the new AMD processors coming out right around the corner (9/27) I'd wait. The single core performance is supposed to be 31% higher (7950x over 5950x) which is huge for Daz. Intel just got the performance crown with the 12xxx processors by ramming a lot of power through it, you'll be using more electricity and generating more heat. The AMD cpus are a lot more efficient. The new gen AMDs will be faster, and with AMD using TSMC's more advanced fabrication they are sure to beat the newer Intel generation coming out.
For just under 4K you could EASILY get an RTX 3090 with twice the VRAM (24 GB). Given that your primary use is Daz Studio along with the Genesis 9 announcement yesterday and your budget I wouldn't consider less.
For some reason I was under the impression that nvidia is always better than amd. That is good info, I'd certainly rather have more vram to future proof. I was looking for a build with 24 vram. So do you think with all the specs as shown above, but the change to windows 11 pro, and a change to the amd processer - that would be a good machine?
Outrider, you are saying either AMD or NVidia - just make sure it is the 3090 with 24 vram, correct? And that also means I should wait to see what they are charging for AMD per Gator's advice.
I think your confusion is AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. If you want to Iray render, you'll need to get an nVidia video card. For processor, though, you can go with either AMD or Intel. Daz doesn't utilize the processor very much. If you're going to get an Intel CPU, don't get the F-variant. Those don't come with Integrated GPUs
I just did a big system overhaul from an i9-9900K with 64GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM to an i9-12900KS running 64GB DDR5 6000Mhz RAM. I ran a render before, and it completed in 1 hour. Ran the same render after, and completed in the same amount of time.
I am eyeballing a 4090 video card, though, since I've only got a 3070
oh you are correct, that was the reason for my confusion. I understand now, thank you. I'll wait until the end of the month and configure a new build based on the comments here. If you know somewhere as good or better than ipower to configure a build, I'd love to hear it.
What Expozures said on the cards.
On the CPU, it will have very little benefit towards rendering time - and thanks for that comparison with what I assume is same GPU Expozures. The CPU will help with the loading of things and of course overall system responsiveness. When you're looking at simply render time, with an hour long render it's such a small slice of the pie it's insignificant.
On system integrators, you probably want to look at some YouTube channels like Gamer's Nexus and JayzTwoCents. Search their channels, I know for one Gamer's Nexus reviews some system integrators.
Not to make you wait more, but the RTX 4090 might be worth considering. It might stretch the 4K budget a little more though. If Nvidia's claims are true it might be worth the cost price/performance (wait on 3rd party benchmarks of course). I only mention it since they will be on the street next month, and at least if you consider it then it won't surprise you and make you think "dang I should have waited."
- Sound Card : 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard. We're in 2022, no need for sound cards anymore. Except eventually if you're a pro music artist. You get sound on motherboards and Graphic cards. Realtek does a perfect job 5.1 or 7.1 surround systems.
- Graphics Card : RTX 3080 Ti 12GB : an RTX 3090 24GB, for Daz, will be WAY more useful than your 3080 Ti that won't handle most scenes. If you don't want to end up rendering constantly with your 16 cores CPU : go for the most VRAM. 3090 is a bit more expensive, but twice the amount of RAM = twice the amount of fun when it's about rendering with Iray.
- Corsair RM850 : 800W is a bit tiny. 650W should be enough for a 3080 Ti. But if you go (and you damn should) for 3090 RTX, then 800W is the bare minimum. Go for 1000W or more to be on the safe side. Especially if you plan to overclock a bit your hardware.
- Network Card : ... what's the use for that nowadays ? You get Wifi with the motherboard. You get fiber connection with the motherboard in LAN. What would you need a Network card for ? There could of course be many reason. But just be sure you need that. If all your computers, phones, etc. are sharing the same netweork, network cards for individuals... are a thing of the past.
- USB Expansion Card / iBUYPOWER USB Expansion System : What are all those extra USB things ? There are natively 10 or 12 (?) USB ports on TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS. Isn't that enough ??? If it's not you can get cheap USB splitters. A lot of screens also have USB extension ports. I really doubt extra cards for extra USB ports is useful in any way. Especially with 800W to manage all you plan to plug in there.
- DDR4 motherboard and RAM... : Great CPU, great GPU.... taken down by a motherboard and RAM of a precedent generation of DDR that will soon become obsolete ?
I recently (this morning around 5 AM) bought a similar config. Should receive it between the 27th and 30th. But big difference, I went for DDR5. Because it's gonna pull MUCH more of the power of my 3090 RTX and i9-12900KF. I'm talking of a very ! big difference according to tests I've seen between DDR4 and 5. And if you choose wisely motherboard and DDR, it's actually not much more expensive, probably in your case even less. This is what I bought :
- ASUS PRIME Z690-A DDR5 288€ (your DDR4 motherboard is around 360€...)
- CORSAIR Vengeance RGB - DDR5 (2x16) 5600 MHz CL36. 255€ (so it'd be 510€ for you. I don't know what's the RAM "Certified Major Brand Gaming, etc." but I'd be scared sh...tless not KNOWING the brand and model of RAM. It's as important as the motherboard. MHz and CL are VERY important things to know about the RAM you choose. Don't close your eyes on something like that, trusting whoever sells you that stuff.
As you see, DDR5 doesn't have to be more expensive than DDR4. My RAM 5600MHz / CL36 will definitely make my rig more powerful than yours although they seem similar. DDR5 is ... damn fast ;) You should think about that really. Especially if you plan to keep that rig a few years, or you'll be left behind quickly with DDR4.
It's hard to balance budget and power. But I have the feeling that there are a few things in your config that are useless, maybe not of course, it depends what you plan to do with it (extra USB stuff, netword card, sound card. If it was me, I'd remove all that, useless). And a few other things that should be changed (DDR4 -> DDR5) or need !! to be changed (Graphics card).
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P.S : As for the ongoing battle about AMD. My personal opinion is without a blink, for 3D pro work : Intel + Nvidia. Alder Lake beats AMD in all meaningful performance metrics, single and above all multi-threaded productivity workloads. You want fast dForce, fast Marvelous Designer, etc ? For anything multi-core related to 3D production, it's Intel (I'm talking of course in the range of prices of a i9-12900K).
As for the graphics card, there is absolutely no doubt: NVidia. They are the ones who brought 3D acceleration to professional applications (3DS Max, Maya, and Daz with Iray, etc.). They are the ones who have advanced the world of 3D and AI at an insane rate because they don't focus only on hardware, but a lot on R&D. For professional 3D, there is only Nvidia. No competition whatsoever. Period. And for Daz anyway, because nobody develops rendering engines for it... except Nvidia, well you don't have much choice anyway.
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It probably depends on where you live (taxes, etc.) But during the last few days I spent loooong hours building my rig online. And I was impressed to find cheaper prices than Amazon, CDiscount, Rakuten, Newegg, etc... on a french website : Fnac.com. My whole config (motherboard, CPU, RAM, Cooler, Power Supply, Case) costed me 190€ less on Fnac.com than anywhere else. Pretty cool. And it's a very old brand here, definitely serious people.
Looks like I will definitely go for at least 3090 24gb. The 4090 certainly sounds interesting but i read in another thread it might not immediately be compatible with Daz Studio. I suppose I could wait to see the pricing, and what people here say about it working/not working.
I think it probably will work, but I could totally be wrong.
I don't recall the 3000 series taking long for Studio compatibility. Then again it was months before I was actually able to get my hands on one. I do remember it took a while for the 2000 series cards to be compatible, but there was a big difference with RTX adding raytracing cores. There is a much smaller difference between RTX 2000 and RTX 3000 cards.
I would make VRAM on your video card the most important priority spec in your build to work around. Targetting 24GB VRAM as a priority over anything else. If your scene runs out of VRAM, which can happen very quickly if you do scenes with mutliple characters, your render will fallback to CPU which will go from minutes to hours of rendering time.
You want your GPU to do all the work, but Daz has incredibly terrible memory management making us all waste our computer specs when we frequently run out of memory. They are years behind other modern day applications.
I wish they can have an engineer spend a few days to add a simple tool to at least help us monitor the amount of memory use. For example a build option before actually doing the render. So it can warn us that we are exceeding the available VRAM by 'x' (For ex: Your scene has exceeded the 12GB VRAM limit by 200MB). That way you can try to trim down your scene. To go even further, give us more options to trim down the VRAM use. We shouldnt rely on third party tools for this.
I just had a system built a few months ago from Digital Storm: Aventum X... it's a bit overkill, but it handles everything:
3D rendering, VR, A.I. (Visions of Chaos: Stable Diffusion), gaming, and video encoding / editing really well!
System Configuration:
Chassis Model: Aventum X
Exterior Finish: Black Metallic Matte Finish
Processor: Intel Core i9-12900KS (5.5 GHz Turbo) (24-Thread) (16-Core) 3.2 GHz (Alder Lake)
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme (Wi-Fi) (Intel Z690) (3x PCI-E) (DDR5) (E-ATX)
System Memory: 64GB DDR5 5200MHz Corsair Vengeance (Digital Storm Performance Series)
Power Supply: 1500W SilverStone ST1500-TI (Modular) (80 Plus Titanium)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD M.2 (2TB Samsung 980 PRO) (NVM Express)
Storage Set 2: - Western Digital WD_BLACK 10 TB
Storage Set 3: - Western Digital WD Red Pro 10 TB
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Graphics Card(s): 1x GeForce RTX 3090 24GB
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: H20: HydroLux PRO: Exotic Custom Cooling System (CPU Only)
HydroLux Tubing Style: HardLine Tubing (Requires HydroLux PRO Custom Liquid Cooling System)
HydroLux Fluid Color: Clear Fluid + Clear Tubing (Requires HydroLux Liquid Cooling System)
Cable Management: Exotic Cable Management - White - (Cable Combs with Custom Color Sleeved Extension Cables)
Chassis Fans: Corsair QL Series (RGB Fans) (Software Controlled Effects) (14 Fans Total)
Internal Lighting: Remote Controlled Advanced LED Lighting System (Multiple RGB Color Modes)
Software Control: Corsair Commander PRO Management Control Board & Software (3x Boards)
CPU Boost: Turbo Boost Advanced Automatic Overclocking
Graphics: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
OS Boost: Yes, Disable and tweak all of the non-crucial services on the operating system
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Professional (64-Bit)
Recovery Tools: USB Drive - Windows Installation (Format and Clean Install)
Virus Protection: Windows Defender Antivirus (Built-in to Windows)
Keyboard: - RAZER HUNTSMAN V2 ANALOG (Wired Keyboard)
Mouse: RAZER BASILISK V3
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 21-28 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: Life-time Expert Care with 4 Year Limited Warranty (4 Year Labor & 2 Year Part Replacement)
It's the first PC build I've ever purchased with a custom watercooled CPU (and 14 RGB fans! my whole room lights up like a Christmas tree now, haha), but I wanted a system with plenty of room for expansion that would last me for many years.
If I were building a system all over again, I would proabably look into AMD's CPU offerings since they finally beat Intel CPUs in terms of performance and power efficiency.
Intel is definitely struggling to compete against AMD on the CPU front (and Intel doesn't stand a chance against NVIDIA GPUs on the high end either).
In terms of the GPU, I will always be a firm believer in NVIDIA graphics cards... they are far superior to any of AMD or Intel's GPU offerings, especially the high-end SKUs, and if you intend to use Artificial Intelligence of any kind, and 3D Rendering with NVIDIA Iray or NVIDIA Omniverse using CUDA, you should be aware that CUDA is a proprietary technology that AMD or Intel cards don't have, so 3D rendering in Iray with an AMD or Intel GPU will be really slow, since Iray will fallback to CPU rendering instead. So if you want the best 3D render times, and have any interest in A.I. art generation tools like Stable Diffusion (with Visions of Chaos) or Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI, then an NVIDIA GPU will serve you very well.
GPU prices on previous generation 30 series cards have come down quite a bit after the cryptocurrency crash (and Ethereum's recent switch to Proof of Stake from Proof of Work), so you might be able to get two GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards with NVLINK on the secondary market for less than I paid for one GeForce RTX 3090 when it first came out, since supply was so constrained by high demand back then... I paid over 2K to get a 3090 in peak demand. Now you can get a 3090 Ti for $1,099 at Best Buy... aaargh.
At the time I configured my system, availability of DDR5 memory was almost non-existent with prices much more higher than DDR4... and benchmarks reported DDR5 performance gains of only about 10-15% better than DDR4 in 1080p gaming.
DDR5 does have a 50% higher maximum data rate than DDR4... DDR5 transfers data up to 38.4 GB/s, while DDR4 tops out at 25.6 GB/s.
Once the RTX 4090 gets released on October 12th, I'm definitely going with that... it looks like it's going to be 2x - 4x faster than the 3090 Ti / 3090, for just $500 more.
That's going to make a huge difference in processing time for my Stable Diffusion A.I. art generation and Iray rendering in Daz Studio...
I just can't see buying a new system on 23 September with all of the new tech coming out, literally within a month. The 4090 looks to be almost 2x the speed of the 3090....
When the new items hit the retailers, everything in your cart now will drop in price, due to the fact that its "older tech"... so even if you stick to your plan and get the exact same things, you will $ave money if you can just wait another 30 days.
Now, if your system blew up, and you HAVE to get something now... well... ok, but if you can wait, you will reap the benefits.
My suggestion would be figure out what you have to spend, and get the best system that money will buy on Nov 1.
Which is a good thing in my opinion, based on experience gathered during the last 35 years as a computer hobbyist and about 18 years as the one responsible for "all things computer" at my previous places of employment.
1. Complexity increases problems
2. If a device is not going to be used, it is better to not have it in the system at all
3. GPU drivers are amongst the most important software on the system, having drivers for several GPU:s with different architecture has a high probability to cause conflicts. If not anything else, read no.1
Yeah, I haven't upgraded my GPU...yet. Still running my 3070 I got a couple years ago. I'm just holding out for Gamers Nexus and Jayztwocents to get their hands on the 4090s to determine if I want to get a cheaper 3090Ti, or splurge and get the 4090. By the time 4090s come out to market, 3090Tis should be around the $1000 mark or so...don't think I'd go for the used market, I'd like to make sure that I've got a reliable video card for Daz. If I'm dropping that much on a card, I want to make sure that it's good, and has warranty.
I'm sure there will be a person or two in here who will grab a 4090 also and give us their experiences. What would be interesting is if some kind of 'stock' benchmark was setup that we could all run, using base models, scenes, HDRIs to have some good comparison to of video cards.
Some of Daz Studio is single-threaded.
But there is one already;
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p1 ;
Good to know. Thanks. :)
Thanks everyone, I decided I will wait as suggested. When the new tech comes out, I might come back here with the "new specs" to be sure I did okay with my selections. Really appreciate all the help and ideas.
Worlds Edge....
Do you mind me asking what your budget is?
Sorry @Chumly, I did not see your question sooner.
$4k - 5K, obviously preferring lower range.
So, it's time for me to start thinking of an upgrade as well but I was worried that the new 40XX stuff won't be compatible for a while, so figured I'd start planning on it in spring. Does anyone know how long it usually takes for the new cards to get support in DS?
...long since past due for an upgrade here as well, however when I see people mention 3,000$, 4,000$, 5000$,build budgets I look at my trusty old system I built over a decade ago and pat it on top for continuing to soldier on like it has all these years as I am on a fixed pension. The old girl has been upgraded to her limits which is still far behind what many have on their desks today: 6 CPU cores/12 threads, 24 GB memory 2 SSDs, 12 GB VRAM (minus a couple GB as it is a pre RTX card running Daz 4.20), and 850w PSU,. About the only area of improvement remaining is increasing drive capacity.
Picked up a 3060 a year ago which went back in the box as the system's MB is so old the BIOS won't recognise the card. (in spite of what I read on several tech forums)
Originally I planned for a W11 upgrade but after reading more about it over the last few months decided, "no". So looking at staying with W7 which means the latest legacy tech available that still supports W7
Total cost 1,208.18$
Using existing case, drives, PSU, and displays.
This has me curious, as you could fit more in scenes rendering with Iray using your CPU with 128 GB system RAM but it's just gawd-awful slow. That CPU is only 2.7 GHz, so that's another area it's gonna be slow - rendering will use all cores, but most other Daz tasks it's mostly single core. FWIW old machine is a 1950x Threadripper, and it was just waaaaaaaaay slower than the Titan-X (Maxwell, no RTX, roughly equivalent to 1080 Ti).
If you're gonna pile up a scene to use that much RAM with Iray and CPU rendering it feels like you're gonna click 'Render' and come back a week later to see if it's done.
IMO, on that budget you'd be far better served with a newer CPU like the Ryzen 5000 series as they are discounted now with the 7000 series out and a 3060 or possibly going used like eBay for a 3090.
(12th Gen Intel has a little bit faster chip but at the cost of terrible efficiency, TDP is like double - more electricity, more heat).
How old is the PSU? This could be a bad idea for one well over a decade old, the components do degrade over time and so does the efficiency. You really start increasing the odds of damaging system components or starting a fire.
Factor in how high quality it is, how hard it's been pushed for how long.
It's been all mentioned, basically, including priorities. Basically other applications or physics might already make use of CPU or CPU+GPU in parrelel by now, and you can't rule out DAZ Studio improving on that aspect too for some use cases, maybe some plugins already do, though i wouldn't bet on any time frame there. Question is what you most likely will do, in addition to or as an extension to DAZ studio in the first place.
On top the upgradability also might be an interesting point, where (upcoming) AMD CPUs might still be favorable.
Workstation or server CPUs also allow for more of memory. E.g. some recent Ryzen CPUs you would be "limited" to 128 GB memory, while Threadripper would have allowed for 256 GB, if the mainboards had been available at all. Server CPUs of course may allow much more of memory. That of course only is relevant, if you have any (future) application for it. I don't know where the sweet spot for DAZ Studio is right now, but being limited to 64GB total upgrade potential for a desktop, for instance, would probably be something you might want to reconsider for a fresh hardware buy.
...Ryzen and Intel Skylake-X or newer require moving off from W7. After reading about W11 I decided to stay with 7 as 11 retains several features of 10 that I dislike and adds even more on top of that (there was also an announcement a couple months ago that MS will be sending feature updates whenever the felt like it rather than sticking to the normal rollout schedule, that's a "no go" for me). The fact that several of those "undesirable" features are also integrated into the Core OS and uninstalling them can break basic OS functions, is a major part of why I decided not to adopt ether 10 or 11
For over the last decade W7 has been running nearly flawless for me. About the only time I've had issues (and even that was few) it was a BSOD triggered by a bad driver or buggy security update and nothign to do with the OS itself. In my book, an OS should for the most part remain in the background and dow the one thing it is deigned for, supporting the software and utilities being used.
As I mentioned, I already have the 3060, but also will be working with the AweShading system for 3DL as the results I've seen posted on the 3DL renders thread are approaching near Iray like quality (hence the HCC Xeon and amount of memory). As I was pricing DDR4 2133 ECC memory I discovered that 128 GB is not all that much more than 64 so may as well go for it all now as maybe down the road I can pick up a 3090 at a decent price.
Yes, I know that, I am approaching a ceiling with 7 as Nvidia has already dropped driver support (though I'm 5 revisions ahead of the current required driver for Iray rendering) as have most software developers. What I have works fine for my needs as I have no intention to get into resource intense processes like animation and use dForce only sparingly (for the few clothing items I like). If Daz5 drops support for 7 then I'll just stay with the last version of 4.x that's released.
...the PSU (EVGA 850 GS +80 Gold) is only about a year old and replaced the original Corsair 750 +80 gold that finally gave out (popped a capacitor). It will be more than sufficient to support the specs listed, plus the RTX 3060 (which will be dedicated to rendering) and Titan-X (which will support the displays and add its cores to the process).
Just know that the new RTX 40 series of cards will be expensive. With the RTX 4090 ranging in price from $1600 to $2000 USD, also beware with the RTX 4080 as there are two models a 4080 16GB and a 4080 12GB. The 4080 12GB model is a very different card, in that it uses a different model GPU chip and has a narrower memory bus. Some are calling the RTX 4080 12GB a renamed RTX 4070, for reasons no one is sure why.
On CPU's Intel will release their Raptorlake CPU's in October, that are supposed to be faster and cooler than their previous Alderlake CPU's. While AMD have their new Ryzen 7000 series CPU's the main issue there is the cost of a decent motherboard, DDR 5 looks to have come down quite a bit so should have no worries there.
Just know that Raptorlake will support both DDR4 and DDR5, While Ryzen 7000 is DDR5 only.