New computer advice
SteveM17
Posts: 985
in The Commons
Hi. I'm thinking of getting a new computer, as my old laptop struggles with DS nowadays. My question is where is the best place to buy one that can handle fairly complex scenes in DS (lots of figures at once for example)? I'm in the UK, and the only place I could think of was PC World, but I'm not sure if their computers have the right specs (I'm not great with that side of things). Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.
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Avoid NVidia 5000 series (If you could even get one :P) as current DAZ Studio is incompatible with it (And wont ever be, we need DAZ 5 for that and there is no release date at the moment)
Could look at these + Thanx
Dell Outlet: Certified Refurbished Laptops, Desktops & Monitors
https://www.dell.com/en-us/dfh/lp/outlet
Dell's Alienwares are good choice, granted you beef it up with some extra RAM and an Nvidia Card that isn't a 5000 series. The R16 is pretty nice, and going from an older laptop to an Alienware gaming PC will be a pretty good jump in quality.
...In the States here.
Dell sometimes uses proprietary hardware which can be a headache if you want to do more customisation or future upgrading,
A friend of mine here had one of their top end notebooks and the MB started having issues He ordered a new one nearly a year ago (at a high price) and a couple months ago he still had not received it so he cancelled the order and got a refund..
It could be cheaper to have one built from an independent source. I love Alienware, but a good bit of the cost goes to them for getting everything together for you, reccomendations, assembly, having it ready to use when you get it, shipping it out, etc. We are living in bad economic times, but usually it's more affordable to obtain the pieces yourself and assemble it. If you haven't done something like that, I would recommend having someone do it for you, as it can be easy to make mistakes and ruin pieces if, say, you aren't properly grounded or have the right tools.
No matter what you decide to do, gaming PCs are a good option because they typically have everything you would look for in a setup ideal for Daz Studio: Decent storage space, high performing CPUs ,a lot of RAM and a powerful video card*. That link to the refurbished R16 Alienware is a great place to start because it's still a respectable system for a decent price and most importantly-the video cards are in the 4000 series so you won't have any issues with Daz Studio.
*Reminder that we REALLY need that fix to the 5000 series -_-;
Go to the HP website and buy an HP laptop with a RTX 4070 in it, 2TB SSD card, and 32GB or more RAM. It'll do what you need at a fair enough price without making a headache for you. Likewise, go to Acer and get equivalent speced laptop. I think those two generally have the most laptops at lower prices. They are both often in the US Walmarts so they make laptops for that customer base, go to Tesco or similar locally, or online.
I wonder if the following I found would be suitable?
Swift Go 14 SFG14-73-92LK Notebook
SFG14-73-92LK | NX.KSGEK.00U
No, you really do need a dedicated Nvidia GPU if you want to get the most out of DS; Intel or AMD graphics are unable to accelerate Iray, leaving you with only interminably slow CPU-only rendering.
Yes, it will work fine if you are to render by restricting the convergence of your renders to 95% convergence quality and the maximum number of iterations to 2000 or 2500. With those settings you will finish most FHD renders in less than 4 hours and most 4K renders in under 12 hours. NOTE: You will be CPU rendering with this laptop.
If you want most FHD and 4K render done in less than 4 hours you need a laptop with an nVidia RTX 30X0, RTX 40X0, or RTX 50X0 (oops - forget the RTX 50X0 - not compatible with the DAZ Studio 4.X series). I don't think there are any laptops that have an RTX 20X0 GPU though. Note: An RTX 1650 or RTX 1660 would GPU render but I think it'll be 8 hours or less, rather than 4 hours or less.
NVidia 5000 series incompatible with DAZ Studio? Who is claiming that?
Everyone. It's a known issue; the version of Iray that is currently in DS does not support the 50 series, and due to a compiler update, it is not expected that DS 4 can be updated to include a version of Iray that does.
The reports so far coming from those with a line to the developers is that there will be no 50 series support until DS 5. (Although it is *maybe* possible they find a workaround).
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/716486/nvidia-5090
I am in the UK.
The place I normally purchase PC/parts:-
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/
I purchased a pre-built PC from them last year and no problems. You can configure a PC which they will build for you.
Richard talks about it on this thread : https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/716486/nvidia-5090/p2
Richard Haseltine said:
Thanks for confirming. So it is a race between the release of DS5 and the availability/affordability of the RTX50x0 series...
In the UK I'd go for Scan. Their PCs are built using good quality standard fitting components (which they list) and they're the official reseller for Nvidia FE cards and workstation cards. I'd look at the RTX Studio line up.
https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/pro-graphics/rtx-studio-systems/nvidia-rtx-studio-pcs
A lot of info here, guys, so thanks for the replies. I don't tend to go for photorealistic renders that take hours, my renders usually only take a few minutes, I use DS to make comic strips, the strain on my current computer is probably due to the number of figures/objects in the scenes and the age of the machine, and I use 3delight rather than Iray because it's quicker. I've looked at a place that builds computers to request, but when it starts mentioning motherboards and coolers my brain explodes. I shall look at your suggestions so thank you for your advice, and I will no doubt be posting again on this thread soon before I spend any money!
...if you are using 3DL you want a CPU with as many cores/threads as you can get. as that is what determines rendering speed,
The upgrade I have planned includes a 12 core/24 thread Ryzen as I also use 3DL.
I'm not partial to Intel's new design that splits the CPU cores into "Performance" and "Efficiency" cores. For example a 12 core i9-12900 has 4 Performance cores (dual thread) and 8 Efficiency cores (single thread which are also slower) yielding a total of 16 threads instead of 24. For a system that is always plugged into a wall the Efficiency cores seem to make little sense.
I really don't know enough about the technical side of things to get one custom built. I wonder if this would be a suitable replacement for my old laptop? (Or use as a guide for a custom one?)
ASUS TUF GAMING A14 NVIDIA RTX 4060 32GB 14" 2.5k 165Hz AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Gaming Laptop
Specification:
14-inch, 2.5K 165Hz WQXGA
2560 x 1600, WQXGA, 16:10 aspect ratio
IPS-level, Anti-glare display, sRGB:100.00%
G-Sync, MUX Switch + NVIDIA® Advanced Optimus
AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370 Processor 2.0GHz (36MB Cache, up to 5.1GHz, 12 cores, 24 Threads)
AMD Ryzen™ AI up to 81 TOPs
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 8GB GDDR6 Laptop GPU (233 AI TOPs), 2225Mhz at 100W
2175MHz Boost Clock+50MHz O.C.,75W+25W Dynamic Boost
2TB PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ M.2 SSD
32GB LPDDR5X 7500 on board
Max Capacity:32GB
Windows 11 (64bit)
Ethernet: N/A
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6E(802.11ax) (Triple band) 2*2
Bluetooth: 5.3
2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (data speed up to 10Gbps)
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with support for DisplayPort™ (data speed up to 10Gbps)
1x Type-C USB 4 with support for DisplayPort™ / power delivery (data speed up to 40Gbps)
1x HDMI 2.1 FRL
31.1 x 22.7 x 1.69 ~ 1.99 cm
1.46Kgs
1 Year
1x card reader (microSD) (UHS-II)
1080P FHD IR Camera for Windows Hello
Backlit Chiclet Keyboard Single Light
2 speaker system
73WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion Battery
Yes, the Asus Tuff will get most complex FHD iRay renders done in less than 4 hours and most complex 4K iRay renders done in less than 8 hours. For 3DL, the first Acer or this Asus are both moore than enough but complex 3DL renders as stated are helped more by faster and moore CPU cores than a better GPU. When I do 3DL I always use this extremely simple toon shaders that were shared long again on sharecg.com and for those, even a 15 year old laptop renders an 8K image instantaneously.
...I wouldn't go with anything less than a 12 GB GPU for Iray rendering.
I've topped 10 GB on scenes like the one attached below.
It has eight G3 characters (one being the driver of the approaching train), a fairly large environment set, and mist & wet surface effects, It was rendered at 1,600 x 1,200 resolution, quality = 2 and took about 7 hours to render in CPU mode as this was done on what today is considered "legacy" hardware with a GPU that didn't have enough VRAM (several years ago I added a 12 GB Titan-X)...While building the scene I had to create and pose the characters as separate files and merge each of them them in, one at a time, using a "marker cube" to place them as the load became so high the viewport would almost come to a standstill..
Personally, I would go with a desktop as it is easier to upgrade and make changes/expansions as needed amd It will also benefit from superior cooling as tower cases usually have multiple fans. . The system I mentioend (and still use) is in a large "half tower" case that has 7 fans 4 intake and 3 eexhauust (along iwth a fan on the CPU cooler), is about 13 years old, and has been chugging along just fine suffering just one HDD crash and a PSU burnout some years ago .Granted back thn I had to learn everything about the process on my own as custom houses were were more expensive than today.
Again if you also use 3DL,rendering will put a heavy load on the CPU and as notebooks generally do not allow for an aftermarket CPU cooler heat could be an issue, The old Toshiba I used to use would get very warm where the CPU was, even with an external cooling pad and somtimes shut would down during a render..
One other issue with "off the shelf systems" is they usually come bundled with a lot of useless "bloatware" installed that you likely won't need or use.
I would go with a custom build house. Most have what are called "configurators" which allow you to pick a base system and customise it your needs and budget..
My two kopiyok worth.
My current laptop has Total Available Graphics Memory of 2176 mb, which I'm guessing isn't much?
...sounds like that is integrated graphics on the CPU, which is what my 17 year old Win Xp Toshiba notebook has (BTW ir still boots up and works)..
Yeah for rendering in Iray, a dedicated GPU is pretty much essential to avoid waiting hours for a render to finish and punishing your CPU..
In the 40xx (Ada) series (current generation) the only card with 12 GB is the RTX 4070.
For some reason prices for GPUs seem to be spiking as I'm seeing the base 4070 going for anywhere from about 650 USD to over 1,000 USD while the 4070 Ti Super (16 GB) can range from around 850 USD to as much as 1,600 USD. or more.
If funds are a concern you might want to consider stepping back to a 3060 12 GB. which are around 430$ on average.