computer design

rhos2821

can anyone give me the stats on a computer that can render effectivily but not be over the top

looking to build a new one with Daz in mind

thanks

sriesch

I can't really provide specifics, but here are a few random points to note:

Make sure it's 64-bit. Large scenes crash my 32-bit version of DS, but work fine on my 64-bit version.

You can't have too much processing power. There is no "over the top" here. The faster you can render, the happier you'll be, and the more you can do by being able to quick see what does because your system is fast enough to let you try it without having to walk away and do something else for every tiny little thing. I've spent weeks rendering, although rarely, and I have to say it would really have sucked had those weeks been a month due to having purchased a motherboard with fewer/slower processors.

Different people will give you wildly different answers about how much memory is enough. I can't predict what you'll need. I have not yet used all 8GB I have available, but I'm sure the day will come. 4GB on the old system is now insufficient though, even though it seemed fine when I started on that system a number of years ago, so I'm probably not that far away from running out at 8.

Long ago, many people, myself included, made the mistake of assuming "I'm working with graphics, so I want an expensive graphics card". You probably don't. There are some minimum features you need, you might want it for something else, and obviously it has to be able to handle whatever monitor setup you have, and it will have some effect in your preview views I don't remember the specifics of, but a lot of it's fancy features may not be getting used since your rendering isn't normally using it anyway. Don't dump a bunch of money into one hoping it might help unless you know exactly what it is you are getting out of it and why it makes sense to do so.

I also can't predict how much drive space you will need, either for this hobby or whatever else you put on it, and it's pretty easy to just buy a new disk later. I'm able to run on a 500GB drive (not counting backups and an additional drive that is useful even though not absolutely required) without problems at the moment, but it's rapidly filling up. I'd recommend starting with a 1TB drive at a minimum.

Remember not to overspend just to get a few extra percent of goodness out of it. No matter what you get and how happy you are with it, it's going into a trash pile not that many years in the future anyway because it broke or became obsolete or you simply grew out of it, so make sure you are comfortable regularly shelling out that same pile of cash for a new one over and over.