What Pc? Need Some Help Please?

[Timbo]

Could any of the computer savvy people out there offer some help with advice on what PC to buy? When it comes to the software I know the ins and outs of the cats wotsit...however as soon as folks start talking hardware to run the software I develop a glazed expression. Even the advice given by the software companies I deal with seems to make little sense. I've been advised to look at a 'Gaming System' but by the time I start configuring the system I'm totally lost in the technical details and more importantly the system is way over my budget. I'm looking to spend £700-£1000 on the system...as I would rather spend what money I have on the boat instead!

Here's what I'm after. I need a machine that can cope with my work at home. I need a monitor with the system. The machine needs to have multiple cores to handle animation. A minimum of 8GB of RAM. A more than decent graphics card to handle 3D around the 4 GIG mark. The software I use most is 3Ds Max, Maya, Sony Vegas Pro and a variety of in-house animation software all built on a 'game platform'. 

Here's hoping someone can help? 

The motherboard's connected to the shin bone, the shin bone's connected to the APU, the APU is plugged into a beagle...now hear the word of the four letter variety issuing from my study!

 

 

 

[BroadScot]

Something with a minimum i5 or i7 should I would think keep your graphics up to speed, Tim. I personaly have a i5 with a good dollop of RAM. I bought to store photos. Sadly with my old legs not behaving, I have not been able to get out and do some picy taking. I have the Isle of Arran next on my list, oh and Millport on Cumbrae also.

Happy PC hunting.  IMHO dont buy a HP pc all the geeks I know say its no very guid!

Iain

[deebee29]

I would go for i7 if you're running Sony Vagas pro and 16gb ram if you can afford it. I'd also avoid Windows 10 as the constant updating in the background causes major problems for video editing (from experience).

W 10 is ok for general photo retouching and General pc's use but once you get into memory intensive programs it struggles... I have i7 with 16gb ram which was fine with Windows 8 but once I switched to 10 it became impossible.

[grendel]

I too will say go for a machine with an SSD hard drive (at least for the operating system - I have upgraded a laptop from 2007, running lubuntu, and it now gets from the push of the on button to logged in and ready in just 14 seconds, before that it was over a minute. I am in the process of upgrading another machine - a dell inspiron mini 10, that took forever to do anything, once the hard drive has cloned over I will let you know how much faster it is.

a 120Gb SSD hard drive was just £35, a 240Gb one was just £55.

as for machine specs, a good processor with a good high quality graphics card and plenty of memory, the trick for what you want (as with CAD) is the graphics card- as that is where the bottleneck lies with intensive graphic processing.

Grendel

 

[Siddy]

Just reading above I've had to stick 16 gig mem in my i5 base unit since moving to win 10, Not upgraded i7 laptop yet but thats ready for action within seconds on win 8.1.

I'd look at buying away from highstreet and use someone like CCLONLINE they sell ready built or build your own and the sale guys and very good they'll sell or design to your spec. I've used them for years, ok there a few mile from me and pass there showroom on way to work.

I take it you have a pc doing this now but running slow, other option is 2nd hard drive, disk caddy & clone your drive then the one for work strip it back of extra software virus prog running etc (take off network) you slide in the drive you need on the front and power up, £150 max. This is what I did with a XP machine years ago (still got) we used when doing a party, karaoke, lighting etc didn't miss a beat afterwards. 

 

 

[JonC]

Scan and PCSpecialists both do custom and semi custom PCs that are more than capable of doing what you want, but certain hardware setups might benefit you more than others, I did notice that Scan do pre configured sound, video, and rendering configs. I build me own rigs, but I get the info on the config from the computer forum Hexus

http://forums.hexus.net

My advice would be to join there, do an intro post, then post in the hardware section detailing the software you use, and your budget. There are several professionals on there doing CAD, video eiting, sound editing, etc. Scan specifically will be anything you want, PC Specialists will probably have a better price on a pre-configured rig.

[Warp]

Hi Timbo,

This really does come down to what type of work you are doing, how complex the models are and how much tolerance you have for previewing results in low-fi modes (simplified models, no textures, wireframe etc).

But from what you have posted I would likely go with a mid range system and put the hottest graphics card (probably a nvidia one although ATI tend to edge forwards on video) I could lay hands on in it. Keep in mind that graphics cards are not just about the 4GB they are also about the number of execution units! I can get a really cheap 4GB card that will not do you any favours in 3d studio or maya.

At your price point you do basically need a gamer PC as the ones that are designed for the software you are using usually come in at a multiple of your budget.

You may also want to consider a second hand Quadro, again depending on if you need one for what you are doing.

For now buy a cheap monitor you can tolerate and plan to upgrade it. (does colour correctness matter for what you are up to?)

The posters above mention scan where I buy some things from and PC Specialists. I would also mention Overclockers who do a lot of gaming rigs.

[MauriceMynah]

This might sound stupid but what's wrong with the one you already use? can it be upgraded to give you what you want?

There will be much of your current machine that will be perfectly serviceable, the case, the drives the power supply etc. If it's too slow, perhaps putting in a solid state discdrive (SSD) might help, then use your existing drive as a back-up. Even if you replace the main board (Motherboard) and the processor, this might be a lower budget solution.

[Warp]

After posting above I realised that the very first PC I bought with my own pay and built myself from components was to run 3d studio max and softimage. It was a beast at the time, it had 32MB EDO RAM, a matrox millennium with a 3d daughter card and two pentium pro 166's with 512k cache each which I overclocked to 200 MHz for a blistering total of 400MHz!

My colleagues used to love rendering on it while I was doing other things as it was so amazingly fast!

Scary to think that machine is now 20 years old. But it did serious commercial work on hardware that was significantly less powerful than a raspberry pi including some pretty cool animation even if I do say so myself 

[grendel]

I have done CAD on machines that were seriously slow too - I remember when we got a windows 95 machine that ran CAD, that was nearly as fast as the Unix workstations - they had Scusi Bus and ran at 12kHz - and were networked to the data storage on a 56 bit modem.