Posts by amberhawk5

wanderingbison9 said:With all due respect, sure, the monitor matters and having it calibrated to a specific standard is great, but there are plenty of Dell monitors out there that come factory calibrated and cost half as much, even if they don't boast a wide color gamut, which honestly feels like an advantage here... I mean, what are you actually going to do with DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB color space for modeling, and why pay the premium for it? I once had one of those older, hyped-up Dell U-series models where the "factory calibrated" sRGB mode was basically useless because the white balance was way too red, plus the sRGB gamut wasn't even quite right, while every other mode just had a massive gamut that you can't even manage without a colorimeter in hand... I'd love to own a screen like that and actually put those extra features to use, but for this kind of work, it's really not necessary.

When it comes to modeling, yeah, I agree, it doesn't matter at all, but modeling eventually leads to some kind of photo or video output, and for that, it's incredibly important... Everything you need for photo editing is also necessary when you're doing 3D visualizations, or at least it is for my clients...

Personally, I think this build is solid, though you really need to double-check if that motherboard and RAM actually play nice together, because compatibility issues can be a real headache... I definitely don't see eye to eye with what Adam Moore3 was saying earlier about the Dell being overkill. It’s absolutely not overkill; honestly, color accuracy is everything here. Like, seriously important. Now, whether Dell's quality control is consistent enough to ensure you aren't getting ten different calibrations on ten different units... well, I wouldn't know, I don't really go that deep into their manufacturing specs, but I've got an older version of that monitor and it's been fantastic.
If you're planning on doing any heavy GPU rendering, you're going to need a beefier graphics card, specifically something from the Nvidia RTX series.
So, yeah, just my two cents...

P.S. One more thing—those Ryzen chips tend to run pretty hot, especially when you're running long CPU render jobs. Everyone says that Noctua cooler performs just as well as liquid cooling, but in my experience, that's just not quite how it plays out... I ended up buying an extra Noctua fan and cramming as many as I could possibly fit into the case.

Anyway, just something to think about.

Jerry Cruz4 said:Hey there,

I'm looking for a killer PC to handle visualizations and rendering for ArchiCAD and AutoCAD.

I got a quote from for $3633 before taxes. Is this actually a good deal? Maybe I'm overpaying for stuff I don't need... any advice or suggestions would be great.

Look, ArchiCAD and AutoCAD aren't really "visualization" programs per se. AutoCAD is vector drawing, and ArchiCAD is BIM modeling.
Both have plugins for rendering, though.
ArchiCAD has more options.
To even give you a straight answer, I'd need to know which engine you're planning to run, because that changes everything—whether you need raw CPU power (more cores) or a beastly GPU (massive graphics card)...
At the very least, you should be looking at 32 GB of RAM and at least 8 GB on your graphics card. Your choice of processor (and by extension, the motherboard, the power supply, etc.) depends entirely on whether you're rendering in something like V-Ray or if you're moving toward Lumion or Twinmotion...

P.S. I can't see your actual quote on my phone, but judging by the price alone, no, it's not too high... if anything, it's reasonable.$1667 A decent graphics card alone costs that much.

wiredotter14 said:Honestly, if you're going to do anything, just grab a GTX 1070 and a 1440p monitor. You can always keep what you have for a dual monitor setup.

Anything else is basically just flushing money down the toilet. If you're sticking to 1080p, swapping out the GTX 970 isn't going to give you any noticeable jump.

Truth.

Joe, look, five bucks isn't some massive dealbreaker, obviously... but I really hate feeling like a broken record here, so maybe just give what was already said a second look. Back home, that specific graphics card was going for about $325 at the time we're talking about. That’s actually a pretty significant gap, don't you think?
I mean, sure, you don't need a high-end workstation GPU for everything, but if you're actually trying to do stuff like GPU rendering, you can't even get the software to run without hitting at least 2000 PassMark points, let alone anything less than that...
Grimko, you're spot on with all that, it's just that it feels to me like the OP completely veered off track and now we're all just sitting here spinning our wheels... 😵

wiredotter14 said:http://www.amazon.com/search?q=16gb+ddr3

Paying $200 for a GTX 960 isn't exactly a steal, honestly... you might be better off stretching yourself just another $30 to grab an RX 470 4GB
(Around here, a GTX 960 runs about $200-$220) and the R9 380 is hovering in that same range.
So, tell me, is it actually worth ordering something with a questionable warranty just to save five bucks, even if the shipping is free?

P.S.
An SSD makes a massive difference in performance, so putting 20% of your budget toward one is totally fine... the real question is whether someone even needs an HDD at all, though if they really need 1TB, they should just go with an HDD

In my situation, I was only looking at Nvidia because of specific software requirements... picking a card wasn't even much of a debate for me since the prices were basically identical anyway. By the way, you get a warranty, it’s not some shady operation.
I agree on the SSD, but when you're talking about a workstation for modeling, RAM and the graphics card are insanely more important... And as for HDDs... has anyone here actually modeled anything before and do you have any idea how massive those files can get?

If you happen to be down in Washington, D.C., or somewhere relatively close to St. Louis, there’s this one online shop selling all kinds of new components that are roughly 30% cheaper than what you'd find walking into a physical store... For instance, an EVGA Nvidia GTX 960 is sitting at about $220, or you can snag 16 GB of HyperX DDR3 RAM (2*8) for around $80, stuff like that... I don't know how the pricing looks for the rest of you across America, but where I am, the retail shops are charging way too much... Shoot me a DM if you want more details.
(By the way, this isn't some pitch or anything, I'm just genuinely stoked with them and wanted to pass the luck along 😁)

I mean, it’s totally doable... I’ve actually been running a similar setup myself since back in 2011, using an ASUS Motherboard that went for about $140 at the time. And look, if you really want to stretch things at the end, you can always grab those 16GB sticks for two slots, though honestly... I'd much rather sink that extra cash into a better motherboard instead.
It’s obvious the budget is tight, but you just can't justify skipping out on an SSD when it's supposed to be 20% of your total spend, especially if you're going for a larger drive and ditching the old hard drives entirely. That whole approach is just complete nonsense...

I honestly can't get behind that idea. Look, I actually do this for a living, so I know what I'm talking about here... A smaller SSD is going to be more than enough to handle all the programs you want to throw at it. At the end of the day, that's just your system drive, and what really matters—like, what's absolutely vital—is which graphics card you're running. If you're stuck deciding, just go check out the GPU PassMark site and grab the most powerful one you can afford because that, along with your RAM, is where the real heavy lifting happens. Actually, if you have the budget, I’d highly suggest aiming for 24 GB of RAM too.

...and don't even think about getting rid of your HDD no matter what anyone tells you, those storage models are massive and an SSD would be completely maxed out in a single day...