I'm in the process of trying to put together a PC. Now, I'm a Mac person so I'm new to the PC world. I'd like your opinions on the most important components for maximum Brycing (keeping in mind I'll also be using Poser, W3D, and anthing else 3D related and such). Money is as always an issue. Want to keep it under 2Gs CAD. That's 'bout 1600 USD. I'm thinking of starting with the following Mobo: ASUS A7N8 E-Deluxe Socket A CPU: AMD 2700 XP RAM: 1.5 Gb Samsung DDR400 Case: ANTEC SLK2650-BQE HD: Seagate 'cuda 120 Gb SATA CD and DVD burners are pending. What's more important, RAM, CPU, Mobo? Keeping in mind upping one will sacrifice something else. Any comments appreciated.

You'll be more than fine with 1.5Gb of ram The cpu equals rendering speed, if there is anything you want to increase, I would suggest that. $1600USD? I build similar PC's for $700-$800USD Of course, I notice you haven't mentioned a video card, you could spend a ton of money on one of those these days. AS

Well, with that kinda bling to throw around, and if AMD is the route yer thinking, why not go with an Athon64? Oh, and I'd steer away from the Seagate drive; I've had nothing but trouble with 'em.

AS I'd love to know how you build a similar PC for 700 - 800. Keep in mind I still need a CD and DVD burner and a monitor.

Jay I looked into the 64 route and its pricey. I'll wait a year when its not the latest/greatest. As for the Seagate, I read great reviews on 'em. What would you suggest?

As for the bling. I don't consider it that much, not because I'm rich or anything, I'm a home owner. I'll be spending over $2,500 in home heating oil alone this winter, along with $3,000 in property taxes, $650 in school taxes, $250 for snow removal, so on and so forth. I'm used to throwing money out the window. I make extra cash by renting my children out to Pharmaceutical companies for medical testing. ;-)

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 10:33

Watch the Seagate SATA! They can be a pain in the ass to set up. You may have to Zero-fill it before formating and using. Checkout out Seagate's website. I have 2 Seagate 160gig SATAs and I had loads of trouble getting them to work with a 40gig Maxtor - ok so that's a different setup tothe what you are proposing, nevertheless, be warned! And unless your mother-board has an SATA socket you'll need a pci board as well. Another problem you might get is that the PC will only recognise the 1st 100gigs or so of your hdd.

bando - I'd stick with Maxtor for your drive needs. Easy to set up, and generally bulletproof. Yeah, the 64's are pretty dear, though if you don't mind doing some hardcore shopping, the older Hyper-Threading P4s have come way down in price. Mmmmm.... hyperthreading...... I know the HT chips don't work as intended with Bryce... yet, but they are gonna fix that for Bryce 6, right AS? ;) Oh, and for you vid card, I highly recommend anything by nVidia.

If you can't afford an athlon 64, consider the Sempron 3100, runs on an athlon 64 mobo so you'll be a bit more future proof, have a faster platform and it rocks for the 70 you can get them for with careful shopping. As fr graphics cards nowadays, anything by the main 2 manufacturers (ATI/nVidia) will rock.

I usually build my PC-s under 800 USD, dunno, I think I could build a miracle machine with 1600, try smaller store for better pricing, usually parts are the same quality ! Brand names are not important when it comes to periferals, only mobo and CPU are important (Seagate along with IBM are the best choice for HDD indeed!). I have 512 Mb of ram and I'm happy with it, I can run Silo, Bryce and PaintShopPro all together and surf the web at the same time, no visible slowdown, I would rather buy 1 gig ram which is double faster then 1.5 Gig which is slower, more does not always mean better ! :) And one more thing: ASUS is the best mobo I know of, even do it is not the best one in the world, it is the most DEPENDABLE, trust me, i'm buying them for years !!! :) They never die ! :) Monitors are all good quality these days, do not let Sony confuse you, Samsung is that good too, I have 17 inch Samsung LCD for 2 years now, works 24/7, purring like a kitten, still, great monitor and fearly cheap ! :) Hope I helped some ! :) Cheers.

My husband and I have built all our PC's (we have 8) for less then $800, not counting the monitor of course.
I also would not suggest Seagate, they are iffy. Get a Western Digital.
And yes your priciest item will be your graphics card. ATI's are good, but NOT if you are a gamer.

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 11:10

And BTW, Nvidia SUX with Athlon based Asus MotherBoards !!!!!!

Try not to buy Nvidia, even do at Nvidia they say that their cards are 100% compatible with SIS chipsets (which ASUS heavily uses on their motherboards), do some reaserch, trust me, lot of problems I ran into with Nvidia, ended up returning them to the store ! :)

@ Carineq: Seagate did have seme issues in the past, but they are MUCH better in last year or so, IMHO ! :) Radeon is what I would recommend, and lots of ram on it, not for Bryce now, but for the next versions, OpenGL needs it ! Cheers ! :)

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 11:19

Attached Link: http://www.newegg.com

Also check out www.newegg.com for some good prices on hardware.

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 11:31

The most important thing to know when you're used to PC or MAC and are switching is that the numbers aren't equal. 1.5 Ghz on a MAC will scream but be sufficient on a PC. Same thing with memory, 512 will be awesome on a MAC but be average for PC. I never understood why, I just know that it is.

So... much... info... brain... heating... burning... CRASH! ... ... Reboot ... loading BIOS Hadn't thought about a VC. I guess the on board video won't be enough, huh? As for purchasing, I'm using a Canadian site www.ncix.com out of Vancouver as a basis in pricing. Where ever I can, I'll be trolling eBay for used parts, again from Canadian vendors. Cross border shopping is nuts. Customs agents in Canada charge duty, not based on the price, but on what they think it should cost. Free Trade my A$$. I'd rather forego 64 bit or Hyperthreading as no software really takes advantage of it as yet. In a couple of years, I'll sell off the old stuff and upgrade. Great info guys, thxs

As someone that is into the graphical aspect of computing I HIGHLY suggest that you invest in a high end graphics card!! Heheh and no an onboard card wouldn't suffice :)

The best and expensice hardware today is best and cheap hardware tomorrow, so, I will not go to the last hiper-super Pc, take a good quality but cheap. yes, you will not have a superspace machine, but you have a very good decent machine and money in the bank for the next pc you'll want to buy later.

Wow, I guess the Seagate external drives are alot more reliable, mine is at least...but then again it's just for storage....

My 10gig is a Seagate 'cuda...i haven't had any problems with it. However, i know 3 guys who had parts of their seagate drives literally melt. I would personally suggest Western Digital, they make fantastic hard drives.

First, stronger CPU. All the rendering is done in the CPU, just like all the graphical stuff is done in the CPU (PS and PSP), so a 3200 would be better, if you don't want to go with Opteron. Graphic card, no, an onboard graphic subsystem is for office computers where they run nothing more demanding than Word. I recommend nVidia, because ATI has some issues with Rhino, but that doesn't mean it will work badly for you. On that note, keep in mind that PCExpress slot is coming into market and the AGP slot is going to be phased out pretty soon. So you'll be stuck. Taking a PCExpress card means taking a m/board with that kind of slots.

A lot of great suggestions here. Drives: Maxtor or Western Dig. When purchasing memory: "Crucial Memory" Best quality out there. Processor is the biggest consideration. AMD for sure. Something alot of ppl overlook is the powersupply. After spending more on other components they opt for a cheaper box. Cheaper Box= Cheaper powersupply. Check the specs on'm before you buy. Have fun, wish I was at that stage...about due for a major overhaul

So the concensus so far seems to be 1) CPU 2) Video Card 3) Ram 4) HD Funny, on the Mac Western Digital is the cheapest HD you can get. When I mean cheap I'm not talking least expensive. I wonder how important FSB is as the AMD max out at 400, whereas Intel goes to 800? Awesome info, thx.

Attached Link: http://www.ecollegepc.com

I overhauled my box and it cost me just a little over $600USD. If you shop smart... and shop around before you buy and build... you can put a box together fairly cheap. I never see a need to spend $1000 on a new computer. I been building my own systems since 1995. AS is not pulling your chain. One can build a system as cheap as he said he builds them. And... Yes, ICM is right about the power supply.

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 20:58

I agree with karineq - western digital do good HDDs - haven't had one of those die yet at home or work. From my personal experience, IBM hdds are a dodgy proposition - seen enough of them die so that now I don't go near them.

Oh yeah...FSB (Front Side Bus) VERY IMPORTANT. Get as big of a FSB as you can, the bigger = the faster your speed will be. (That's very un-technical of me, but it gets the main point through) I build 1 or 2 PC's a month, mostly for friends, family or for my boss. I buy almost exclusively from a chain of stores we have out here in the Western U.S. called "Fry's". They actually don't have a website proper, but you can see their "outlet" site at www.outpost.com With them I build good/average machines for around $800 complete. I'm talking about friends who do some gaming but aren't going to plunk down $2,000+ so they can have an extra 1ghz in cpu speed, and a $600 video card, etc, etc. I usually have them all stick to MSI motherboards, Nvidia video cards, Western Digital hard drives@7200rpm, 512mb strips of Kingston memory (or something with a lifetime warranty), Creative audio cards, and you can get 17" monitors and dvd burners for basically $80 each. This is what has worked for me. Yeah, DAZ has mentioned they are working with Nvidia to have Bryce 6.0 render faster than Bryce 5.5. Since they are doing that, I would assume they will be looking into Bryce having multiple processor support, and 64-bit support. That's just a guess on my part, but it just makes sense, imo. AgentSmith

Cinema has kinda prototype plugin that enables it to use the video card processor for rendering to screen. And that's been talked about for a while. So that may be that.

Careful Swade on what you imply. Noone said AS was yanking anyone's chain. I just wanted to compare some notes so as to help me in my buying habits. We also have to keep in mind, what I consider a minimumum "killer" machine for Bryce rendering, may or may not be the same as what AS calls a "good/average" pc. It also depends on of your scrapping out an older machine for parts. New Operating system? What do you consider minimum ram for Bryce now and it's future...512, gig, or more ram? DVD burner for backup? We're here to learn, not accuse ;)

I think swade said AS is NOT pulling your chain, I think swade meant it as a friendly "agreemnet phrase", for lack of a better word, lol. Yeah, "Killer"? It's all in the cpu speed if you want to get down to brass tax. A fast cpu does eqaul fast rendering. But, don't forget about FSB...I have a 1.5ghz cpu, my girlfriend has a 1.2 ghz cpu...but Bryce renders TWICE as slow on her computer. FSB, baby, FSB. Oh, I also HIGHLY recommend Windows 2000, Windows XP is also great, but you might want to look into trimming down XP's fat, it uses a LOT of graphical stuff in its gui, stuff that you might want for useful memory when Brycing. I saw a BIG difference when I switched from Windows 98se to 2000 Pro. Good performance jump, and beautiful handling of memory. Ram - you can never have enough. 512mb will work great. 1.5gb is a dream come true. ;o) AS

Aye, I would ditch the extra RAM in favor of an Athlon 64 setup. You've done well in choosing AMD, as they are much faster and more powerful at rendering graphics and math than any Pentium, no matter the clock speed.

With that much RAM, definitely choose XP. Windows 2000 is dated and XP has soooo many good features.

But everyone else is right... I priced those parts here in Seattle at $627, with XP Home. You are paying waaaay too much for the system. Better to Fly over here, get all the parts, and build it yourself. Just an idea!

And .... Get a graphics card. You can get a Geforce 6 for under $100. Go for it!

Oh yeah... Stick with Maxtor, if you can. Seagate's have a much higher failure rate. Out of the last 40 Maxtor drives I've used, only two have been toasted. Every Seagate drive I've ever used fried itself within a year. AND... I have an 8GB Maxtor that has been spinning for 6 years, nonstop.

Message edited on: 10/13/2004 16:23

Here's the system I'm building right now for a friend (he's paying me, AND I get to keep his old parts, hee hee) P4 3.0 Hyper Threading Gigbyte Titan Series 800 FSB (yeah, i know. I told him not to buy Giga-anything, but does he listen? Anyways....) 512 DDR from Kingston. Total cost for parts was around $550. He just snagged a gForce 5700 128MB last week for $150, and with his newer dvd and cd-rw drive, he should be good to go. I figure I'll toss the older P4 (1.8) he's handing over into the renderfarm. :)

Ah FSB, don't just look at the speed, look at the width...... i.e is the 800M P4 bus more efficient then the 400M Athlon 64 bus - don't think so, that's why I said go with a Sempron, especially if you can find a PCI-e board and ATI card (why ATI? because ATI cards for PCI-e use a native interface, the nvidia one use an AGP - PCI-e converter slows the whole lot down)

Aye, but Nvidia cards no longer use an AGP-to PCI-e converter... That was the first wave of Geforce 6's... But Gog has a good point. There's a lot more going on than just the surface numbers. When building the best RENDERING machine, AGP and PCI-e slots mean nothing, at least as far as Bryce itself is concerned. You'r fine, lots of RAM, a great and PROVEN great processor, the only thing I would be concerned about is the price. You're paying nearly double what you should be, which would be fine if you were getting some overpriced rig from a name-brand company like Dell or Alien. They make great machines, I guess, but who would want to pay 800% overhead? Then again, you get what you pay for, right?