Well I am out dated in so many respects lol

So I actually have enough $ to build a render box; dedicated rendering comp. I'm going for a fast i7 and 32gig. Not worried about the rest; maybe SSD, But want to keep it below $600.

This comp is my online gaming rig. 3 year old refurbished discontinued, upgraded Gateway. i5 3.0. 8 gig but expanding to 24, and a GTX1050.

Plan on transferring all 120gig of content by removing the HDD with all of it on it lol Just drop it in the new rig. Now I'd love to do a render farm but $600 would turn in to 3K fast O.O And I can't get it for the old copy of Carrara I use. Not sure how or even if carrara/studio work as well together as the copies I have.

Not sure if I'll get back in to this though. One of the reasons I gave it up was losing my comp for a day or two to a render. The other part was DAZ frustrated the motivation right out of me. Even after all this time my opinion of DAZ has not changed.

Some thing like https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADT25S96866 and 2X https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233585

The secret to carrying on with happy renderings is not to look at the other site. Nope, not even a peek. Don't do it. Program your computer to shut down if you type in their web address. ;)
Work your art, not their merchandising. And no, I cannot get their current stuff to work in C8.

I'm using mostly Poser format elements in Carrara 8.5 animations and enjoying it a lot. The machine is 3 years old, i7 4770k 3.5 GhZ, 16 GB RAM, nVidia 660GTX, win7. Because I compete in the 48 Hour Film contest (5 minute video in 2 days), everything is done for fast rendering. In particular, 720x480 frame size which the local contest producer makes look good on the theater screen with her projector. I usually get about 10 sec/frame render time, sometimes faster - no fancy lighting. I also use Particle Illusion for effects (explosions, dust, etc.), which renders in real time. Really. I think the video card helps with the animation previews in the 3D window (OpenGL, I think, a big plus to avoid animation render mistakes).

My concern is, at the time, I was one of the few people using Studio as a scene prep tool for carrara. But it seems there was very few builds of ether that work as well together. At one time Studio was the Genesis prep tool for carrara. It just had far more and better tools for preping the figure and clothes. AT ONE TIME.

build of my dreams lol

Core i7 3D Modeling & AutoCAD System Intel i7 6950X Up to 4.0Ghz (10 Core) 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD & 2TB HDD, Windows 10 Pro, NVIDIA Quadro M4000 w/8GB, 750W PS, Mid-Tower, Liquid Cooled https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ299UJ

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 1:57PM Sun, 20 August 2017 - #4312544

build of my dreams lol

Core i7 3D Modeling & AutoCAD System Intel i7 6950X Up to 4.0Ghz (10 Core) 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD & 2TB HDD, Windows 10 Pro, NVIDIA Quadro M4000 w/8GB, 750W PS, Mid-Tower, Liquid Cooled https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ299UJ

Hmmmm ...... I'd dump the quadro for a liquid cooled 1080Ti (faster, more memory, and a lot cheaper) and probably go with a Threadripper 1960x CPU from AMD (again, faster for rendering, More cores, and a lot cheaper) and save a lot. Compare the one you posted with this one: https://www.amazon.com/CyberpowerPC-SLC8700A-Supreme-Threadripper-Computer/dp/B074NBYQBN/ref=sr_1_sc_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503259689&sr=1-5-spell&keywords=treadripper

Stan - have you looked at Xeon based used systems on Ebay?? You could get a really nice refurbished dual CPU workstation (HP, Dell, Or Lenovo) for under $600 (but it might be tough to put a good graphics card in it and stay under $600). Just a thought, If you plan on using CPU rendering, then they might really improve your rendering speed on a budget.

I'd dump the Quadro for a Titan XP - 12gb vram running at 11.4 Gbps, 3,840 CUDA cores running at 1.6GHz, and 12 TFLOPs of brute force. Way more power for the money. I'd also go with Threadripper as mentioned above.

shopping cores again, with stimulus burning holes