Best laptop or desktop set up for Daz Studio, Poser, Maya...maximum storage, maximum ram, good render engine, video card. Able to safely store 2000 models and run the full Adobe Master Collection.

May I suggest...

max out your RAM.

Lots of CPU cores. IMHO, a few more cores are much better than a slightly faster clock-speed. (Do the math !!)

DO NOT keep everything on your C: Drive. Poser thrives on 'external libraries', which limit clutter in your core run-time. So, F:, G:, H: etc. Preferably one removable / slide.

IMHO, does not really matter how fast eg Poser loads from C: as PC will spend much more time wrangling the scene. For other apps, that load & unload modules, YMMV...

You can spend an absolute fortune on high-spec GPU cards. One things is certain, your projects & scenes will out-grow them. Unless GPU & CPU rendering can be combined, you're back to 'CPU-Only', and be very glad of those extra CPU cores...

In fact, IMHO, if you are planning to do 'many' renders', you may do better going for a comparatively modest GPU card for main PC, and spending the savings on a network-render 'Box' . If Poser's 'render queue', it uses CPU-only, so lotsa RAM and Cores, with only a basic 'office' GPU and a small, pre-loved display...

I agree with everything MikKelly said, except possibly the GPU. I'm not sure how he defines a modest one as opposed to a good one. To me, the whole RTX series is "good" but I've recently upgraded from a GeForce 210 to an RTS 2060. I'm very happy with it. I don't do huge renders as far as dimensions but I do put a lot into them most have 5 to 10 figures and so far I've only had 2 where I've had to switch to my CPU to render.

This is also only with Poser as I don't use DS or Maya.

My two-cents: Poser and all its runtimes are on an SSD on my PC. And all Poser-related files (everything bought, the scenes, the runtimes) are duplicated on external pocket-sized drives, connected only at backup time, using dedicated batch files and one of Microsoft's best ever programs: Robocopy...

Thanks to all for your replies and suggestions.

Don't mean to bump this unnecessarily, but I can vouch for the CPU's cores giving a stronger edge than merely upgrading the video card. I bumped up to an RTX3050 expecting it to work miracles since my previous one was and AMD card which didn't allow GPU rendering. It really did make a difference, up until the GPU cache filled, then it would revert to the slow CPU rendering. (CPU fallback in Daz Studio) So I recently bit the bullet and upgraded from a Ryzen 5 with 6 cores to a Ryzen 9 with double that. The difference was far greater than the GPU upgrade. With the Ryzen 5, I could easily just start a heavy render before bed and it might be finished before my morning coffee. Now two hours is the max.

The GPU memory limitation is why I went with an RTX 3060 (12gb).

The Poser manual implies that we can use multiple GPUs for rendering.  I have a support ticket in on this, and I am hoping that one day I will hear back from them on this.

If we can use 2 (or more) - I'll get more 3060s - they are starting to slide under $400, and I have my eye on an X570 MB that can support 3 GPUs.