Please advise. My computer has finally hit the big number. The CPU fan needs to be replaced and the tech guy that I had used decided to get greedy and charge me the price of a new computer to fix it. I fired that s.u.c.k.e.r.! So now any recommendations from him is suspect.

I admit, I haven't been tracking the latest or new set in computer technology since, my computer was last created. So dear forum readers, can you help me? Can you recommend the good computer or online customizer of computer? Recommendations about cpu and other stuffs for a poser user.

THANKS!

I assume your interpretation of 'ideal' goes with a price tag limit, and there may be limits on availability depending on where you live.

Some details in this area may help to get answers that are useful for you.

Okay, it depends on the suggested items. Motherboard, case. Heck the whole shebang! I am looking for a suggested computer that I can use our of the box, and can hold more than 2 hhd, no solid state, can render fast,with poser and other 3D content makers. NVida graphic card, etc. Does that give you a clue?

Why no solid state? I would consider solid state for the boot drive at least.

FWIW, I recently bought the top of the line Dell, maxxed on on RAM and hard drive sizes, and am happy with it. Came with what was then the top of the line Nvidia card.

I was going to say that about SSD's. ok not for storage, but for the boot drive, once you've pressed the button and your into your desktop in a few seconds (like 3-5) you'll never go back...

SSD for the application? Heard there might be problem with . Just don't trust SSD. But other drives, is fine with me.

If I had enough Money to share I would go for a Threadripper 2950X, at least 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1080TI. The GPU will be hard to get new, but newer cards don't work with Poser.

A cheaper way would be the Ryzen 7 (this is what I use) and a GTX 1070TI or some other Card of that series. Newer cards don't work with Superfly, AFAIK.

I would never order a PC without SSD as a boot device. It's way, way faster than a normal HD as a boot device. Applications on a SSD are fine. Get a SSD for booting and a 4TB HD as a data drive. Make backups. I had more problems with hard drives than with solid state disks. Both can break, just use backups. An external disk isn't that expensive.

bantha posted at 1:50PM Tue, 25 June 2019 - #4354667

Newer cards don't work with Superfly, AFAIK.

Wait, what?

What about them doesn't work? I'm working on putting together a parts list for a new build and would like to know what cards to avoid.

As for external drives, every one I've ever had just randomly dies on me within a year or two, sometimes just a couple months so I avoid them now. I'm guessing it has something to do with no cooling system in them. Don't know. I have one left that's been up on a shelf for about 2 years. Afraid to see if it still works so I just don't.

SSD are fine for booting, but they don't like a lot of reading and re-writing. Example, never allow OS or Apps to use them for temp files or swap files.

As for external drives. When they are FULL size drives, they are mostly OK. The main issue is with those notebook sized drives plugged in USB without power. They don't like to be thrown around.

For the rest? A good CPU with at least 8 cores, and a solid well known Nvideo card like the 1080. It is better and safer to install two 1080's then to go for the newest cards that are not supported yet.

Time frame?

Well, we have to look inside and be honest. Poser (like some other apps) does NOT support the new cards yet.

Poser just being sold the here ( Renderosity) will not be upgraded in a short time. First they need to transfer all licences, (or re-licence or recode) then bring out a license upgraded Poser (Pro) 11 version, before they can start building on P12.

We also know that 3 different teams have tried to fix some of the deepest Poser bugs (all pulling hairs and biting nails) on them, so there is some deep-digging work to be done before implementing new features.

Honestly, don't expect too much enhancements for the first 2 years or so. (Except for the license update version)

A good 8 core, with 16-32 RAM, and a couple of 1080 get you covered for at least 5 years in my humble opinion.

AmbientShade posted at 4:24PM Tue, 25 June 2019 - #4354693

bantha posted at 1:50PM Tue, 25 June 2019 - #4354667

Newer cards don't work with Superfly, AFAIK.

Wait, what?

What about them doesn't work? I'm working on putting together a parts list for a new build and would like to know what cards to avoid.

As for external drives, every one I've ever had just randomly dies on me within a year or two, sometimes just a couple months so I avoid them now. I'm guessing it has something to do with no cooling system in them. Don't know. I have one left that's been up on a shelf for about 2 years. Afraid to see if it still works so I just don't.

Poser's shoehorned version of Cycles doesn't support Turing (and probably never will), so not a single new NVIDIA card made after Pascal ceased production will work.

My current situation is that I have a 1070+970 for rendering, works great on small scenes, but a lot of what I do eats up ram like it's a buffet and my 970 just isn't cutting it anymore. So what do I do? I can't use any of the 20XX cards because they aren't supported and I can't buy a new 1070/1070ti/1080 for anything under $500 because of markup and how rare they're becoming.

What I'm thinking I should do is buy the 2070 Super whenever that comes out, and make the 1070 my primary rendering card. That way I have at least 7GB to work with and my main video card can drive the OS and everything else. I just really like the speed of two cards together, even with the weaker 970, both cards rendering go so much faster than the single 1070 and I'll miss that major time saver. :(

Keep it coming! I love these suggestions! It's giving me ideas on what to look for in my next computer/workstation.

Thanks for the information. Gave me a clue what to avoid..

Wow, didn't know about the newer card issues, or poser issues with it anyway.

Hi there

I would wait on Ryzen 3xxx benchmarks and then I would decide which one to get, 3600X it will be 6core/12 thread CPU which in Cinebench from leaks looks like is fast as 8700k, 3700X it will be 8core/16 thread, 3800x it will be 8core/16 thread and 3900X it will be 12 core/24 thread abd 3950X it will be 16 core/32 thread

Prices are pretty good 3600 it will cost $199,3600X $249, 3700X $329,3800X $399 and 3900X $499 and 3950X $749 I think

For RAM get CL16 3200mhz and personally would go with at least 32GB, motherboard this again depends on budget but choose good one with good VRM

For GPUs depending on budget again, RTX 2080Ti are monsters in rendering when Turning is supported, but if you are really want use PC for rendering in Poser SuperFly then older GTX1080Ti or GTX1080 etc are good options but fir similar money you can have RTX 2080 or RTX 2070

In LuxMark or LuxRender RTX 2080Ti are great cards and there performance is pretty much great there

SSD or NVMe is must right now there, good case like is Fractal Design Define R6 or Meshify etc are good cases, PSU EVGA G3 are nice PSU and usually they use Seasonic as OEM abd Seasonic are very nice PSU, used one which powered my PC with 4*GPUs all OC and 5960x with 4.7GHz OC

Hope this helps

Thanks, Jura

I got a fairly good deal on an Acer Gaming system with Intel i3, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB Ram for $600. It seems to run smoothly on Poser with the SSD I have as my main boot/storage. I like it.

Lots of cores, lots of RAM.

Jartz , does your system a!low for additional hdd and how is your CPU cooling system. Reason I ask is because rendering can heat up both CPU and gpu,. That's enough to bring a system toa screeching halt. Not bad for a gaming system, price wise. What other features does your computer have?

Out of curiosity - buying another CPU fan and plug it in should be like $10... Unless your system is ANCIENT and you plan on upgrading anyway, why not just fix your old machine?

I have 2 PCs that I use - one is an i7 2600k that I built 6+ years ago - it's still plenty fast for just about everything. I use it for server/media duty nowadays at home. I've recently built a compute monster out of "older" parts (mostly for work, a little bit of play, and a little bit of hobby (poser) :) ). Threadripper 1950x, 64GB RAM, 2x Titan XP (with a 3rd one on its way!). Building it was an experience in itself due to the thermal characteristics of the components. Some observations:

If your primary workload is CPU, or do mostly CPU rendering, then get something with a lot of threads - I recommend the newer AMD Ryzens for sweet spot in price and performance. I don't recommend Threadripper because unless you have specific use cases that benefits from TR4's PCI lanes, you can get 95% of the performance for less than 50% of total cost.

If your primary workload is GPU - and you are using Poser Superfly - you are limited to the 1xxx Nvidia Pascal GPUs. I picked Titan XPs due to their 12GB of RAM. However I also don't recommend Titan XP because the default cooling solution that came with the card is terrible and doesn't do the GPU justice. The best deals would be a used 1080Ti part - you get 95% of the performance of a Titan, only 1GB less memory.

Cooling is not a big deal in most use cases if you are just going with 1 GPU. If you start cramming 2, 3 GPUs in a case then you need to have 1) a high quality PSU and 2) a good cooling solution. Either lots of fans or straight up watercooling for the hotter components.

ThunderStone posted at 11:54AM Sat, 29 June 2019 - #4355046

Jartz , does your system a!low for additional hdd and how is your CPU cooling system. Reason I ask is because rendering can heat up both CPU and gpu,. That's enough to bring a system toa screeching halt. Not bad for a gaming system, price wise. What other features does your computer have?

Yes. I think it allows for an additional hhd. I bought a WD hard drive 1 TB, and I think I can add an another ssd. I just needed extra space, but hearing from others, ssd is faster; don't particularly care for it being 265GB, would've prefer more. I think the cooling system is okay as I've done test renders and manage to get 40 minutes in one scene. It may vary I don't know as I don't do gaming. I can upgrade to just only the hard drives, ram and the processor, it would take some trial and error because it's a slightly small area to work with. It's pretty much a simple symple system with a faster processing. That's pretty much it.

Hope it helps.

jartz posted at 7:36AM Sun, 30 June 2019 - #4355363

ThunderStone posted at 11:54AM Sat, 29 June 2019 - #4355046

Jartz , does your system a!low for additional hdd and how is your CPU cooling system. Reason I ask is because rendering can heat up both CPU and gpu,. That's enough to bring a system toa screeching halt. Not bad for a gaming system, price wise. What other features does your computer have?

Yes. I think it allows for an additional hhd. I bought a WD hard drive 1 TB, and I think I can add an another ssd. I just needed extra space, but hearing from others, ssd is faster; don't particularly care for it being 265GB, would've prefer more. I think the cooling system is okay as I've done test renders and manage to get 40 minutes in one scene. It may vary I don't know as I don't do gaming. I can upgrade to just only the hard drives, ram and the processor, it would take some trial and error because it's a slightly small area to work with. It's pretty much a simple symple system with a faster processing. That's pretty much it.

Hope it helps.

It, does, jartz, it does. Thanks for the information. I am going to look about the system after the holidays and everything calms down. It's time for a new system. I might get the system repaired if I can find a local computer repair shop. The tech guy I used to use is really a greedy mf 'er and wanted to charge me the cost of a new system just for repairing or replacing the cooling fan on the cpu. I could have gotten the cooling fan and other components less expensively online and had him put it in for less than the cost of a new system. But the mfer wanted to use me as a moneybag. And he's no kid either! Grrrr.

tonyvilters posted at 1:05PM Mon, 01 July 2019 - #4354704

SSD are fine for booting, but they don't like a lot of reading and re-writing. Example, never allow OS or Apps to use them for temp files or swap files.

I have multiple pc's that have nothing but SSD's and have not had an issue.

Reading isn't what hurts an SSD, writing is. Reading from them doesn't degrade them.

I put my render cow into hibernate all the time, and that SSD is about 4 years old. If you go into it and look at the write history, I have about 50 years left based on what Samsung says it will survive write wise. The average SSD will survive for years now, and probably outlast most HDD's. I have had more hard drives fail than SSD's. Most SSD's will survive writing about 80gig a day for the duration of the warranty. If you write less that than, and I am sure you do. It will last a long time.

Just passed by this old thread.   

Re: Turing,

Poser team responded to that common concern from customers at their support desk,  and  upgraded the software to support the NVidia Turing architecture GPU cards on Windows since the Poser 11.3 version.  

https://www.posersoftware.com/article/448/whats-planned-for-poser-113-nvidia-rtx-gpu-support

My systems are listed below if it is any help and I am more than happy with both.

My systems are supported by two USB stacks that each hold 4 SSD and the stacks are hot pluggable.  Both systems also have 2 SSDs on the mainboard.  I use them for almost all my storage, for example one has all my old CD music stored on there as you only tend to write once and read often which it is an ideal use of an SSD.  I total my installation as 14 SSDs  varying in age from six months to four years and I have a few 250G and 500G SSDs I do not use day to day but I hold onto them as they still work.  One disadvantage SSDs still suffer from is that they can fail without warning while the old spinners often get noise when they get near the end.  Best way to avoid disaster is a good backup strategy, but then you need that no matter whet drives you are using.

As a guide this render was rendered completely on the mini PC and took around 30 minutes, I would expect it to less than ten on my larger machine.

What are USB stacks?

I have a bunch of external drives, but Windows tends to lose some of them, which is really annoying.

randym77 posted at 5:13 PM Sat, 28 October 2023 - #4476960

What are USB stacks?

I have a bunch of external drives, but Windows tends to lose some of them, which is really annoying.

Sorry I should have used the correct term, they are hard drive docking stations.  The ones I am using are Sabrent 4 bay docking stations which can house up to 4 SSDs each and can provide cooling if required.  I started using them some months ago when I moved over to using a mini PC and wanted even more desk space.  Before that I was using a large number of SSDs all in individual external housings.  Each docking station can support up to 64Tb but in my case one station is equipped with a batch of Samsung 2TB 870 QVOs giving 8Tb.  The other station and a mixture of SSD drives I purchased in 2018 during an earlier upgrade and are Crucial  MX500s of a 500g or 1TB capacity.  I may be tempting fate but so far none of the MX500s have failed despite being used on an almost daily basis.

The three SSDs in the mini PC has all programs running on the 'C' drive, all my financial records on Drive 'A' and all my supporting Poser files on Drive 'M' which includes all my runtimes, working scenes, support files and my content database.  Files in the docking station store all my photographs, multimedia data that includes my music and E book collections and household documentation.  I only have three spinners left, if you ignore my NAS systems, which are 4Tb units and share a 2 bay docking station as required.

Thanks, I might try a couple of those.

randym77 posted at 10:54 PM Sat, 28 October 2023 - #4476971

Thanks, I might try a couple of those.

I don't think you will regret it.  They are certainly nice units and appear well made, a bit pricey but not so bad if compared with the price of four individual SSD enclosures.  I have been using them on a daily basis since July so I cannot  comment on their longevity but they look the part they keep the desktop looking tidy.  My two are placed either side of the mini PC unit and the blue power and status lights gives a nice tech looking touch.  Considering the space the docking stations and mini PC take up they pack one hell of a punch.  As to the use, so far it has bee faultless I am really happy with my purchase.

As the OP, I am asking the moderator to lock this thread. If there is a need for information,  people can open a new topic.  

Thanks! 

ThunderStone posted at 8:50 AM Sun, 29 October 2023 - #4476983

As the OP, I am asking the moderator to lock this thread. If there is a need for information,  people can open a new topic.  

Thanks! 

Sorry if we upset you by wandering of course, it wasn't the aim.

ThunderStone posted at 8:50 AM Sun, 29 October 2023 - #4476983

As the OP, I am asking the moderator to lock this thread. If there is a need for information,  people can open a new topic.  

Thanks! 

you left out the primary determining factor of computer upgrades, the budget. so of course you get sketchy answers