A Good Desktop for X13

[raltd9245 25]

I've asked before but looking for specifications for an X13 desk top upper mid range specification with a graphics card that will be adequitye for a few years?

Thanks

[BigKahuna 6]

MICRO CENTER HERE  HAS PUT TOGETHER ONE I WENT TO SEE LAST NIGHT.  RTX CARDS ARE NOT READILY AVAILABLE YET 

 

ASUS  STRIX Z490- GAMING MOTHERBOARD

INTEL i9  3.7 GHZ CPU

32 GB RAM

1 TB SOLID STATE DRIVE

NVIDEA GeFORCE RTX 3080 VIDEO CARD ( 10GB GDDRX6 VIDEO MEMORY)

( RTX SERIES NEEDED TO MAKE THE NEW X13 REAL TIME RAY TRACING WORK

WINDOWS 10 PRO

$2499 . NO MONITOR

 

THIS SHOULD SCREAM PER THE REVIEWS AND DO ALL YOU NEED  FOR CHIEFS NEW VERSIONS

 

 

[MarkMc 547]

I'm considering this

https://www.pugetsystems.com/nav/ryzen/B550-M/customize.php

 

May bump to a 3080 and add a second drive. Sent them a message asking about upcoming 11th gen Intel out next month. From what I can tell pcie4 makes a small difference now but I think I want that going forward.

I asked Curt about them as he's on his second system from them a 2020 Intel with a 2000 series GPU

[ChiefArchitect 86]

Hello,

 

Thank you for the question.  We have an in depth blog article with tips on buying a computer to run Chief Architect that you may find helpful.  Below is a link to the article and feel free to contact us if you need any assistance at 208-292-3400 or email sales@chiefarchitect.com.

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/blog/computer-for-design-and-gaming/

 

Kind regards,

 

Derek Pedersen

Chief Architect Software

[MikeD56 3]

I got the Dell Alienware since finding an RTX 30xx individually, to build a system, is almost impossible. Price at least as good as building and arrived in 7 days.

[SNestor 527]

On 2/22/2021 at 7:57 PM, ChiefArchitect said:

Hello,

 

Thank you for the question.  We have an in depth blog article with tips on buying a computer to run Chief Architect that you may find helpful.  Below is a link to the article and feel free to contact us if you need any assistance at 208-292-3400 or email sales@chiefarchitect.com.

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/blog/computer-for-design-and-gaming/

 

Kind regards,

 

Derek Pedersen

Chief Architect Software

 

I've read the blog...but still a bit confused as to what we will and won't be able to do with a new MAC with apple silicon. 

 

Is only "real time" rendering disabled? In other words...can we still ray trace the old fashioned way (like in X12)...just not in "real time"? 

 

What about Physical Base Renders? Will we be able to produce these with apple silicon in the traditional way....just not "real time"...or is this feature totally disabled if we have a computer with apple silicon?

 

Thanks!

[lookingforchange 4]

11 hours ago, SNestor said:

 

I've read the blog...but still a bit confused as to what we will and won't be able to do with a new MAC with apple silicon. 

 

Is only "real time" rendering disabled? In other words...can we still ray trace the old fashioned way (like in X12)...just not in "real time"? 

 

What about Physical Base Renders? Will we be able to produce these with apple silicon in the traditional way....just not "real time"...or is this feature totally disabled if we have a computer with apple silicon?

 

Thanks!

 

Steve,

 

Real time Ray Tracing is only supported under windows so not even a old Mac Supports real time Ray tracing!

 

Unless Chief set out to completely restrict the new release from working on apple silicon I would imagine that it would work just the same as it does on a intel Mac only it is being translated/emulated via Rosetta 2.  From what I hear a lot of programs work better on the M1 being translated by Rosetta 2 then they ran natively on the intel Mac. However, the blog says chief does not like to run emulated or virtualized so rosetta 2 translating x86 code to Arm code could be problematic.  The M1 chip is super powerful (beats 9900k at since core) many big developers are making their programs/apps into universal apps so they work on intel and M1 Macs. The M1's integrated GPU is about the same power as an RX560 roughly 2.6 TFLOP and EGPU is not an option.  

 

According to apple it is really easy to make your intel Mac only software into a universal application that will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon. According to my buddy that works for Apple they did a lot of work to make the transition for developers as painless as possible.  However, I am not a software developer so I can not confirm the validity of that. 

 

Fun Fact:

All CPU these days are RISC on the back end, programs feed the CPU CISC data and the CPU decodes the data to RISC. 

 

[DougDM 2]

Sweet aye?

 

 

 

[MarkMc 547]

On 2/19/2021 at 2:26 PM, raltd9245 said:

specifications for an X13 desk top upper mid range

Don't know if you settled yet or gotten enough input to be comfortable.

 

My priorities -quiet, low heat, good cooling, ATX board, good ports in a quality compact case, Wifi, Gigabit Ethernet.

I get enough render requests that I wanted a 3000 series card since Chiefs preview indicated they are enough faster than my 2070S to be worth it. For my needs I decided on 3070 as best balance of heat, noise, $$ for me. IF I did less renders a 3060 saves $, more renders a 3080 for extra $$, heat and noise, no way was a 3090 in my sites.

Similarly my sweet spot CPU is i7

 

I ended up at AVBAdirect. I'd never heard of them but was checking all options around. They're worth a look.

I started with Desktop, Tower  Checked off a few filters, settled configuration, put in cart

Then talked with them, (Kyle) was  really helpful tweaking the configuration and checking availability of parts.The buying experience was excellent. I have no idea how support or any of the rest will be System delivers in a few weeks. (they do test em as they build em which is critical to me)

 

You can get higher level GPU and/or CPU for less than I spent; either from them or elsewhere (for comparison I configured an i9 , rtx 3080, liquid cooled, 32 GB, 1TB 970 plus, 1TB HDD- at $2400 & then an i7, 3060 for $1800). I looked at systems from $1800 to $4k, 5 custom builders and stock systems from 4 places.

I ended up with:  Define7 Compact, i7 10700k, EVGA 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING, MSI Meg Z490 Ace, Noctua 15, Grizzly Kryonaut, (4) Silent Wings 3, 32GB 3200 Corsair, 1TB 970 Plus M2, 1TB 860 Evo SSD, BeQuiet 11-850w Gold, $3k delivered. Won't really know how I did until beta

[CharlesVolz 85]

On 3/4/2021 at 2:02 PM, MikeD56 said:

I got the Dell Alienware since finding an RTX 30xx individually, to build a system, is almost impossible. Price at least as good as building and arrived in 7 days.

 

Yea, I bought all of the parts for a new rig minus the video card....got tired of this waiting bs.... and bought a Dell Alienware also. 

 

They knocked 10% off when I asked via quote. I hope some of my extra parts will fit :).

 

$3,118 before tax and free shipping.

 

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

 

[mtldesigns 50]

On 3/25/2021 at 9:44 PM, CharlesVolz said:

$3,118 before tax and free shipping

Not a bad price for a new rig.  I think I paid a little less than that for my Alien about 3 years ago.  I love this machine, doesn't give any issues (knock on wood) like my HP did.

 

My only regret was not having a bigger C drive.  I have a 230 Gig and gets max'd out very quickly.  Always cleaning out the archives, and had to unlink Dropbox.  Anyways D drive is great, 2TB.  I am waiting to see how this runs with 13.  still thought $3200 +/- is very decent, and a write off.   

[solver 1682]

7 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

My only regret was not having a bigger C drive.  I have a 230 Gig and gets max'd out very quickly.  Always cleaning out the archives, and had to unlink Dropbox.  Anyways D drive is great, 2TB.

 

You can install Chief on your D drive.

[mtldesigns 50]

It is on D, now. But to gain C drive space, I had to removed DB.  Even though DB is on the cloud, if you have it linked and have it accessible via file explorer, it took most of my drive space.  I was unlinking, linking, it got to be a PITA, so I deleted it and I upload those daily projects every night.  The explorer def made that part easy, automatic per say.

 

So Charles, you only have the one drive and not a dual, a C and a D?      

[solver 1682]

35 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

I had to removed DB

 

You can put your DropBox folder on D too.

[CharlesVolz 85]

On 3/27/2021 at 9:14 PM, mtldesigns said:

So Charles, you only have the one drive and not a dual, a C and a D?   

 

I already have 2 new drives (and my cost) that I was going to use to build a new rig:

Hard Drive 1:        Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $297

Hard Drive 2:        Seagate Exos 16TB Enterprise HDD X16 SATA 6Gb/s 512e/4Kn 7200 RPM 256MB Cache 3.5" Internal Hard Drive ST16000NM001G $340

 

Charles

[kylejmarsh 25]

On 3/4/2021 at 5:37 PM, SNestor said:

Is only "real time" rendering disabled? In other words...can we still ray trace the old fashioned way (like in X12)...just not in "real time"? 

 

 

As a fellow Mac user I have looked into this topic a lot. It's not a Chief issue, there is a fundamental disconnect with the MAC GPU architecture and the way everybody else does it, so I don't even think it's an issue that the CHief programmers could solve - it's more of like an AMD level issue.

 

Luckily, they have solved it and in stunning fashion. To enable real time GPU rendering you'll need to get Twinmotion and export your chief model to .dae (collada) and import it to TM. I swear it's the easiest and most amazing rendering software I've used and right now you can try it out for free, then it's only like $300 or something. 

 

Use chief for the geometry, then when you want to render just export it and move it to TM - takes maybe 5 minutes to move it over there, and you'll save that much time on a single Raytrace if trying to use chief and it won't look half as good.

[coffcons 0]

Is the requirement for the "Ray Tracing" as opposed to the standard rendering the driving cost for these machines? Would a lesser machine merely take longer to Ray Trace?  If so, I think I would sacrifice the Ray Tracing for a more affordable computer.

 

I was hoping to pay around $1000.00... not realistic?

[TheKitchenAbode 579]

10 hours ago, coffcons said:

Is the requirement for the "Ray Tracing" as opposed to the standard rendering the driving cost for these machines? Would a lesser machine merely take longer to Ray Trace?  If so, I think I would sacrifice the Ray Tracing for a more affordable computer.

 

I was hoping to pay around $1000.00... not realistic?

 

Just to help clarify this Raytracing concern. If you are going to upgrade to X13, Chief is adding an additional Raytracing feature called Real-time Raytracing. The original CPU based Raytracer will still be available and does not require any additional hardware. The new real-time Raytracer will however require a graphics card that supports this function, currently the Nvidia RTX 3000 series cards support this. If you don't mind waiting then you don't need to purchase one of these more expensive graphics cards. If you are purchasing a desktop then you can always upgrade the graphics card later on if you decide to use the real-time Raytracer

[MarkMc 547]

13 hours ago, coffcons said:

I was hoping to pay around $1000.00... not realistic?

Yes that's possible. I was looking for something for someone with more simple office use and checked just to see. There are some that are ok BUT bumping the budget  a bit gets a significantly better machine. There are machines out there with RTX 2000 cards in the low to mid teens and good CPUs. With the 11th generation Intel CPUs out some places have good deals on 10th gen machines.  The best deals I saw were at the LOCAL Microcenter or at BestBuy- not at the manufacturers.

 

NOTE that If you hope to upgrade the GPU someday keep an eye on the power of the PSU or you could end up needing both. Also upgrading either Intel or AMD machines after this years will also require a new motherboard no matter how much you spend. I don't think that's a big deal, at least I'm not worried about it. A decent current generation CPU should work ok with Chief for 5+ years.

 

[coffcons 0]

29 minutes ago, MarkMc said:

 

 

NOTE that If you hope to upgrade the GPU someday keep an eye on the power of the PSU or you could end up needing both.

 

Thank you Mark,

 

I'm not familiar with PSU though. Are you talking about cables or something more significant?

 

Am I correct in assuming that the main driver of the system requirement to have expensive video cards etc (basically a gamer's computer) is the Ray Trace function?

[MarkMc 547]

PSU is the power supply unit, rated in Watts. May inexpensive systems have very small ones (350 watts).

 

1 hour ago, coffcons said:

Am I correct in assuming that the main driver of the system requirement to have expensive video cards etc (basically a gamer's computer) is the Ray Trace function?

It's not as simple as that. Chief has uses a balance of resources so all parts have a bearing on cost.

Did you read the link supplied by Chief above?

While Yes the new X13 Real Time Ray Trace requires a capable card yes, old fashioned Ray Trace uses the CPU so need power there. Standard view uses the CPU too.

 

Only you can decide how expensive a system needs to be. It depends on how you use the program and your business model. I look at it as a 5 year investment, guess how much time it will save me this year, factor the tax deduction, how much can I manage now/this year...Check the signatures on the forum, there's a wide range of systems folks are using.

[coffcons 0]

7 hours ago, MarkMc said:

 

Thanks Mark,

 

Yes I checked out the link above, that's why I was asking about what portion of those requirements were related to the Ray Trace function.

 

I appreciate your help...I'm still looking at computers and I also appreciate the website you recommended, AVBAdirect. They really allow you to fine tune a computer set up.

[MarkMc 547]

4 hours ago, coffcons said:

I was asking about what portion of those requirements were related to the Ray Trace function. 

While you may not need a top end video card for your work I'd suggest getting a dedicated GPU as opposed to ontegrated (Intel). I mention that since AVA is not currently showing either GTX or 2000 series cards, maybe give Kyle a call there.

[coffcons 0]

Thanks Mark,

 

I'll check that out.

[BenPalmer 32]

On 3/6/2021 at 6:48 AM, MarkMc said:

I ended up at AVBAdirect. I'd never heard of them but was checking all options around. They're worth a look.

I started with Desktop, Tower  Checked off a few filters, settled configuration, put in cart

Then talked with them, (Kyle) was  really helpful tweaking the configuration and checking availability of parts.The buying experience was excellent. I have no idea how support or any of the rest will be System delivers in a few weeks. (they do test em as they build em which is critical to me)

 

You can get higher level GPU and/or CPU for less than I spent; either from them or elsewhere (for comparison I configured an i9 , rtx 3080, liquid cooled, 32 GB, 1TB 970 plus, 1TB HDD- at $2400 & then an i7, 3060 for $1800). I looked at systems from $1800 to $4k, 5 custom builders and stock systems from 4 places.

I ended up with:  Define7 Compact, i7 10700k, EVGA 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING, MSI Meg Z490 Ace, Noctua 15, Grizzly Kryonaut, (4) Silent Wings 3, 32GB 3200 Corsair, 1TB 970 Plus M2, 1TB 860 Evo SSD, BeQuiet 11-850w Gold, $3k delivered. Won't really know how I did until beta

@MarkMc curious how your experience was with AVA and what kind of delay there was on some of the components.