Member wmich50 Posted December 26, 2014 Member Report Share Posted December 26, 2014 New user here. Bought 3d-Coat from Steam ($75 version) yesterday. Started working through the 'Rat From Scratch' tutorials and like the way it's going. Two questions: 1st question: I'll eventually need to upgrade my system, but am curious as to how soon, how much power I'll need. My goal is to learn to make 3D printable, cartoon style figurines. I have: AMD A8 -3850 APU with Radeon HD graphics 2.90 GHz 8.0 Gb memory installed. Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit. I imagine my system is adequate for plenty of learning, but would appreciate comments on what will eventually be needed. Especially, can I get by with more memory, and maybe a second GPU. And, should I expect to need the Pro version of 3D-Coat? 2nd question: Hope it's OK to ask this, but are the 'Adam Gibson' tutorials a pretty good resource for learning? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted December 26, 2014 Report Share Posted December 26, 2014 Hi wmich50 ! You can find our youtube channel plenty of tutorials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member wmich50 Posted December 31, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 Can already can see that my system won't cut it. Sculpting performance is more important to me than rendering. I want to make character models for 3D printing. This is selling for $900 at NewEgg. Would it be adequate for learning 3D-Coat.? Any glaring deficiencies? Dell Model X8700-3313BLK Processor Intel Core i7-4790 3.6 GHz Memory 16 GB DDR3 1600 Hard Drive 1 TB SATA 6Gb/s Graphics NVIDIA Geforce GTX 745 4 GB GDDR3 GPU/VGA Type NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 4 GB GDDR3 Memory Capacity 16GB DDR3 Memory Speed DDR3 1600 Memory Slot (Total) 4 HDD 1TB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Tony Nemo Posted December 31, 2014 Contributor Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 It looks adequate for most things, certainly for your intended use. I have 12 GB of RAM and wish I had more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Aleksey Posted December 31, 2014 Advanced Member Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 i would say the video card is a bit underpowered. i'd get something with atleast a 60 in the end. so a 760, 660, 560. not sure what exactly a 745 is capable of... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted December 31, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 Can already can see that my system won't cut it. Sculpting performance is more important to me than rendering. I want to make character models for 3D printing. This is selling for $900 at NewEgg. Would it be adequate for learning 3D-Coat.? Any glaring deficiencies? Dell Model X8700-3313BLK Processor Intel Core i7-4790 3.6 GHz Memory 16 GB DDR3 1600 Hard Drive 1 TB SATA 6Gb/s Graphics NVIDIA Geforce GTX 745 4 GB GDDR3 GPU/VGA Type NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 4 GB GDDR3 Memory Capacity 16GB DDR3 Memory Speed DDR3 1600 Memory Slot (Total) 4 HDD 1TB There are good reasons for buying a prebuilt system, but I would still highly suggest hand picking your parts from a well-respected retailer like Newegg.com, and then assembling the PC yourself. One major reason is Overclocking capability. If you buy a Dell or other off the shelf PC, you have NO Overclocking capability at ALL (except for the CPU's default Turbo mode...which is very minimalistic). The quality of the parts they use are also inferior. The CPU makers are going to sell these prebuilt systems makers their lowest yield parts because they know the user cannot go beyond the factory specs. But, when you buy the parts individually from retailers, the same CPU is going to be a higher yield model, with significantly higher headroom for overclocking. I know this from experience because I bought a Dell a number of years ago, and later on, when I tried to upgrade the motherboard and memory, the CPU had almost no capacity to go above the default clock speed. Most newer CPU's can easily go above 4Ghz with a good CPU cooler and plenty of case ventilation. You can watch videos on Newegg that walk you through the process of building your own PC. There are only about 5 major components and all cables are dummy proof. You can't connect them to the wrong outlet. These prebuilt systems are also not made to allow multiple graphics cards. When it comes to rendering, all the rage today is GPU accelerated rendering, and being able to add one or two extra videos cards is roughly = to one or two render nodes. It's a very efficient and economical way to add a portable render farm without having to buy extra computers to do so. I'm using 2 GTX 580's (3GB) to render with Thea, and Moskito Render and the speed is pretty amazing. Once you build your own, you'll never want to go back to prebuilt systems. Having said that, there are some "Barebones" systems that have individual components already assembled by the retailer, but there are some components remaining for the buyer to add...maybe like everything but a graphics card. http://www.newegg.com/ http://video.newegg.com/v/1111348395/how-to-build-a-pc-newegg-tv-neweggcom-netv-paul-video/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted December 31, 2014 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 i would say the video card is a bit underpowered. i'd get something with atleast a 60 in the end. so a 760, 660, 560. not sure what exactly a 745 is capable of... If you can, try to swing for a GTX 970. It's basically a 980 with fewer CUDA cores, and it's priced exceptionally well ($300 range). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member wmich50 Posted December 31, 2014 Author Member Report Share Posted December 31, 2014 Good advice. There's no hurry. I'll postpone any purchases while I learn. Not a lot of confidence in Dell anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 1, 2015 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 1, 2015 I will also add that AMD used to be very competitive in the CPU market, but they publicly stated a few years back that they were bowing out of the high-end CPU arms race. They are now focused more on the budget segment and mobile devices. So, Intel is pretty much the only game in town now. But the sad part is, they really haven't pushed very hard to increase performance levels. That is why I'm still using my 6-core (12 thread) i7 970, and don't plan to upgrade the CPU until Intel comes out with something that performs twice as well or better. It's a 4-5yr old CPU and sadly Intel still doesn't sell anything that blows this CPU away, performance-wise. I always found that when trying to build a well-rounded PC, that it tends to cost between $1300-1600 when all the parts are bought and you include an OEM version of Windows (8.1 in this case). You could go cheaper than that, but you'd be skimping pretty hard in one are or the other. I also found that for a desktop that you are going to use as your workstation and/or gaming system, you really should go with a full-sized tower. Mid-sized towers are fine for just browsing the internet and some graphic/web design type of work. But anything that you are going to push really hard, with extreme detailed sculpting, 3D Animation and Rendering....even video editing and compositing, think of a full-sized truck. It's intended for HEAVY duty work...not light jobs you could easily do with a small pickup or SUV. Cases are really using the same concept. You NEED a full-sized case to give you room to expand (multiple graphic cards and such) and maximum ventilation. Large fans push more air than smaller fans, but they are quieter because they run at lower speeds. So, large cases give you a number of large fans for excellent airflow. In mid-sized cases, it gets really cramped with all the cables and long graphic cards. This would be a good example of a DIY kit/combo from Newegg. Might add another 8GB of RAM to it, though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2092642 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted January 1, 2015 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted January 1, 2015 This is another one, with a GTX 970 (4GB) card http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2092914 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member wmich50 Posted January 1, 2015 Author Member Report Share Posted January 1, 2015 I'm eyeballing this combo. Already have tower cases,fans and drives. Will need a beefier PSU, mine's only 450W. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2086642 Can buy cooler and gpu later. I assume the cpu comes with some sort of cooling. Haven't bought Intel in years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member iceage Posted January 1, 2015 Member Report Share Posted January 1, 2015 quad core 3.2 GTX geforce 560 16 gb ram I do have 3 x 300mm fans and a couple of small ones. I do have very large dedicated fan on the CPU as well. I think my power supply is 800 or 850 watts Over 2 terrabytes of hard drive It has been a very good computer ever since I put it together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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