Originally Posted by
sideways14a
I dont know much about the software you are discussing but i do know an awful lot about computer hardware.
CPU - today and for the next couple of years at least its AMD - for rendering or anything that might be heavy on the processor then get one with more cores. The current 3900x is a 12 core 24 thread part, the 3700x is an 8 core 16 thread part and the 3950x is a 16 core 32 thread part. If your software "likes" more cores then obviously get a computer with a lot more of them. If the software is not strong on multithreading (ie tends to use only 1 or 2 cores) then get something with a high single thread speed - Intels top stuff is good at single or limited thread software because they have a higher clock speed* thus can usually be faster than a larger more powerful cpu with more cores but a lower clockspeed.
Memory - absolutely 100% minimum 16gb of ram nowadays, i would aim for 32 at least depending on budget and software requirements. I am not going to go into memory speeds and tuning because thats out of scope of this thread but if you want i can go into it.
Storage - No arguments here with anything, its SSD all the way now - unless you have some extremely big files to store but this is an outlier. Always always always back your machine up to the cloud or something else. I get several terabytes of MS cloud storage via onedrive which i jighly recomend for off site/ device backups as i work in education i get it free with O365 so try and get a cloud storage platform with large amounts of space, if you buy ms office 365 you get onedrive with it but its bloody expensive for businesses. For the SSD i would look at a minimum of a 1tb NVME m.2 drive.
Video card - i have no idea if your software supports gpu rendering or acceleration. Some do and thus you would need to check with the software requirements before we could make a decent suggestion.
Not much else bar flippancy like the case, dvd rom drive if you must have it... (dont bother unless you need it) and psu which should be of a good make, high enough wattage to support future requirements - i would say at least 650 watts.
Ohh and you need a copy of windows 10 - if your building yourself you will need to buy a license, if your purchasing from a pc supplier then it usually comes with that. I would factor in some additional software like malwarebytes ~15 a year iirc for extra malware help or one of the other many virus checkers.
Is this a standalone machine? or going on a lan, is it to be part of a large active directory network or just a home box?
*Within turbo duration (tao) - a turbo boost one a 5.2ghz intel 10900k is only supposed to last something like 45 seconds or so... then clock speed falls and so does performance..