threedee

I'm starting to think that best course of action is to just buy old 5-6th gen(ish) i7 and cram loads of ram and an ssd into it. Reason being 1500 quid wont buy me much more performance than old pro setup but for a fraction of a price (please prove me wrong with arguments).

I AM the creative here, btw With many a screwdriver in my pocket (and a soldering iron, and some spanners too). I do my "mac"'ing on pc for many years now, but since my boss knows i like to mess with pc's/electronics he came to me for advice. I usually run CNC's/plotters/printers, do some "designing", etc. Jack of all trades. Its a 4 person band, this company here - 3 of them (incl. boss) put stickers/plaques/ads/boards/signs up, 1 manufacturing/designing (that'd be me). Software doesnt bother me at the moment, as all we use daily, although old, runs on win10 (some with some prodding, but still does). But some software, the heavy use ones (crldrw, rip printing) comes to a crawl on big files or complex geometries on old machines, hence upgrade requirement. I'm planning to use upgrades for many years to come, i dont chase novelty year to year. But well built machine WILL last 10 years. Mine did(well, nearly 10), i7-2600k on watercooling, since 2011-12, just replaced gpu at some point (when games became unplayable ). I'm still debating should i replace THAT one, as barring RDR2 i'm all pretty good still.. Runs crysis too... As for all color accuracy thing... dont much use it anyway. Technically its good to have callibrated displays, spec gpus etc, but too costly for what we do here... Just need a machine that will be able to shove complex 2d graphics out with upcoming software (whatever it may be) for next 8-10 years.

Sorry, i'm a boring suit guy in this scenario, always was, always will be. No macs for me . Also, i do still have 286 stashed somewhere... just in case... As for serious part... Software is old, this comes up all the time. However, we expect software to evolve faster than hardware, hence upgrading hardware for futureproofing. I still run a second gen i7 with gtx970 and it works just fine (built in 2012-13?). However doing complex 2d graphics on an i3 is a bit of an ask, hence upgrade. Coreldraw CRAWLS on 2nd gen i3. The whole "upgrade shenanigans" hapening because we are reorganising/expanding our workshop, decluttering, streamlining software/hardware. It doesnt matter that "old" software is not multicore NOW. We'll fix that in near future, but for that we need good workstations to be in place.

Disclosure: building pcs since 286's, last pc built in 2012/13, a bit behind times. Location: UK Budget: To be determined, exploring options. Screens to run: 2x24" (1080p, or a bit higher ?) I had a discussion with my boss today about renewing graphics workstations at our advertisement/signmaking company. At the moment the plan is to get rid of all old barely functioning hardware (celerons/i3's), that run operations in way too fragmented manner - too many old computers doing separate things in the shop. Too much usb key hopping, different software versions and general inconvenience of having too many chairs to sit in during the day (technically needlessly)... I need to figure out the platform for next build that will do most of the things we need (will describe later). My main concern is intel/amd choice, core counts and how each performs in 2d vector graphics production role. Do i go for (historically) stable intel performance with less cores or go for AMD's fabled new (3700/3800?) chips ? (To be clear: although intel rep dipped in recent times, i'm not here for the intel/amd drama - need performance advice.)... Do i need a dedicated GPU for that sort of work ? Would it help ? How much would it help ? Definitely no need for rtx2080ti's in this case (pity, though ) but is there a point in slapping in old gtx970/980 over integrated ? I do use 970 at home with coreldrawx6, it works fine, i just dont know how much of a difference it makes over intel integrated (and i'm not pulling my machine apart to find out ) Software and hardware we use in the shop for the most part are CorelDraw x8/x9, Roland RIP for superwide solvent printer/cutter, couple of Graphtec plotters, NanoCAD/Artcam for large cabinetmakers cnc router (tekcel v-series 3x2m beastie, might need accellerated opengl capability for this one for toolpath preview(artcam2018)). Also, there is the need for centralised storage solution, like NAS of some sort, with which i dont have any experience at all. Want to get something that will let me do redundant storage to 2 sets of drives (i'm not familiar with raid types). Screens: 24in is absolutely fine, not sure of the need of 144/240hz. Panel color quality/price is more important. Flat panels, curviness in precision work is a no from us. For memory, i think we do need 32gb as sometimes we get monster bitmaps to print on the monster printer we have. Curent machine handling printing has 16gb and handles well, but looking to the future may need moar. For local storage 1tb nvme's should suffice, as most storage would be handled by NAS. Budget is not unlimited, but not set yet. However we both agreed that performance takes priority over RGB nonsense. Basic cases(no glass/windows), adequate for cpu/gpu but reliable power supplies (no need for watt overkill here), air cooling (stability is key, no OC), no game'y gimmicks (pc moonlighting as a christmas tree) etc... Keep it as low cost as possible. To quote boss "we're not a corporation". I'm off to raid some cpu benching sites now, and although its more of a general query if someone have something more specific to feed me then i'd appreciate it... In general we need a machine capable of shoving LOADS of flat vectors and monster printing processing for as little money as possible. Any advice is welcome and appreciated, educate me...