I need a new PC for game dev (3d art with UE4/UE5), suggestions?
polycounter lvl 6
I have a 5-year-old desktop pc. I just got a full-time job and looking to save up money for a new desktop pc by next year with the intention of using it for game dev (indie games using UE4 or UE5) and 3D environment art with UE4/UE5. I also use software like Quixel Megascans, Mixer, Substance Designer/Painter, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Marmoset Toolbag. I also intend the pc for playing pc games as well. So. a creator's gaming workstation pc.
Since there are shortages and scalpers with Video Cards and computer parts right now. It's almost impossible to buy a graphics card or CPU at a reasonable price or at all. I'm still looking for a job in the gaming industry as a 3D Environment Artist and want to keep working on improving my portfolio with new projects. My PC is getting so old and slow that it sometimes crashes and hinders my ability to work.
Here are my PC system specs:
What do you think? Should I just upgrade my storage on my current desktop pc? I have a free M.2 Gen3 slot and could upgrade the SATA SSDs to larger drives and upgrade the HDD to a bigger one like 6-8TB for just video and non-work data (I also do photography and video editing which can be stored in HDD as long it's not too slow). My current HDD space is low and has been acting up. It's about 8 years old.
Since there are shortages and scalpers with Video Cards and computer parts right now. It's almost impossible to buy a graphics card or CPU at a reasonable price or at all. I'm still looking for a job in the gaming industry as a 3D Environment Artist and want to keep working on improving my portfolio with new projects. My PC is getting so old and slow that it sometimes crashes and hinders my ability to work.
Here are my PC system specs:
- NZXT Manta ITX Case
- MSI Z270I Gaming Pro Carbon AC Mini-ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
- G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB DDR4 Memory
- Intel Core i7 7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core CPU
- MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Gaming X Graphics Card
- Corsair AX 860w 80+ Platinum Fully Modular PSU
- Samsung 850 EVO Series 500GB 2.5" SSD (for Windows OS & Applications)
- Samsung 840 EVO Series 250GB 2.5" SSD (for Games)
- WD Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" HDD (for Data)
- WD MyBook 8TB Desktop External HDD w/ USB 3.1 Gen 1 (for Data Backup - 2x a day)
- Asus VS239H-P 23" 1080p Monitors (x2 - dual setup)
What do you think? Should I just upgrade my storage on my current desktop pc? I have a free M.2 Gen3 slot and could upgrade the SATA SSDs to larger drives and upgrade the HDD to a bigger one like 6-8TB for just video and non-work data (I also do photography and video editing which can be stored in HDD as long it's not too slow). My current HDD space is low and has been acting up. It's about 8 years old.
Replies
This is not a good time to be buying a new PC between the price spikes and the fact that hardware manufacturers are getting ready to switch over to new standards for RAM (DDR5) and PCIe (v5). Unless your entire PC dies, I'd wait until the end of this year or early next before making any big purchases.
You're probably right, I should just upgrade the storage drives. That should help a lot with loading. I'm also aware of DDR5 and PCIe Express V5 as well. Hopefully, by the time there are RTX 4000 series, it will be gen 4.0 PCIe instead of PCIe 3.0, and easy to buy one for a reasonable price point. Maybe I can pick up an RTX 2070 if I'm lucky...
https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/
If you want to buy a new PC for some reason more power to you, but you don't need it to make art that'll get you hired.
And then the saddest thing people do is preemptively setup excuses for failure. Don't do that. Don't leave an escape route. If you are gonna do the thing just do it all the way or die trying. "I tried to get in but I wasn't tall enough." Bullshit!
Everyday we all come up with a lot of bullshit reasons to procrastinate. Sometimes you got to lie a little bit to get your boss of your back cause he's an asshole and pushes too hard or whatever but if you sell your own bullshit to yourself you wont be able to remove the obstacles to progress and you wont progress. In the end you wont get the job, and in the worst case scenario you starve and die.
So please, forget about the hardware and just focus on making the lines have all the wonderful curves and the colors nice and pretty and everything will be okay.
This is probably the best sentence I ever read!
I'm going to buy a hard drive and new SSD because it will make my life easier and stop my pc from crashing or taking mins to load a simple file when it should take seconds. I will get a new pc just in time for UE5 because I want to take advantage of UE5 software and produce high-quality work. It sounds like you have gone to the extreme end of only software is important when the hardware is also important.
My point is eventually hardware has to be replaced to keep up with the latest software. Right now, we are going through a big change in graphics and hardware.
I just tested one of my UE4 project files on an SSD (copied from HDD) and it suddenly got 20 fps more and loads much quicker. That tells me that my 8-year old HDD is becoming a bottleneck that needs to be fixed before it becomes a bigger problem.
The only thing to do is take away valuable insight or not.
The wise thing to do is assume that other people might know something you don't.Especially those who have long careers in the field and specialize in exactly the type of thing you are talking about.
That's not me but I can offer a little general workflow advice. Consider this piece from your portfolio:
You mention in the description you did a lot of high poly modeling. That was wasted time and resources because the work doesn't showcase any high poly detail. And if it did, that would still be wasted because the fundamentals of good art are missing from this scene. So in the end you probably spent too much time sculpting and noodling with "next gen" lighting and rendering and not enough time making sure the tree looked pretty and the scene had a pleasant composition.
Making good art takes the same skills as making good conversation. You just have to know how to communicate with people. The computer and all the nerdy tech is just the medium, but in the end what you are doing is making something that has to communicate with another person.
The fundamentals of art is the language you need to learn first, and it doesn't require high end hardware. Even if your computer was much lousier than yours is, if you are a real artist that is going to shine through regardless of what obstacles you face. Think about that old asian dude who makes beautiful art with microsoft excel. Can you imagine how tedious that is? If i was him i would have just died of boredom, but he is a true artist.
You could take this scene right here, light it using a single directional light, use albedo textures only for models, redo the tree so it looks like an actual tree, and just focus on composition, color theory, and think about how the scene reads and feels to the viewer, and you'll have a AAA piece of art. I'd focus not just only on this scene but only this specific camera angle from this scene. Delete everything else. It is bloating the project and probably makes it take too long to open.
Put it up on your screen and watch/read as much "fundamentals of art" instruction as you can, and try to apply the things you learn about to this image. Then make a plan how you can fix it and get started. When you get to the point where you need community to assess your work the question shouldnt be, "what should I do?" but "what do I not know that is keeping this from being as good as it should be?"
That tree pinewood project is the oldest project in my portfolio. I'm planning on removing it and replacing it with a new project in near future. All my projects in the future are going to be very small and focus on high quality and composition. I'm totally guilty of having the scope of my projects being too large or trying to get so much when it can lower quality and overall composition. I think a lot of students were guilty of this.
My next project is just a simple abandoned prison cell from Germany which has an old wooden bed bench and toilet with grungy walls and a window with light coming in. I thought that was perfect for my next project, it's small but you can really focus on the quality and overall composition.
My biggest regret starting with game dev and 3d graphics is not keeping the scope of the project to a reasonable size.