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I Need a New Computer.

E

eclark1894

Visionary
Well, not brand new. I'm semi retired, so on a fixed budget. I want to buy a used or refurbished computer, but I want to get one that will run both Poser and Blender without any problems. I'm not really a computer game person, so I don't anticipate ever playing any on the computer. I had to look up Integrated Graphics just to find out what it was. Which leads me to my next question, which is better, a DEDICATED Graphics card or an Integrated Graphics? I'm also seeing a lot of i5, i7, i8, i3, and i4 followed buy 3rd and 4th generation Intel chips. I need a little help from anyone who can explain it in layman's terms.
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Generally, onboard video (or "integrated graphics") is mediocre, capable of driving modest screen resolutions, and won't keep up with high refresh rates of contemporary games. A decent add-in GPU will allow for higher resolution and multiple monitors.

Buying used is a wise choice. My recommendation is to search Newegg and eBay for a *used* enterprise-grade workstation with two Xeon processors and a goodly amount of RAM. Use "2x X5670" as a search term, for example. A pair of the processors listed below will give you 24 render threads, which ain't shabby.
Westmere clockspeeds.PNG


If you find a good price on a workstation with dual 1366 sockets but it has two mediocre processors (L5520 is common), I'll send you a pair of the HyperThreaded hex-core CPUs.;)

Workstation chassis which would commonly have dual Westmere-series Xeons will be HP z600 (midtower), HP z800 (full tower), Dell T5500 (midtower), and Dell T7500 (full tower).
 
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seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Here's an example... Dell T5500 midtower, with dual X5670 Xeons and 48GB RAM. It includes a Win10 license (most used workstations and servers don't). $360 and $40 shipping. Connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and you're ready to go, with 24 render threads at your command.:cool:

My advice would be to clone the included hard drives to new hard drives (have a shop do that if you're uneasy about doing it yourself), since you don't know how much mileage is on the included hard drives. No need to worry about other components; workstation/server gear is more durable than consumer computer equipment.
 
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