building a new PC

The first thing is that a PC can be designed to do very specific things well. So you need to first discuss what you want to use it for, because what works best is going to vary wildly depending on your answer.

Like if you play games, then you will want a balanced PC where all the parts work together. Balance is usually a good thing to look for.

But if your only concern is Daz and Iray, then that changes. Iray is a GPU renderer, and only works on Nvidia. While it can run on CPU, it is super slow on even the fastest CPUs. So for a Iray PC you want to look at the best GPU you can, and you can basically ignore other parts if you really want to. You do not need balance with Iray. You can save money by getting cheaper parts and spend that money on the best GPU possible.

BTW, new GPUs are coming soon. So you might want to wait a couple of months if you can. From your budget, the hypothetical 3080 would be a much better choice than a 2080 Super if the rumors about it are true. Rumors say the 3080 will be 20% faster than the 2080ti, which is way over $1000 US, and it may have 10 gb of VRAM.

VRAM is a big deal for Iray. If you run out of VRAM, then it will stop rendering on the GPU at all. That would be bad. So having more VRAM is always a good thing. The 3080 could have 10 gb, which would be more than the 2080 today. That by itself is a reason enough to hold out for it.

With $1500, you should be able to get a 3080 and scrape the rest of the PC together. A cheap but good enough Ryzen 5 or 7, with a decent motherboard. At least 16 gb of RAM, 32 would be better. SSD for OS, big HDD for everything else including Daz content. If you do some gaming, then you want at least a 8 core Ryzen 3700. Games will be going 8 cores soon because of new consoles. Otherwise a Ryzen 3600 is more than enough. Ryzen 4000 series releases soon, too. In fact, all of this stuff is releasing this fall and winter, so right now is not the best time to build a new PC.

So if you can wait, do it. You can also use the 2 months to save even more, and perhaps buy a 3080ti when it comes out. Then you can feel like a pimp.

wait for the new Nvidia cards, it has been said these will have much more RAM for bigger scences, I have a 2080ti and still have to take to much care on running out of memory 😉 18GBps against 11 GBps is a nice boost for larger scences. Same pricepoint they guess but 40% faster. Release date around September.

that together with a eg. AMD Ryzen 9 3900XCPU and a fast SSD (ideally M.2 SDD, they are lightning speed fast) and you have a good system for 3D stuff.

Is the 3080 architecture new or is it the same as the 10 and 20 series? I'd be hesitant to be the first to buy a card based on a new architecture. Let someone else work out the bugs.