Looking to (finally) get a better rendering setup.

I've always used AMD cpu's because they give the best bang for the buck. My only real suggestion is to talk with the local gamer community and any IT folks you know to get their suggestion for a local 'Mom-n-Pop' computer store. Every city has that one shop that's stacked to the rafters with new and used components and is always willing to do a deal. Get a decent used case and stuff it with items that are one generation back. This gives you 90% of the power for 40 to 70% of the price. Read the computer magazines too, although PCMag isn't too techy these days. Tom's Hardware is trustworthy.
You can always take your hard drives with you into any new build. Both my online and offline (the better graphics box) computers are Frankensteins but they're crazy reliable and work well. I use Win7 online and Win10 for the graphics one. I also installed Win10 Ameliorated ( https://ameliorated.io/ ) to eliminate the crap. Don't update ANYTHING until it's been out for awhile and it's shown that you need it to fix something.

When you plot RRP of component parts v. performance, there comes a point where cost rises exponentially for a relatively small increase in performance.

The sweet spot to hit is just around the price point where it starts to curve radically upwards.

@ethiopia Yes, like cameras and all technology, you will always get a better deal on recently superseded models.

🙂

Kitbash rules! 🙂

Yes, I use good quality old glass on recent digital cameras & get nice results.

I've always been disappointed that no one made converters to use old (but still excellent and expensive) lenses during the shift to digital. I heard about one but they never became popular. Our shop had a zillion dollars worth of high end lenses (Nikon) that where all sold by Crown Assets. The companies all made a big deal about selling lenses 'optimized' for digital, but we worked in an imaging lab with all manner of test equipment and knew it was just marketing bullshit.
Our selection of Rodenstock lenses continue to work perfectly with the digital back on the 8x10 Cambo.

I knew some people who thought I was crazy back in 2020 for having 64Gb of RAM. Been great. Even thou I could have gone to 128Gb of RAM - if I wasn't planning on getting a new computer. As Ethiopia said - Tom's hardware is pretty good, as is the local gaming community.

I was recommended a computer retailer here in Melbourne, who I have brought some stuff from. What I did last time when my got my current desktop - was keeping to a budget, which meant I had to have everything that I wanted at that time (like adding another hard drive or new graphics card)

Some forward to now - again at the moment I have been in the planning for a few months now. Been reading about the new Intel processor, as last time I brought a processor that had been on the market for a few years to save money. Yet to decide between Core 7 and Core 9 - but I'll decide sometime in November or December, once I see prices on motherboards, CPU and RAM. I am also hoping that graphic cards get cheaper with the release of the RTX 50 series. As I want to buy a RTX 4070 or 4080 series. Yet to decide which - but I an use my RTX 3060 12GB in my new computer for a few months.

Hehe. I'm a Parramatta supporter. And there is the fact that I don't like either team. Undecided on who I'll go for. If the Storm win it will be great for the game to grow here.

I'll test my new system - whenever I get it. My old system works fine at the moment. It all depends on prices, which at the moment is unknown with regards to some components.

My guy wants $1700 US for them in Canada.