I am considering to build a desktop pc for 3d modelling and some rendering, mostly still images. Not interested in AI/crypto stuff, where apparetly most progress is focused. How should I think about it? Does it still make sense to avoid Nvidia? Maybe even second-hanf market is worth attention now?
I can say this:
I am both poor, and cheap. And as a result, I tend to basically upgrade my equipment continuously until it reaches the ultimate hard-stop; which is where the motherboard itself just won’t support any newer hardware.
My current setup for not only Blender, but also video editing in Resolve and Kdenlive, Motion graphics in both Resolve and/or Natron, medium to heavy gaming (not on ultimate settings of course) is almost 10 years old (2016) with a 3060 midrange nvidia card, 16 gigs of RAM, a upgraded 750 watt power supply and a pathetically old AMD A-10 7800 cpu.
It works fine. More than fine. Using Linux it’s plenty powerful enough to do what I need it to do. Would I like to be able to afford a more powerful one? Sure. But I don’t need it.
The caveat I’ll say to that is that my blender modeling isn’t heavy on animation, though it is fairly complex (flyable aircraft with 3D interiors for X-Plane…so a good number of animations, but nothing complex like human walking or anything.)