Hello everyone!
I’m a Mac user but I’m going to start using PC for now on.
Could anyone give me some advice on building the best possible pc to work with Harmony 12?
Thank you!
Davi
get a high performance pc from HP, even the lower end pc has more than enough power for Harmony, I use it with C4D and the adobe production suite cs5.5, if you want to just buy one
https://www.toonboom.com/products/harmony/system-requirements
i7 3.4 Ghz processor
16Gb ram
nvidia gtx 780(ti) video card
As has been mentioned before you could always hackintosh your PC. With Clover it’s easier than ever.
Unlike a 3D program like Maya, Harmony doesn’t need huge amounts of power to run smoothly, a decent quality laptop will suffice.
The Dell Precision M6600 has an easily ejectable main hard drive so you can install osx on one hard drive and windows 7 on another. Swapping the os easily without needing to dual boot the system.
From what TB techs said, the graphics card is most important and all of the current CPU’s are sufficient. Rendering benefits more from the CPU. You should also consider video processing in the pipeline. That is typically handled outside of Toon Boom software. CPU and graphics card choice will need to take this into consideration.
The 700 NVidia series has been replaced by the 900 series. You could still find a deal on a 700. If you are going to go through the effort of building a system you might as well invest in the current technology. It will end up costing you more money sooner than later if you invest in yesterday’s technology.
One problem with a laptop is lack of screen space. Even when you connect a full size display you have to consider the small size of the laptop it is paired with. I use two 27" displays and would like more screen space. I would not like being confined to a laptop and a desktop display unless it was one of the new ultra wide 34" models. There are a lot of editors and the Timeline, Drawing/Camera and Network windows benefit from being large.
One other problem with a laptop is limited options, especially in GPU’s.
Have you considered building a Hackintosh? I have been all Mac for years and hated the idea of switching to Windows but Apple no longer offers anything suitable for my uses. I was able to customize more than Apple ever offered. It is expandable well into the future. I have the elegant OS and do not have to invest in Windows software.
I did some research when I was planning to build a system to run Harmony. I spoke to a couple of TB support techs about it. You have to choose from a compatible list of parts but there really is a selection of strong contenders and the bonus is that you can set up a dual boot OS X / Windows or just go Windows if the Hackintosh proves too challenging.
I just put mine together this weekend. There were a few hair pulling events but it was mostly the idea that you are on your own. I asked about the problems on various forums but figured things out before anyone responded. Assembly goes surprisingly fast. I felt like the clock was ticking when faced with obstacles but once I figured them out they were not so bad looking back.
Either way (W or OS X) choose your graphics card based on the software minimum requirements. I used the built in graphics on the CPU until the very last stage and that was far better than what I had been using in my Mac Mini. The GPU is the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G because it is known to be a cool and quiet version of NVidia card. Get 16GB RAM, it does not have to be anything faster than 1600 MHz. The software doesn’t use more and it also does not benefit from overclocking the graphics card or CPU. I wanted silence so I got a Corsair RM850i PSU that will rarely kick up the fan. It is dead silent. Intel i7 4790 CPU. The system is all fan cooled. The CPU cooler is the Arctic i30. I added an extra fan to the R5 case. There are 3 case fans, 2 fans on the graphics card and a fan on the CPU, a fan on the power supply and it is still dead silent. Fastest computer I have ever used.
Again, this will run Windows as well.
I did my homework but I am not an expert. This is just a 2D graphics machine and I will use it for music software as well. I will not be gaming. Someone may debate over the power supply size perhaps but I did this on purpose so the fan would never kick in.
I have only this week been able to run Harmony and am happy to finally have access to it.
Hi Davi_Clean, I have nothing against PC’s - i use them for certain things, but curious why you want to move to a PC when you use a Mac already, I have always found the Mac an easier machine to use for animation, plus with the "metal’ graphics boost coming soon graphic work should be a dream!
Also if you haven’t considered it, rather than building a Hackintosh ( which we have also done in the studio for kicks) if you have an iMac for example ( which have painfully slow hard drives) You can connect an external USB3 drive which boosts write speeds by about 500% and use that as your OS drive. I have this setup and it’s insane how much quicker everything feels.
Final cut pro for example opens within seconds.
@jasonvenus
Storyboard pro | Harmony 12
Rather than building a PC, why not buy a second hand laptop?
The old Dell Precision M6600 can often be found on ebay for a few hundred dollars.
It comes with either a quadro 3000m or 4000m graphics card, which should be adequate for harmony - it can be upgraded to a quadro k5000m which ebay for a couple of hundred bucks, if you really want to. Also they can take upto 32GB ram, quad core i7 processor…
Best of all get one with a 17" touch/pen display at full HD resolution. Not quite as good as a cintiq, ( it’s N-Trig technology and the pen takes a AAA battery) but good enough.
I’ve been using a Mac for the last 8 years, I love it and it REALLY hurts to go back to pc. But i don’t think i can avoid it.
My Mac specs are really outdated now and I think it’s better go build a pc that I can upgrade in the following years than buying new macs in the future.
Anyways, I just wanted to know what specs are the most important to make Harmony run as smooth as possible. I’m a real noob with computer specs, so I need to figure out what is important for harmony and see what’s the best computer my budget will let me build.
Here is what I have today:
iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
OS X Yosemite 10.10.4
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB
And a Cintiq 24HD
Hi davi , how did your transition to Windows go? I have a Mac and I want to transition to windows I want to see how it went .
thank you