I’ll be buying a new PC/ labtop was wondering what my best bet would be as far as who is running what and not having tons of issues ( I have not bought X carve yet )
What software are you planning to use if easel , anything will work even a tablet pc… if your going to be using Vectric software or fusion 360 or solid works your going to need a pretty good PC at least something in the 1200-1500 dollar range for just the PC not including monitor and peripherals.
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Other than the Heathkit H8 I’d built, I’m an Apple OS person(Microsoft at my work). However, for my X-Carve, I’d purchased a dedicated HP PC(exceeded all the specs), as I wanted to keep personal accounts/data/email/etc isolated from my hobby stuff. The Inventables folks were extraordinarily helpful, attempting to get things up and running. However, after a month, I threw in the towel, and bought a MacPro. In 15 minutes I was carving. This has worked well for me. Best wishes. X-Carve is a great adventure. I don’t know how more advanced CNC software performs with OS.
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personally I use a Mac as well, Intel i7, 32 gigs of ram. run windows 7 with parallels for Vectric software, UGS and easel with MacOS
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Nothing agains any of the suggestions here but the need for an extreamly high end PC is not needed from my experience. Granted if you use Fusion 360 or solid works then yes the better you get the better it will run. With that said I run a simple Core 2 Duo PC with 6gb of RAM. I primarily use UGS and V-carve for the majority of my work. In addition to this I do have Fusion 360, Autocad 2016 and Sketchup installed (As I said the better machine you get the better it will perform but mine runs Fusion 360 okay just a little slow) In addition to all that I also RDP to that PC so I can keep all my stuff together. My suggestion would be to use the PC or laptop you have now. If it works well get a machine with similar specs.
One additional note: An out of the box idea is to have a dedicated PC for the Gcode sender and then get yourself a nice PC to do the modeling and designs on. Then just put the files on a USB or better yet use DropBox or another online file repository and just send the Gcode with the cheap machine.
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I’ve got Vectric V Carve installed on 2 PCs, both at least 4 years old. I have never recognized a performance issue with it. The actual connectivity to the xCarve takes very little processing power. Easel requires enough performance to be a good web browser (more than one might think due to the amount of flash and java script around), but if you have that you should be fine.
–Rick
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Are you looking for a pc just to run the x-carve? And do your design work an a different pc. If so you don’t need much to run the actual machine. I’m using one of these. Amazon.com
Works perfectly.
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Realize I "recommend " a nicer PC with vectric and car software because I like “0” lag when I’m moving around a rendered object… u can run anything on just about any pc made in the last 8 years weather you will be fighting lag or not is purely personal preference …
I guess I’m just picky , I don’t like to wait for rendering and toolpaths and after is generated when I simulate I like it to be quick and smooth and when I move the object around after it’s rendered I can’t stand lag at all I also like to set it on highest settings, guess it’s my " I.T. Background " I didn’t buy my Mac for this though it was already here and beefy before I got an X-carve, I do a lot of photo editing and illustrations.
Yea home built is alot cheaper, I just bought a new PC for a company I do contract work for , it was around 800$ for just the tower it was a Dell i5 8 gigs of ram and a 1 tb ssd, mediocre graphics card, in my opinion it still needs “alot” more HD space and a better video card for 3d files and rendering also at least 16 gigs of ram. that was 800$ with a small Hard drive and no monitor mouse an keyboard…at any one time on my PC while working on CNC projects I have , Adobe illustrator, adobe Photoshop, Vectric Aspire, Chrome for the forum, Safari for Easel, Itunes for music, so for me i have to spend the money to get the gear to handle my workflow, in my opinion i need the horsepower and I have had “1” problem with UGS which was because my computer went to sleep… The OP asked who was running what and having no issues. This is my opinion and not the vies of Inventables and most others on this forum lol! Oh and calculator app is running to… just noticed as i was typing this last line!
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What are you wanting to do? I use a Raspberry Pi 3 in the shop to run the X-carve and could not be happier, I do most of my design on my main system which runs Linux in the house which is an old dell T7400 (2007 model) but it has dual Xeon Quad core processors running at 3.4 GHz. with 64 GB ram and NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics card. I know that when new this was a super high end system(video card alone was over $3000.00) but I have very little in this system as I got several from surplus from a university (around $100.00 each). I can do simple, quick and easy designs on the Pi but I also like to use the remote controller when I am setting zero. I also like the fact that it is so small and I do not worry about dust in the system as the Pi is very easy to blow out and all media is solid state. So if you want to have an expensive top of the line system in your work area and subject it to the environment of the work area then get a high end system, but If you want a small compact system to run the X-carve which allows you to send files remotely and locally then there are alternatives.
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That is still a very capable workstation grade PC the dial quad xeons and quadro graphics card is still probably going to outperform modern computers at enterprise type computing and applications such as vectric and fusion. Number crunching and games are 2 totally different program architectures. I was actually looking at eBay a couple months ago for some motherboards and old xeons too build a massive workstation. Good rig!
I was banned for replying.to much as a new user -_- thanks everyone for advice I plan on buying vector desktop
Say what!?!?!?
Yes they banned me for 20 hours for replying to much on the forum as a new user but the 20 hours is up now they really screwed me over on learning for that amount of time
I use the same PC I use for vinyl and photo work. An old Dell Precision t5400. It is a dual Xeon setup- basically like two quad core Core 2 processors. I think it has 12 gigs of RAM, and an SSD. It is years old, but still keeps up with modern software. And you probably pick one up for next to nothing.