What kind of computer do you guys run for a RIP?

[Rayd8]

A rip processes the job and sends it to your printer, so in essence once a job starts printing that will be the soonest timing it can process the next printjob. Send a few of the more complicated/large jobs with lots of detail or data to your rip, then time its processing time and check if any printer is idle due to processing. For me personally i dont care about cpu or ram age, i care about the idle time. As long as no idle time (and an acceptable waiting time to start the first printjob of the day) happens i wouldnt change a thing.
Should you however have waiting issues in your case i would suggest/do: Run a virtual pc on your gaming laptop with the rip software installed and start with giving it a low memory and cpu resouce, test it With your most demanding printjob and time how long it takes to process and repeat this after adding cpu power and or memory, keep doing this till you are happy with the processing time.
I have a few digital graphic printers with a few being old (+7 years now) and adding memory does in fact a lot to its processing time, but the base memory of the included rips off course s*ck bigtime, so i wouldnt completely ignore memory. On these rips you can watch and see ho mich memory is being used when a file/job is bzing ripped which in my case gave me the memory hint. Since doubling ram memory i’m experiencing ca 25% speed increase
Hth

 

[netsol]

We upgraded largest client, 3.5 years ago from ibm vcenter to new cisco system running vmware
3 hosts (24 cores each, 512 gb ram, 10 gb network backbone (not sure how much disk space, but 36 TB used)
High availability, it fails over to a different host TRANSPARENTLY, if needed.

We run. 36 vm's exchanging data constantly. It all replicates to a data center for failover (spin up the backups) you lose speed if you failover to remote, but are never "dead in the water"

We actually run the old vcenter. At my office, a vmware environment can be handy, if you want to spin up a poece of software

 

[King Hesh]

I'm running an older i5 Dell with 8GB of RAM with the OS from an SSD with Rasterlink for my small Mimaki UJF3042MKII, which is perfectly adequate for the size etc. The machine also drives my 24" Summa cutter with no problem. Now I'm in the process of adding a larger machine, likely a UCJV300-130... What kind of computer / processor / how much RAM do you guys use to drive the larger roll-to-roll machines?

FYI - I might be one of the few people on here who actually like Rasterlink, but I also have never used it with a larger machine or cutter.

We use Rasterlink too, not for everything, but for precision die cutting. Our RIP is Onyx and we run 32 Gig Ram on a i7 - 64 bit Machine, works well with our Dell server. It pays to beef up the PC's, why wait for a file to process?

 

[Erik Mello]

If ever my customers are asking for recommendations, I always tell them an AMD CPU. Ryzen 5 3600 handles most shop's needs. Best CPU "Bang for your buck". And these days with shortages/price hikes, that's how you should be thinking.
16GB of RAM is all you need but if you're willing to spend an extra ~$70 to double it to 32GB, can't hurt.
Storage is key. I NEVER recommend hard disk drives anymore because the reliability is far worse than Solid State. M.2 NVME drives are just overkill in my opinion.

 

[Pauly]

If ever my customers are asking for recommendations, I always tell them an AMD CPU. Ryzen 5 3600 handles most shop's needs. Best CPU "Bang for your buck". And these days with shortages/price hikes, that's how you should be thinking.
16GB of RAM is all you need but if you're willing to spend an extra ~$70 to double it to 32GB, can't hurt.
Storage is key. I NEVER recommend hard disk drives anymore because the reliability is far worse than Solid State. M.2 NVME drives are just overkill in my opinion.

M.2 nvme are not overkill, and it's also to populate a motherboard with them.
We have 2x m.2 drive. only 512gb each. One is booth drive with software. Other is storage for offline prints & test prints & data.

Then we've got 2x 2tb 7200rpm HDDs for backup/storage set up in raid 1.

We dont backup customers files locally. They get stored on AWS S3, so customers have access to their files online if they need a reprint etc.

 

[rjssigns]

Custom built from a local shop. Only time that I was interviewed about needs and capabilities of the new build. Once built they also made sure all software ran without issue.
CPU is AMD Black Edition. They don't use Intel. Rig is a few years old but still cranks out the work.

 

[Retro Graphics]

I have one machine that used to be a gaming computer and is way too nice & powerful to spend its time as a RIP.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950x. 16 core / 32 thread.
It's overkill for 99% of people here.

I have the all in one setup, and I know my setup is way over the top, but AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16 core, 128GB of Memory and GTX1060 6GB running 4 monitors. (left), the system on right with the other 4 monitors is my other job. I live in my basement lol.

edit: i originally built the system myself in 2012 and have I upgraded internal components over time.