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Would this be a good laptop for rendering?

Ami0Ami0 Posts: 1
in New Users

I'm currently in the market for a computer, not just for video rendering, but also for school and work. Would the Asus (i7-6700HQ, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD, NVIDIA GTX 960M 4GB, 17.3" Full HD, Windows 10) Gaming Notebook be good for rendering?

Comments

  • Ami0Ami0 Posts: 1
    edited May 2017

    I have no previous 3D animation experience and so I attempted to render a 14 second animation on a $200 notebook with just 4gb.

    Needless to say my PC crashed after rendering for over 25-hrs. In that 25-hrs I managed to render only a quater of the animation. However, since it crashed nothing was saved. So it was a learning experience. This time I want to make sure I'm buying a laptop that won't crash.

    Post edited by Ami0 on
  • OstadanOstadan Posts: 1,128

    Sounds like something you could do smaller and/or slower renders on.  If you have a lot of assets in your content directory, though, you might want to have some external storage for home use.

  • grinch2901grinch2901 Posts: 1,246

    For rendering animations, under render settings/general you can select render as image series.  This will save each frame as a seperate image. If it crashes, you can start from the last frame rendered so you don't need to redo the whole thing. Once you have the individual frames, rendered, you can stitch them together in an image editor but I forget how. Maybe someone else can refresh us all on how to do that.  Hope it helps a little.

  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057
    edited May 2017

    32 GB of ram should be quite nice.  My 13.5" 2 in 1 notebook can only accomodate 16 GB of ram, and has integrated Radeon graphics.  I am able to do all right with it, but renders are SLOOOOOOW.  With the NVidia card you mentioned, that should help a bit with Iray, although I'll leave that to the professionals around here as to how well that'll work.

    You'd probably want to have a second hard drive (external) to back up projects once you are done with them.  My 512GB SSD is filling up fairly quickly.  The 1 TB will give you a bit of room for a while, but if you are doing a lot of renders, yeah having a second hard drive will be in your future.

    The newer laptops often have M2 or NVMe drive options in addition to the 2.5" drive, which can be a great place to install your OS and most used programs, at which point a HDD for your 'secondary' drive can be a more viable option (SSDs/NVMe drives are awesome, once you have one you won't want to go back).  2.5" HDD's can be had for fairly cheap in the 3-5 TB range. This way, you won't have to mess with an external drive as much (although you'll probably want one for backup purposes).

    Depending on how handy you are, you can do a number of upgrades yourself, but if you fear voiding the warranty, then you'll want to get as much preinstalled as you can hardware wise.

    Looking at Newegg, if you don't mind refurbs this one looks quite nice, and is on sale for a couple more days.

    https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6BM5C11911

    Pretty much all the specs you mentioned, plus a m2 256 GB SSD, and a GTX 980M 4GB instead of the 960.  Keep in mind that you could always upgrade the HDD to a 3-6 TB later on if you are so inclined, and buy an external enclosure for the 1 TB HDD (to keep handy as a backup).

    Post edited by tj_1ca9500b on
  • Ami0Ami0 Posts: 1

    Thank everyone for your comments,

    I chose a different computer. I got a 16GB instead. I rendered a 10 second clip in about 30 minutes. I was really surprised because previously it took me forever (24 hours) just to render 2 or 3 seconds before my laptop would crash. 

    My current laptop is a 16GB Intel (2.80GHz Turbo), Nvidia 940MX Graphics, 1TB Hard Drive. So less than the first one I mentioned, but I am pleased, especially with the price.

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