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Which PC computers are good for running Iray at $2000 or less?

3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

indecisionHi,

Sorry if this subject has already been covered but I could not find it here.

Which PC computers are good for running Iray photorealistic small renders, at $2000 or less?

I know I need maybe 16 gigs of ram, a good Nividea card, maybe a Quad Core, good CPU, cool engine, etc.

I would rather not build my own to save money.

Thanks!

Gordon smiley

Comments

  • wteeningwteening Posts: 89

    I've added a GTX 1080 Ti to my seven year old build, and that was a difference between light and day.

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41

    indecisionThanks wteening.

    I have 8 GB of Ram, what do you have?

    How about your CPU, and Core?

    Thanks! smiley

    _____________________________________________

    Here are the specks on my several year old computer, if anyone is interested, maybe I should fix it up and not buy a new one.

    Hewlett Packard, PC Intel i3
    Processor:  Intel(R)  Core(TM ) i3-4160  CPU @ 3.60 GHz  
    Ram: 8 GB  DDR3
    2 Ter. H. Drive
    Intel HD Graphics - 4400
    System:  64-bit   x64-based processor
    Windows 10 Home, Version 1709, OS Build: 16299.248
    Intigrated Bluetooth 4.0 - Wireless Lan 802.11

  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64

    Here are my specs, and they seem to be working great for iray so far:

    AMD fx-8350 BlackEdition 4.0GHz

    gigabyte 990fxa - ud5 r5

    16Gb ram ddr3 1600Mhz

    evga gtx 1060 sc 6Gb

    I haven´t done any real big renders on iray, but the 6Gbs seems to be able to hold about 3 fully clothed Genesis3 characters and scenery altought not to fancy without problems.

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,588

    An SSD and a GPU would be the only items worth putting into the old system, as they are easily transferable to a new system later.

    I've been managing with 8GB for years, but I only do simple scenes and tests!

    I would start by putting a better GPU in the old machine and see from there if 8GB is limiting your work.

    On the other hand you have a better chance to get a GPU at a vaguely reasonable price if its part of a pre-built system!
    For me that would be anything with a Ryzen 7.

  • fastbike1fastbike1 Posts: 4,077

    @3dGordon 

    This question gets asked about once a week. Hard to believe even the forum's search engine doesn't return any results. Google will also search the forum.

    If your budget is $2000, then the answer is yes. Try this one: https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Daily-Deal-X299-1070. ;

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41
    edited March 2018

    yes OK, here is an incomplete list of all the hardware needed to render in Iray.

    Please correct or add the answers to some of the items listed below. This should help a lot of newbies, like me, in the future (if the search engines can find this, that is frown

    When more of these questions are answered I will impove the list and post it here again.

    ______________________________________________________________

    Let's try and make a list of the minimum to better requirements to be able to make a single photorealistic render in Daz Studio 4.8 to 4.10.

    There are lots of veriables but these specs are needed to make a medium size (to be established), render, with some props, costumes, lighting and 3 people in the scene.

     

    Computer makes (to be established).

    PC Desktop (see note below line for some MAC specs).

    Windows 7 to 10

    RAM:  8 to 16 GB - (DDR3  or  DDR4 ?)

    Graphics Card:  
    Nividia GTX 1060 to 1080 Ti
    evga gtx 1060 sc 6Gb
    Intel HD Graphics - 4400

    CPU  Processor: (central processing unit)  How much is needed?
    AMD fx-8350 BlackEdition 

    GPU (graphics processing unit = much more powerful than CPUs)
    What does GPU do, and how much do we need?

    SSD: (Solid-state drive -  storage device)  how much do we need?

    Motherboard:
    gigabyte 990fxa - ud5 r5
    Motherboard Bus Speed
    It plays an integral role in how fast your computer is, though. The motherboard is the central hub of your system, through which all the other components (processor, RAM, hard drive etc.) communicate.
    It also determines which components you can use, and on an ageing system the motherboard can become the performance bottleneck itself by preventing you from upgrading to newer parts.

    Core:
    Quad-Core is best
    Intel Xeon/Core 2 Duo or Quad /Core i7
    AMD Opteron/Phenom processor(s)

    GHZ:  4.0

    MHZ:
    1600Mhz

    Monitor: What are good monitor specs to be able to appreciate all of the high tech hardware and Iray renderings?
    ___________________________________________________

    MAC:

    One source suggested: (Please add to this if you like)

    Intel Macintosh®
    2.00 GHz Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz or faster recommended)
    Mac™ OS X 10.7 or above.
    2 GB RAM min (3GB+ recommended)
    1GB free hard drive space for installation.
    OpenGL 1.6 compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB RAM (Hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.2, or higher, compatible recommended with 256MB+ RAM)

    ________________________________________________________________

    This may be getting to complicated, but I would like to know the answers to be better informed when building or buying a computer for Iray rendering.

    Thank you all very much! smiley

     

    Post edited by 3dGordon on
  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64

    Nice but your list seems a bit confuse (I dont know how much do you know about computers builds), theres a lot of stuff thats the same thing on different categories.

    If you need any help let me know :)

     

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41

    smileyThanks Theros, you are correct, I don't know much about all these specs but I found this great page under DAZ Help Center and am reposting a much better version of what I did before.

    If you want to add to any of this or correct it please do. The Help Page is here: https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-

    __________________________________________________________________

    OK, thanks everyone so far for your input.

    Let's try and make a list of the minimum to better  requirements to be able to make a single photorealistic render in Daz Studio 4.8 to 4.10.

    Much of the information below is taken from the DAZ Help Center page found here (January 6, 2016) :
    https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-

    1GB free hard drive space for installation

    PC Desktop (see note below line for some MAC specs).

    Windows 7 to 10

    RAM:  8 to 16 GB - (DDR3  or  DDR4 ?) are OK, but DAZ recommends 32GB for a minimum, or 64GB, but this will have little to no impact on your render time.

    Graphics Cards:  
    Nividia GTX 1060 to 1080 Ti
    evga gtx 1060 sc 6Gb
    Intel HD Graphics - 4400

    CPU  Processor: (central processing unit, and storage, that comes with your computer)
    This CPU spinning hard-drive is much slower than an external SSD hardrive, so loading content and scene files will be slower.
    DAZ recommends 6 core CPUs are enough if you are going to use Iray (or other GPU renderer), when you get into high core count GPUs, the CPU becomes less important.
    DAZ recommends an external (SSD) hardrive to keep or host all of your DAZ content and scene files on, which should be 520GB to 1TB:  https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-
    AMD fx-8350 BlackEdition 4.0GHz

    SSD: (Solid-state drive - storage device)  
    This is an external hard-drive, which should be at least 1TB for just content and scenes, and more for lots of Iray renders.
    Bandwidth is not as important as SSD storage space.

    GPU (graphics processing unit = much more powerful than CPUs)
    Starting with Studio 4.8 the GPU plays a HUGE role in the render time when using Iray. 
    The GPU plays two roles, it determines how fast you can move geometry around in the interface and it adds processing power to the render process (reduces render time) with Iray (included), Octane (plugin) and Reality (plugin that uses Lux render).
    Get as many large GPUs as you can… 4GB or memory is a minimum, over 8GB is probably not going to be needed. Core count is critical, so if two less expensive cards give you more cores than one expensive card, go for the two cards…
    ·        Make sure your motherboard offers at least 8 lanes of PCI per GPU installed (Ideally 16 lanes per GPU). If you have 16 lanes per GPU you get the full performance, having only 8 lanes per GPU gets you around 80% of the GPU performance, this influences the decision to buy one large card over multiple smaller cards.

    Motherboard:
    gigabyte 990fxa - ud5 r5
    Motherboard Bus Speed
    It plays an integral role in how fast your computer is, though. The motherboard is the central hub of your system, through which all the other components (processor, RAM, hard drive etc.) communicate.
    It also determines which components you can use, and on an ageing system the motherboard can become the performance bottleneck itself by preventing you from upgrading to newer parts.
     Make sure your motherboard offers at least 8 lanes of PCI per GPU installed (Ideally 16 lanes per GPU). If you have 16 lanes per GPU you get the full performance, having only 8 lanes per GPU gets you around 80% of the GPU performance, this influences the decision to buy one large card over multiple smaller cards.

    Core:
    Quad-Core is OK, but 6 Core CPUs are best for Iray


    GHZ:  4.0

    MHZ:
    1600Mhz

    Monitor: What are good monitor specs to be able to appreciate all of the high tech hardware and Iray renderings?

    ______________________________________________________________
    MAC:

    One source suggested: (Please add to this if you like)

    Intel Macintosh®
    2.00 GHz Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz or faster recommended)
    Mac™ OS X 10.7 or above.
    2 GB RAM min (3GB+ recommended)
    1GB free hard drive space for installation.
    OpenGL 1.6 compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB RAM (Hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.2, or higher, compatible recommended with 256MB+ RAM)

     

     

     

  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64

    I would not recomenc]d a SSD for anything but the OS itself and only if you get enough ram to never use the pagefile, cause they do have a limit on how many times they can be written.

    As I see the best is a SSD for the system alone and a mechanical drive for all your data.

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41
    edited March 2018

    Thanks Lord Theros,

    This is all very complicated for newbies like me, and there are so many variables.

    What Daz suggests seems very expensive and over-kill for HD renders. What I actually want to do is make about 5 HD photorealistic renders (which I would duplicate many times), in a ratio of 4.0 x 3.0 window, with two or three characters in a simple scene, with simple costumes. I then would make a GIF aniumation from that, then film that in seperate video editing software to make a small movie and add voices. I have done this many times, but the quality is very poor.

    What would be your minimum computer specs for HD images, which may not need to be in Iray?

    RAM ?

    Graphics card?

    CPU?

    GPU?

    SSD?

    Motherboard?

    Core?

    MHZ?

    GHZ?

    Monitor Specs?

    32 or 64 Bit?

    Studio 4.8, or 4.10?

     

    Sorry, but these are all things newbies need to know, since we do not know the abbreviations.

    Thank you very much, this will help a lot of people!

     

     

    Post edited by 3dGordon on
  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64
    edited March 2018

    So lets see what I can come up with, and please if any one has a any better tips do chime in :)

    As I dont know  were you live I can´t be sure about prices ( I do live in Brasil, computer parts got very expensive here lately)

    • RAM : always more and faster are better, but I have been doing ok with 16Gbs ddr3 1600Mhz but if you can get ddr4 any speed will be better. For the ammount of it i´d say 16Gbs minimum
    • Graphics Card (GPU) : Since you wanna use Iray it must be a Nvidia, on Iray whats more important is the amount of cuda cores and the amount of memory  cause if you are rendering a scene and it take more video memory than your GPU has it will drop to CPU and render time will go up the skies. so the more the better, if you can find a gtx 1080ti with 11Gbs would be the best, but a 1060 with 6Gbs should do the trick if your scenes aren´t to complex or with huge textures resolutions.
    • CPU : Here you can go with AMD or Intel, I cant talk abou Intel since my last one was a pentium 3 ages ago. On Amd side if you can go for a Ryzen or even better a Ryzen Threadripper go for it as I heard they are very good (I do intend do update fo Ryzen when i get the money). On Iray the CPU is not that important but for overall performance it is (or if you are going to render on 3Delight its even more important then GPU). So on a general rule I would go for at least 4 cores and a a speed above 3.4Ghz.
    • Motherboard: This one is real important but will depend on the CPU you choose, what you need to look for here is if and when you are going to upgrade your system to be sure to have room for it. Since you mentioned it earlier these days BUS speeds are not that important since most boards are around the same. I would try to get one that can use at least 32Gbs ram maximum with 4 slots for memory and that can use Nvidia SLI in case you want it in the future. As a general note the "gaming" boards usually have better construction, components and power circuits. As there are loads of models I cant really recomend one without knowing the rest of the build.
    • Storage SSD/HDD : SSDs are very good for the speed they have but dont last as long as an HDD, if you dont have problems waiting for stuff to load I would go for just a HDD since they are much cheaper than SSDs.
    • Monitors : I can´t really say much about those sine i´m still using a very old LG flatron wich I have sinve my last CRT monitor.
    • PSU Power source Unit : Lets not forget this one wich  will also depend on the rest of the build, gotta bu seure you can power whatever you decide to build.

    As for the rest I´d say 64bits Operating system (i don´t think you can still find 32bits) and for Daz whatever you fell like is ok, if you have a old version and dont want to upgrade its fine, if you want the new stuff like dForce then you have to upgrade to 4.10.

    At this point it would be easier if you start looking around for your parts and posting a them here so we can take a look and advise you on it.

    Edited due to Grammar smiley

     

     

    Post edited by Lord Theros on
  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513

    I wil disagree with Theros and recommend an SSD. Modern SSDs have such a long lifetime you will probably get to the point where you are upgrading to bigger drives before they die. And SSDs don't have those mechanical parts to worry about wearing down or breaking if you jolt them. I would get a regular hard drive only if you prize affordability and huge storage space over speed.

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41

    Thank you both very much for this information, I can start making sence out of all this tech talk now! yes

  • SoneSone Posts: 84
    3dGordon said:

    Thank you both very much for this information, I can start making sence out of all this tech talk now! yes

    Now that it is making more sence for you. Check out this Velocity. Even has a DVD/CD optical for your old collection! laugh

    https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=9SIA6DZ5CN0608

     

  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64

    Havent checked all the parts specs, but seems lik a e solid system Sone!

  • 3dGordon3dGordon Posts: 41
    edited March 2018

    Thanks Sone, but I just bought:

    CybertronPC - CLX Set Desktop - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X - 32GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - 240GB SSD + 3TB HDD - Black/Blue  surprise

    I won't get it for a week, but I will let you know how it works out in a couple of weeks.

    This was way over my budget, but I got it on sale.

    Thanks again everyone for your help! yes

    Gordon

    Post edited by 3dGordon on
  • SoneSone Posts: 84
    3dGordon said:

    Thanks Sone, but I just bought:

    CybertronPC - CLX Set Desktop - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X - 32GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - 240GB SSD + 3TB HDD - Black/Blue  surprise

    I won't get it for a week, but I will let you know how it works out in a couple of weeks.

    This was way over my budget, but I got it on sale.

    Thanks again everyone for your help! yes

    Gordon

    Wow nice Gordon! Do let us know! yes 

  • Lord TherosLord Theros Posts: 64

    Nice one Gordon! that should fit your needs with plenty of spare power! And yes please lets  know how it performs

  • RARA Posts: 78
    3dGordon said:

    hanks Sone, but I just bought:

    3dGordon said:

    CybertronPC - CLX Set Desktop - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X - 32GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - 240GB SSD + 3TB HDD - Black/Blue  surprise

    I won't get it for a week, but I will let you know how it works out in a couple of weeks.

    This was way over my budget, but I got it on sale.

    Thanks again everyone for your help! yes

    Gordon

    I built one this ummer wih simila specs. wondreful renders and much quicker. hope you enjoy yours

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    3dGordon said:

    Thanks Sone, but I just bought:

    CybertronPC - CLX Set Desktop - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X - 32GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - 240GB SSD + 3TB HDD - Black/Blue  surprise

    I won't get it for a week, but I will let you know how it works out in a couple of weeks.

    This was way over my budget, but I got it on sale.

    Thanks again everyone for your help! yes

    Gordon

    This is going to be blazing fast, hope you have a lot of fun with it.

  • MescalinoMescalino Posts: 436

    Personal experience:

    i have 16GB DDR3 ramm this i have found out is the bare minimum to run Daz 3d smoothly (with iray) though i would recommend 32GB

    I also have a GTX 1070 with 8GB Vram 8GB is the bare minimum ramm you need on your card.

    CPU im running on an old i7 4770-K haswell CPU at 3.2 i think which is fine. If you want to use iray using your CPU then you need something mre extremer like a Xeon or i9

     

  • terry.brownterry.brown Posts: 0

    can anyone tell me how to connect a chromebook with daz or is it not possible at all to do so?

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,753

    terry.brown said:

    can anyone tell me how to connect a chromebook with daz or is it not possible at all to do so?

     Meaning? Daz Studio is an application, daz is a website. Connecting a piece of hardware to the former makes no sense, connecting to the latter should just be a matter of entering the URL in its browser.

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