Building a Render machine.
glennblackphotos
Posts: 160
Im looking at building or buying a more powerful machine and wondered what woukd be better for a rendering machine an AMD RYzen or an Intel i9?
Natually I know the graphics card is important as well.
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Rendering what? For Iray the ideal is a GPU with enough memory to hold the scene, but if you do drop to CPU I think most tests favour the Ryzens currently.
Iray rendering initially but with speed in mind.
I upgraded from a AMD Athlon x6 to a Threadripper 1950. I saw virtually no speedup at all in rendering.
The graphics card isn't merely "important as well", it's the overwhelmingly most important factor.
If you're all about speed, and there are reasonable compromises to be made, favor the GPU over everything, and plan for adding more GPUs in the future when choosing the case, motherboard, and power supply. Read the vendor forums about specific parts you're buying, so you know what you're getting into. And use an ESD strap on an outlet that you tested with a ground tester so you don't destroy an expensive part in a fraction of a second.
Good luck!
@glennblackphotos I just built a new machine for myself, with a lot of help, and can tell you the GPU is far more imporant than the processor. I built a Ryzen 7 with a RTX 2070 super, 32 ram, and I'm planning to ad another card when I get the money and time. Coming from the gtx1050 that I had been working on, renders that took 4 hours now take about 45 minutes. Most of that is because of the RTX card. Hope this info helps. Cheers!
Thanks.
IM looking at buying a Dell Alienware Aurora with the RTX 2080 with a view to adding another card in the next 6 months, I have looked at self build kits and prefer the peice of mind and warranty at this price point.
If you have to buy a prebuilt buy from someone, almost anyone, except Dell and HP. The Alienware Aurora that comes with a 2080 is $2500US. That's at least a full $1000 too high.
Man, I hear you on that one. It's cool when you're installing a $39 VGA adapter, but not so cool when it's a $1500 GPU. My next upgrade is going to be a System76 prebuilt, I think. Peace of Mind and a warranty is worth money, too...
Wow really?
I would love to know how I could shave 1000 off the price and what parts to use.
My current machine is an inspiron gaming with a 6gig gtx and to be fair it has served me well.
If your inspiron gaming is a desktop, I would just upgrade that machine.
What exact model is on the data sticker (Or what is the service tag number so we can look up the exact hardware) You should be able to drop in a stronger power supply, faster GPU and more RAM. After this upgrade your machine will be good to go for Iray rendering.
Going this route will save you a bunch of money.
If you are running an Inspiron Gaming Laptop, then yes it is time to buy or build a new computer.
A $1612 2080 Super render rig.
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zhK9Qq
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($172.39 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($169.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA SU800 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($112.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($144.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card ($679.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master MasterCase H500 ATX Mid Tower Case ($131.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $1612.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-12 12:21 EDT-0400
If you have any parts to migrate or the like you can get that a little lower but that is all new parts. (Yes, only $900 lower)
Thats coming in at 1650 in pounds pretty amazing really.
With the Alienware the ram is 2.6mhz not 3.2
So I take it there is actually no liquid cooling with the case you recommended, is this a big deal?
thanks.
Generally speaking prebuilts use watercooling not for performance but because the case is so small a decent cooler won't fit. I think that is what the Alienware system is doing.
The case I chose has great airflow and more than enough room for the CPU cooler. The 3600 runs reasonably cool unless you OC it so the stock cooler will be fine.
For the RAM Ryzen likes fast RAM so the 3.2 will be a substantial improvement over 2.6.
There seems to be so many different variations of the RTX card IM getting confused and the prices greatly differ too.
For example what do I need if I want to add another card at a later date?
Is there a big difference between the 2080 super and the 2070?
There are Nvidia geforce supers and Asus rog stix super, IM so confused.
I just chose the cheapest 2080 Super listed by PCPartPicker. For use in iRay that is generally a safe choice.
2060, 2070 and 2080 Supers are different, better, cards from the 2060, 2070 and 2080. The 2080 ti is also a different card.
The rest of that stuff is branding. Asus is just the company that makessome of the cards, EVGA, MSI and Zotac being some others.
The RTX consumer product stack is like this (bottom to top):
2060
2060 Super
2070
2070 Super
2080
2080 Super
2080ti
RTX Titan
So going from the 2080 Super to the 2070 would be a noticeable downgrade but would still be a good card for rendering, I have one in my render box and love it.
Thanks for the reply.
So if I bought a 2080 super then added another one at a later date would that increase the speed of the rendering much?
It would be a doubling of render pwer. That would result in pretty close to a halving of render times. However the system I specced does not have enough of a PSU for 2 2080 Supers. You'd need a 1000W, at least, PSU for that.
Thanks I will have to firgure that in when the time comes I guess.