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If you're considering ever using more than 1 GPU, I'd go with an X99 platform motherboard. With that platform you can get CPUs that can handle up to 40x PCI Express lanes.
As for GPUs, the best bang for the buck right now is the GTX980 TI. But, buy a NVIDIA card with at least 4GB minimum.
I would get a Samsung SSD Pro series SSD and a good ol' fashion disc enterprise HD as well.
Again, if you want to run multiple GPUs get a beefy power supply, I like Corsair's AX series PSUs personally...
I hope that helps.
I'm on a laptop, as I don't really have room for a full pc. Also I know very little about computers in general, and was looking for a full replacement on a tight budget.
Any suggestions?
It really depends on your budget. However, try to go with a laptop that has Nvidia for the graphics. Most laptops seem to use Intel HD graphics because it's cheaper, easier to build, and uses less power, but won't do squat for Iray. Laptops designed for gaming often have Nvidia graphics chips.
Having said that, the next problem is most so-called gaming laptops that have Nvidia graphics only have 2GB of video RAM (this is different from the 8GB, or whatever, of system RAM). 2GB is pretty low for rendering scenes in Studio. Ideally, you want 4GB (or more if you can find a laptop that has it) of video RAM, aka VRAM.
I did a quick search on Amazon, and here is a laptop that would be ideal, but it's over $1,600. There are less expensive ones, but most either don't have Nvidia, or only have 2GB of VRAM.
ASUS ROG G751JY-WH71(WX) 17-Inch Gaming Laptop, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M 4GB DDR5 VRAM, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD (Win 10 Version)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015QZPRW4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_dK02wb07XJ2XJ
Yeah, I found the same thing when I looked. Ah well...
buying a labtop just for rendering is a expensive USD/CUDA price ratio..
)
I am in the same situation .. and watch currently on auctionplattforms in the hope to grab a outdated gamer PC in the 300 - 500usd range.. and a 780ti (fast but only 3GB ram or a first generation Titan 6GB..( they go for 300 usd)..... the GTX 970 has currently the best USD/Cuda ratio which would be also a possibility... very rare are GTX 780 6GB but i would buy them immediatly (just missed two)...
The idea is then to connect my labtop with the render station using remote desktop... ( which i will host in my office -> or wherever you can must not be in your bed or livingroom
I am on a 5 year old laptop with Intel HD Graphics 3000 and I can still get iRay redering about to 50% complete. I looked at the prices for nVidia video cards and they are too much. Those nVidia cards are cost 2, 3, 4 times the price of a fully outfitted gaming console, whatever brand, without the driver stability or enough performance and speed increases to justify the price.
I'd investigate the (Skylake) Intel 6th Gen CPU/GPU or latest AMD/ATI laptops or desktop take can handle 32 or 64 gig RAM but but that means you'll need to wait to summer/fall if you want a non-early adaptor's or gaming PC price.
My PC is timing out the renders after 2 hours but I've read you can increase the render time.
i hate to say this but a "budget" laptop even a gaming type is going to be woefully underpowered for any 3d graphics work.
I've even seen some of the beasts out there struggle to handle game grade 3d assets during game dev. in 3ds max and others. And daz studio uses assets with much higher poly counts and texture sizes.
even the 4-5k usd monsters are a joke at that price point compared to a comparable priced desktop, let alone the volume of hardware you can get used for that.
As an option you might want to try looking at All in one pcs. They run about half the price of a high end laptop, and generally have comparable specs.
In most cases they don't take up much more room than the biggest laptop(avg 18 in monitor) on the market.
you're still looking at over 1000 usd for a good one.
one other option is the Micro and Pico ATX mother boards, power search on new egg selecting Form Factor option to get an idea, mostly these are used in what are called "Bookshelf" computers. Those units are barely larger than a college text book. But depending on model it can have just about any of the Intel or amd processors for desktops.
The draw back is they usually can't support a full size graphics card, depending on housing and the actual mobo.
We, geeks, used to use these for ultra portable high performance computers for LAN parties, gaming to the wee hours of the night.
For 3d graphics work they will stil be underpowered powered for the cost, but they don't take up a lot of room.
And the upgrade options are superior to any laptop.
nonesuch i hate to say this but 50% on the progress bar does not mean 50% complete in iray. The progress bar is irrelevant.
What matter is the number of samples your computer is getting to. More samples generally mean a better, more complete render, and a significant lower graininess.
Most of the time when i use iray, very limited presently due to hardware limitations, the progress bar sits at 99% and it's still rendering,for hours
As far as increasing the time, IRAY is an unbiased render engine similar in function to LUX, meaning they never finish rendering the user just chooses a point to stop them.
You can easily increase the render time, under Render settings tab>Progressive rendering path>Max time(secs)
The default is 7200 or two hours.
At least it looks like some companies are looking into ways to use external graphics solutions. Having an enclosure to hold some desktop level graphics cards and connecting that to a laptop when necessary may do wonders for the portability/capability tradeoff that is usually an issue in laptops. Seems there's some latency involved, and while it may not affect gaming use much, I don't know how that might affect rendering. Still it's nice to think that someday we might have options beyond whatever is built into a laptop.
Just to clarify, external GPU computational boxes have been around for almost a decade, if not more.
currently they run about 250-300 a pop and can support between 1 and 2 cards on the low end.
The biggest one i've seen is for extreme computing and handles 16 x16 cards.
Unfortunatly that requires a 220 power line, an additional server, and used about 16k total. it'll still be cheaper than one Nvidia VCA(50K)
Not quite what I was refering to if I'm reading your post right.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3019369/hardware/the-razer-core-can-boost-any-thunderbolt-3-equipped-laptop-with-an-external-gpu.html
ah sort of, that particular box, and others like it, are designed for video output, what i'm referring to is for computational only.
Found the big monster with 16 cards for 2k on ebay. Last time it was gonna run 16k.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-c410x/pd
still alot cheaper than this one
http://www.cubix.com/catalog/buy-xpander-desktop
It means 50% converged and it never converges to 100%. I got some advice to change it from 95% to 99% and to up the seconds but rather then changing the seconds to the 3 day maximum I changed it to 8 hours maximum. My renders are simple enough that that will be enough and if not I'll change it back to 95%. I am only testing to see what the textures, hairs, and other things for a character I want to modify look like, not making renders for competitions or product flyers.
Later though I will have to hope new Mac Mini has optional nVidia card or I will need to buy cheapest mini-PC I can afford and add a nVidia 960 card to it.
The main reason i mentioned the convergence and mostly ignoring the percentage is that most people seem to think it's a measure of completion, similar to the progress bar in 3delight, as opposed to just another variable.
I've seen various opinions in the forums of using lower, higher, in between and default, it's all over the place.
Still got some more testing to do this week myself and we'll see where i stand at on using iray vs other render engines i have.
As far as the mac mini and nvidia, i wouldn't hold my breath, and considering the cost of a mac, in general, the mini-pc route would provide more bang for your buck.
now as far as the 960 card, the only problem with that particular series is that i haven't seen one with over 4Gb of ram, so you could be very limited on what you can run through it.