Building PC for 3d modeling, rendering

DisguisedDeamon · Jun 8, 2016

Hi Guys!
I am looking to build a rendering workstation for a friend but its the first time I have done this and it seems a little more complex that just building a gaming pc! I have a rig planned out and I would really appreciate your thoughts on whether it's any good / anything you would change

He's going to be mainly using Maya and Studio Max 3D (mental Ray renderer) Which If I am correct in my research is a CPU based renderer?

I'm probably wrong and sounded like a complete noob, but I gotta start somwhere right?

Cheers!

Power Supply Corsair 80 PLUS 650W
Optical Drive Samsung 24X Internal DVD Writer
Memory Reader CSL 3.5" all-in-one USB 3.0 (Super Speed) card reader
CPU Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4
CPU Cooler ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2
Motherboard MSI X99A Sli Plus USB 3.1 Motherboard
GPU GTX 760 Gigabyte GPU 2GB
RAM HyperX 2133Mhz 16GB DDR4
SSD Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB 2.5 inch
Storage Drive WD Blue (SATA, 6 GB/sec, 2 TB, 64 MB, 3.5 inch)

cdrkf · Jun 8, 2016

DisguisedDeamon :

Well that all looks sensible for rendering (lots of threads on that cpu). You might want to think about upping the ram, large models can use more than 16gb, although it depends on the task.

The other thing is I'd possibly consider looking at a more powerful GPU and less on the CPU side. Up until recently rendering has been a CPU only task, however apparently in 3DS Max 2017 and Mental Ray will offer GPU acceleration on nVidia cards that support Cuda, so maybe looking at a more standard cpu (e.g. i7 6700k) and put the money into a fast gpu like a 980ti or 1080?

Link relating to 3DS Max (see last post):
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/graphics-card-comparison-for-3ds-max/td-p/5540133

DisguisedDeamon · Jun 8, 2016

cdrkf :

DisguisedDeamon :

Well that all looks sensible for rendering (lots of threads on that cpu). You might want to think about upping the ram, large models can use more than 16gb, although it depends on the task.

The other thing is I'd possibly consider looking at a more powerful GPU and less on the CPU side. Up until recently rendering has been a CPU only task, however apparently in 3DS Max 2017 and Mental Ray will offer GPU acceleration on nVidia cards that support Cuda, so maybe looking at a more standard cpu (e.g. i7 6700k) and put the money into a fast gpu like a 980ti or 1080?

Link relating to 3DS Max (see last post):
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/graphics-card-comparison-for-3ds-max/td-p/5540133

Cheers for that cdrkf!

The main issue I am having is that my friend has a budget of £1000 and moving down to the 6700k doesnt free up enough to upgrade the GPU past a GTX 970

Do you think it is work sacrificing the Xeon down to somthing lower that the 6700k in favour of a better GPU ?

cdrkf · Jun 8, 2016

DisguisedDeamon :

Well if what they're saying on that forum is true, then quite possibly. I'd do a bit more research on the subject just to make sure, but I'd guess even a 970 would be much faster than the CPU at rendering, assuming the software support is there.

For context I do 3D CAD design and a bit of rendering. My software doesn't support GPU acceleration in the current version so I'm running a Xeon E3 (essentially an i7) with 24gb of ram and a GTX 750 for my rendering rig and that performs quite well (before that I was using an old Phenom II X6, although that's pretty slow these days). Thing is though where gpu support is there, the speed ups for this kinda thing can be 10, maybe 20x what a cpu can do (I mean if you look at a game modern gpu's can render 2k images at 30+ fps quite hapily, yet most cad rendering software is stuck at several minutes a frame on the cpu).

DisguisedDeamon · Jun 9, 2016

cdrkf :

DisguisedDeamon :

Well if what they're saying on that forum is true, then quite possibly. I'd do a bit more research on the subject just to make sure, but I'd guess even a 970 would be much faster than the CPU at rendering, assuming the software support is there.

For context I do 3D CAD design and a bit of rendering. My software doesn't support GPU acceleration in the current version so I'm running a Xeon E3 (essentially an i7) with 24gb of ram and a GTX 750 for my rendering rig and that performs quite well (before that I was using an old Phenom II X6, although that's pretty slow these days). Thing is though where gpu support is there, the speed ups for this kinda thing can be 10, maybe 20x what a cpu can do (I mean if you look at a game modern gpu's can render 2k images at 30+ fps quite hapily, yet most cad rendering software is stuck at several minutes a frame on the cpu).

Okay, i'm going to do a little bit of digging! Also, a point that was told to me is that in using and Xeon you benifit from the error correction that other processors and GPUs would not be able to do... Is this even right?

cdrkf · Jun 9, 2016

DisguisedDeamon :

cdrkf :

DisguisedDeamon :

Well if what they're saying on that forum is true, then quite possibly. I'd do a bit more research on the subject just to make sure, but I'd guess even a 970 would be much faster than the CPU at rendering, assuming the software support is there.

For context I do 3D CAD design and a bit of rendering. My software doesn't support GPU acceleration in the current version so I'm running a Xeon E3 (essentially an i7) with 24gb of ram and a GTX 750 for my rendering rig and that performs quite well (before that I was using an old Phenom II X6, although that's pretty slow these days). Thing is though where gpu support is there, the speed ups for this kinda thing can be 10, maybe 20x what a cpu can do (I mean if you look at a game modern gpu's can render 2k images at 30+ fps quite hapily, yet most cad rendering software is stuck at several minutes a frame on the cpu).

Okay, i'm going to do a little bit of digging! Also, a point that was told to me is that in using and Xeon you benifit from the error correction that other processors and GPUs would not be able to do... Is this even right?

The Xeon support ECC memory (you also have to buy corresponding RAM as well though). However I'm not sure that ECC makes a difference for rendering? Not something I've heard of before at least.

Albionm00n · Jun 22, 2016

Hi!

You might want to check in to see if the CUDA support for your programs are not workstation gpu driver specific. In the past this CUDA support has mainly been within the Quadro cards which have specific drivers for the programs...not something that is available for consumer cards like the 980 etc. This may have changed recently (as indicated in the linked post from cdrkf) for I haven't looked into it for about 6 months, and I am not a user of those programs so I can not speak specifically to your useage, but if you don't have total gpu support, the render will revert to the cpu which results in the need for a higher core count.

From my experience, if rendering through the cpu, you will want an average of 4GB RAM per physical core. For example, a 4c/8t processor should have 16GB, and an 8c/16t should have 32GB RAM to ensure there is no bottleneck on that end.

Hope this helps!

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