Kinda OT, building a low budget Iray machine?
TesseractSpace
Posts: 1,582
Had to sell my pc recently. Bit of a long story where we ended up emergency foster parenting two infants, and thus needing to get a bunch of baby stuff in a hurry. Gonna be without a pc for a few months at least. Just thinking I'd like to build a new Iray focused PC when things get stable again.
Since I'm not likely to be able to afford much, I'd like some advice and suggestions on a low budget build for Daz Studio that will have reasonable Iray performance. (By reasonable, I'm ok with rendering complex scenes overnight if need be, but I don't want to tie up a pc for days on a single pic.)
Thanks for any help.
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You'll need to tel folks what you mean by low budget and what you intend to render. "Complex" isn't definitive enough. For example 2 figures in a head and shoulders closeup will usually require more rendering time than the same two figures in a full body shot.
5 figures and a woodland scene can be challenging. 5 figures in a room with many reflective surfaces can be challenging.
Iray is not for the faint of hardware.
Just built a Ryzen IRAY machine. Did a lot of research the parts for a decent build cheap was around $500. That was a Ryzen 5 1400 ($140), GTX 1050 4GB ($130), PC MATE B350 MOBO ($75), 16gb of RAM ($100), 450w PSU ($40) and cheap case ($30). You can Go used for the GPU and knock down the cost few dolars. Search for sales too. I ended going for a more powerful machine which ran me about $700+.
Sorry, suppose I should clarify. Complex for me is usually two figures full body, with something like one of Stonemason's or Jack Tomalin's sets (may not be able to buy new stuff but I've got some classics.) and some lighting. As for low budget, my old machine cost $500 (low end Alienware Alpha). I'm hoping to maybe save up $700 to replace it, but will likely be buying it in pieces when I have money and just build it when I have enough to run it.
The Ryzen build looks good, haven't been keeping up on AMD since the Intel Core i3/5/7 started. I see they've gotten competitive again.
You could start with buying a cheap used older machine and put a GTX 1070 in it, usually works fine. Just be sure case cooling is good and that it has at least 8 GB RAM. You can always upgrade the PC later and move the card to the new one.
After seeing more videos and what not I am thinking of going AMD (been a hardened Intel user for years), but after the frantic damage control that Intel are now in after the release specs of AMD's new chips.. I plan on AMD what with the proposed Threadripper CPU on the horizon what is not to like..
...one drawback of Ryzen systems, the MBs only have 2 or 4 DIMM slots so expandability is limited. As I understand the boards only support dual instead of quad channel memory as well. Threadripper (save for it's name) sounds good with 16 cores and price estimates under 1,000$ (compared to 1,699$ for the Skylake-X 16 core) . The X-399 boards will have 8 memory slots in quad channel mode, but could be pricey according to what I've read.
For the time being I would take Taoz's suggestion to heart until you can bank up enough for a newer more powerful system. Stonemason's and Jack's big sets (like The Library, Baroque Grandeur and Anderson Hall) do take a bit of horsepower to render particularly with characters, so I would consider nothing short of 8 GB of VRAM.
I am looking to upgrade my current system to 24 GB and a 1080 Ti. Even though the expansion slots are PCIe 2.0 X16 the card will still work fine and fit in my case. Scenes may take a little longer to load but rendering itself is not adversely impacted. Fortunately I already have a fairly beefy PSU.
"be buying it in pieces when I have money and just build it when I have enough to run it."
Generally, this is not recommended, TesseractSpace, although I must admit that I have a tendency to do that myself, since the best deals on components do not tend to occur all at once. However, I also have the advantage of having an abundance of machines and parts on hand, This is important because the reason why buying components piecemeal is generally not considered wise is because one is not going to know if everything is working until you begin building. Again, not so much an issue for me since I often have enough components to do testing of the parts as I get them. Just something to bear in mind given return policies.
Simple rule for your budget Iray build. The most important component in your machine is the GPU, period! No if's, and's, or butt's!
Start by budgeting for at least a Geforce GTX 1060 6GB version. VRAM is what you need for complex scenes. The rest of the machine you could buy second hand and just replace the power supply with a new one.
I was always surprised what I could stuff into 3gb RAM. I'd still be using two second hand 780ti but I had a few glasses of wine and ended up on ebay with my credit card in hand. Now I also have a second hand 980ti. Don't overlook second hand stuff. Most recent cards and CPUs that come from gaming machines are still in good condition, having not been flogged day and night for years.
I'm just recommending at least a 1060 6GB based on my experience with the two computers in my signature. Just keep in mind going forward that as artists include higher resolution maps, and more HD morphs, that will eat VRAM quickly. Dumping down to a CPU only render because your GPU doesn't have enough memory for a complex scene sucks.
yes. after owning a gtx 1060 6gb I quickly hit the limits of the RAM. Furthermore the card is a little slow for rendering 6gb worth of assets. I suggest the 1070 8gb as the minimum for a new build. Faster and larger RAM overhead.
As for Ryzen. Well I am a convert. I like that the MOBO will be supported through 3 versions of Ryzen so upgrading the CPU in a few years is not an outrageous thought. Right now it is the best bang for the buck. Maybe the new Intel chips coming out later this year will be cost and performance competitive or just better. I needed a build now but if you can wait it might be beneficial.
I got 6 cores and 12 threads for the price you are considering. The one drawback is the 2nd PCIe slot is only 4x on Ryzen 7/5 boards. That will affect speed to and fro the MOBO. Not sure how much of an impact that will have on rendering with a 2nd card. As I understand speed is less of a factor for rendering than having more CUDA.
Trouble with the Ryzen buld is the GPU. It would be well worth another ~$200 to get a GTX1070. A much, much better card than the GTX 1050 or 1060. For fast Iray rendering, GPU VRAM and CUDA cores make the most impact. $700 should be doable if you shop carefully. Your suggests scenes will work but you may need to hide or eliminate parts of Jacks or Stonemasons products in the scene. They both make great stuff, but more detail means more VRAM. When the time comes there can be more discussion about making this work.
...Isometimes it doesn't seem to make a diference. I did that for a scene in a small area of Stomason's Uban Future 5 and the process is just as glacial as it I had left the entire set intact, not sure why as I also deleted most of the emissive lights substituted them with Photometric lights instead. Granted I'm still rendering in the CPU until I can scrape up enough for a 1080Ti as I do "big" scenes.
Given I've been working with 2gb VRAM, 6 should be plenty for my stuff. http://willtodream.deviantart.com might help cover the idea of what I've been doing. Hurt my hand a while back and had to slow down a lot. Hand is all better but now I've had to sell the darn PC. Timing, huh?
One thing that most seem to be missing is the title of the post. "LOW BUDGET"
When I think of low budget, I'm talking about squeezing the whole computer into $500 - 600. On that kind of budget a 6GB GTX 1060 is half the cost of the whole computer.
Not exactly.
Yeh the GPU is important, but it needs enough to support the GPU you go for.
The PSU is absolutely not a place to cut costs. A PSU that fails can (but unlikely to) damage other components if it fails.
Ideally you should balance your system, and consider ways to make it upgradeable.
And if you read the whole post, I said "The rest of the machine you could buy second hand and just replace the power supply with a new one."
"No if's, and's, or butt's!"
I did. I was particularly caught by what I quoted, so while you yourself added some caveats, you contradicted them with something you said previously.
... Further, I didn't disagree completely, just added a caveat, by saying not exactly.
Folks asking for help here are not always knowledgeable about PCs; I was just wanting to highlight it as your comment about PSUs was nowhere near as well emphasised.
I know the value of a good power supply. The setup I'm thinking of should be fine with a 500w power supply. 80+ bronze certified at least. That is manageable within budget. If I were getting a 1070 or 1080 I'd want more, but they'd need to be on an amazing discount for me to get one of those.
Well, just to let people know what happened, was given a pc that was being replaced by a local business. A business class desktop with a core i5 from a few generations back. Still, it's upgradeable so I'm swapping the power supply and putting in a 1050 ti. Since I used to work with 2gb of vram and got good at paring scenes to fit, I should be ok in 4gb of vram. Someday will swap out the other components, but this'll get me back up and running.
Yes the minimum requirement for Iray is 4GB to utilize it to its potential.
That's not a drawback of Ryzen exclusively. Z170 and Z270 all have 4 slots max, also running dual channel. Anything that's not officially intel's high-end desktop line (HEDT), such as X79 (old), X99 (kinda old) and X299 (current) will not support quad channel.
I was just putting together a build for you on pcpartpicker before I saw this post. And I put the 1050 ti in it :) Good call.
COuldn't save the list, but heck, here are the parts I picked anyway:
CPU: Ryzen 5 1500 about $150
Motherboard: ASRock A320M about $50
RAM: . G SKill Aegis 1 x16GB DDR$ about $120
SSD: Crucial MX300 275 GB M.2 SATA about $100
HDD: Hitachi Ultrastar 2TB about $60
GPU: MSI GTX 1050 ti about $150
PSU: EVGA 500B about $40 before rebate
Exact total was $660.05 without a case or operating system. If it's too much, you could drop the HDD, and cut down the RAM to 8GB. Together that would save about $100. And if you've got a microcenter nearby, then you could save even more.
Anyway, glad you're up and running.
Figure the next steps are replacing the case with a gaming case for fans and ventilation. Then plot out a processor/motheboard/RAM swap. Have to pickup a new copy of windows as the current one on the system is OEM. After that I'll work on replacing HDD with SSD and setting up high capacity HDD for storage. Gonna push the current motherboard to it's limit. Silly thing can only handle 8gb of RAM.
Got a Gigabyte Windforce OC version of the 1050 ti. Pity the mining thing has driven the 1060 out of reach for now.
Right on. Well keep that build up there in mind when you're ready for the next steps. Sounds like by the time you're ready to build, the gpu prices will have settled down. RAM and SSDs are inflated right now too. Come fall, you may fit a 1060 in the biuld I put together for less than the price above.
Cases are a very personal thing in my opinion, so to each their own. But the venerable NZXT S340 is an amazing budget case. Can be had for around $60 bucks. The Elite version with tempered glass is a hundred bucks, and it fixes the few minor flaws of the base model.