Assemble a new computer
Noah LGP
Posts: 2,617
Hi,
If you could spend $4500 in order to build a new computer optimized for Daz Studio, what hardware would you choose ?
Post edited by Noah LGP on
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Its easy to do I dropped 5K 3 years ago..
How big are your scenes? Either one Titan RTX or two 2080Tis, depending.
For example, will this computer worth it ?
Will Daz Studio really use these resouces ?
For what? For iray The memory on the GPUs is going to limit the size of scene they can handle comnpared to 2080Tis or Titan RTX, which offsets any speed they offer. The CPU is fast, but not as fast as a GPU, and the memory seems a bit over the top and the RAID 0 means that any of those SSDs failing will kill the array with data loss. I woudl not think that a system optimised for DS use, though it might be good for other tasks which make heavy use of the CPU and require fast disc access (at least as long as it was coupled with a robust back-up system).
About RAID-0 I'm using this method since 2006, no data loss happened yet. Nothing is stored on this volume, it's only the system and the softwares.
About the graphic card, I try to avoid 2080 graphic card because I already damaged two xx80 graphic cards after 1 year of usage. I'm looking for something less hot which supports the summer heat like the xx60 series.
My current computer is 11 years old (Core 2 Quad, 12 GB RAM, 1 GPU GeForce 960 GTX 4GB). Render one figure takes 2 hours and a scene takes 20 hours in photo real mode.
Daz Studio uses 8 GB of RAM and more (swap memory on SSD)
Yes, the size of the scenes you want to do is a big factor! But the machine you spec'ed is sweet, and would be very fast for smaller scenes! I would suggest substituting a Titan RTX and a M2 NVME SSD for GPU and drive.
If I was going to spend that kind of money, I would probably go with a R9-3900X 12-core or R9-3950X 16-core CPU, 128 GB DDR4 Ram, a 2TB NVME PCIE SSD, a Titan RTX (24GB) and a RTX 2060 or better to run the display. It does not take much to go over 8GB for scenes, at least for me. And there are some I want to do that I am certain will need more than 12GB unless I optimize the heck out of them.
What I am actually finishing up is Dual-E5-2680V2's (10-Core) on a SuperMicro server board, 64GB 4-channel DDR3 RDRAM (I will upgrade to 128GB later), a 2TB Sata 3 SSD, a GTX 1070 (8GB) to run the display and (assuming they work) two TESLA M40-2 (GM200 Maxwell GPU, 24GB, no video output) repurposed for rendering. CPU's, RDRAM, and all GPUs were purchased used, and I had a spare 1300W power supply already, so the cost came in under my $2000 budget. The NVME drives have really come down in price, but this older board just will not boot from a drive on the PCIE bus.
Don't forget a case with good airflow and a couple of USB external drives for backup.
..OK here's what I got using PC part Picker
CPU: AMD Threadripper 1900X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor 197.00$
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i RGB PLATINUM 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler 159.99$
MBL Gigabyte X399 AORUS PRO ATX sTR4 Motherboard 279.99$
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory 535.99$
Storage (C): Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive 99.99$
Storage (D): Western Digital Black 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive 176.99$
Storage (E): Western Digital Black 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive 176.99$
GPU: NVIDIA TITAN RTX 24 GB Video Card: 2499.98$
Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case 209.99$
Power Supply: Corsair 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply 239.99$
Total 4576.89$
So a shade over 4,500$ but it does have 64 GB, More than enough PSU overhead for expansion, and a 24 GB RTX Titan and a full sized case with lots of cooling options.
CUDA cores stack, but VRAM does not stack. So your ultimate limit to run on GPU will always be the VRAM on the single cards.
You need to decide first of all just what you want to focus on. You could go all in on GPU rendering and by focusing on that you could save the money for the best GPUs you can get. You could get 2 or even 3 2080tis at that budget.
Or you could focus on CPU rendering instead, and but the best Threadripper you can. If you go full CPU then you don't even need much of a GPU at all, just enough to use the monitor. I think the $2000 Threadripper was actually about as fast as a GTX 1080, which is pretty impressive for a CPU for Iray. And there is a $4000 Threadripper that's even more powerful.
And of course you could try to strike a balance, but in doing so you would also sacrifice something to do so.
So you have a lot to think about. I'll also give you another thing to think about, Nvidia is going to be releasing their next generation GPU in just a few short months. Nvidia is going to announce something on May 14. They may not announce the gaming lineup yet, but we will get an idea of what performance they may bring as the gaming cards will have parallels to the professional versions they are expected to announce. They typically use the same chips. I bring this up because you have a Core 2 Quad and a GTX 960, so you don't upgrade super often. Thus maybe waiting just a bit longer might get you even more bang for your buck with the 3000 series if you decide on going the GPU route. If nothing else, the 2000 series will certainly go on sale.
...true you could swap out the Threadripper 1900X for a 3970X (32 cores/64 threads) increase the memory to 128 GB of DDR4 3200 memory (4 x 32 GB) which leaves four DIMM slots open for future expansion to 256 GB, and substitute a GTX 1660 for the RTX titan to drive the displays so you can run in Iray view mode and you won't have to worry about WDDM reserving VRAM when rendering. This brings the price to 4,412$
One thing to note though the RTX Titan can be set to TCC mode (Tesla Compute Cluster). You would need a second GPU to drive the displays adding to the price. but again, that could be something like a GTX1660.
Now if you decide to also dabble in 3DL (using Wowie's AweShader kit with which you can get extremely high quality results almost on par with Iray), this system would be an absolute beast.
For cards which support it you can use nvlink 2 to pool memory for textures since DS 4.12.1
A bunch of stuff.
RAID 0 is fine for programs you can just reinstall but it does mean a lot of hassle if one drive fails. There is no benefit from having 4 drives instead of 2. However with what you can spend you're going to be happier with a single PCIE gen 4 m.2 which is natively faster than 2 older drives in RAID 0
You have a lousy case if overheating has been an issue bad enough to kill 2080's or better. They just don't run that hot on their own.
For $4500 you are certainly going to be happiest with cards that can use NVLink. That gives you combined VRAM and much faster render times.
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7tmNFG
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($431.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X53 73.11 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($129.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: MSI MEG X570 ACE ATX AM4 Motherboard ($369.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 8 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($263.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($1194.00 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($1194.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master MasterCase H500M ATX Mid Tower Case ($239.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($299.00 @ Adorama)
Total: $4487.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-10 10:44 EDT-0400
You'd also need to pick up an NVLink bridge( ~$100)
Sadly new video games can't run on Core 2 CPU because POPCNT is missing. It forces me to upgrade my CPU.
...ah, if you also deal with games, then the CPU/Memory based system would not be a good choice.
Not being a gamer here, I find the idea attractive as I use both Iray and 3DL and can always slap a beefier GPU in later if need be.
Has anybody confirmed this is actually working? I haven't found any posts in this forum saying they have successfully used Nvlink.
You still don't need much for gaming though. Almost any half decent CPU will handle games just fine. My i5 is from 2014 and it hasn't hurt. I know I am losing some frames that I could get by using a newer CPU, but that hasn't caused me to lose any sleep. I play at 1440p and no game has dropped below 60 fps for me. I'm typically in the 90+ thanks to the brute 1080ti strength. I have not played some of the very latest games, but its not a concern at least to me. At any rate, the point here is if you are focusing on a GPU based Iray build, you can still build with a pretty cheap Ryzen and get along fine. Considering that next gen consoles are going to have 8 core 2nd gen Ryzens, then it would make sense to get a Ryzen 7 with 8 cores for future proofing if gaming a big thing for you. But there are lots of 8 core Ryzens, and the 2nd gen Ryzens are getting cheaper all the time.
You only need to concern yourself with a higher end CPU if you plan on playing games in 4K at high frame rates. Real time ray tracing might be another factor, if you plan on using that in games, but then with Ampere it may not be as big a deal. But for the most part, it looks like most games released now are more GPU bound than CPU bound, meaning the CPU is not as big of a factor for performance.
I am planning on playing Cyberpunk 2077, and it just so happens that the game releases in September, the same month that rumors suggest the gaming Ampere lineup will release. So I hope to have a new GPU in time for that game. I'd like to hold out on a CPU for when they start supporting DDR5. I feel like Cyberpunk will be very GPU bound, so it wont matter too much what CPU is used. The Witcher 3 was extremely GPU bound.
Very interesting.
I really need 3-4 TB of disk because my current 2 TB are almost full due to 50GB for each game and 750 GB of Daz Studio library.
Cyberpunk 2077 and 4K are also my goals.
AMD Ryzen seems to be a good idea.
I have all my games on a HDD. My Steam lib is over 2Tb so I doubt I'd ever put all that on SSD's. I'm willing to tolerate few extra seconds load time to not be having to uninstall and reinstall games all the time.
For me I have a NAS where all my data is stored, a perk of working in a datacenter I got storage appliance we were getting rid of. But once you are at 6+ Tb of data, I'm closer to 20 with all my movies, music and 3D assets, it isn't reasonable to keep it all on SSD's.
I keep the HDD for archives, rarely power ON in order to extend the lifespan but I begin to think about replacing it by a cloud service like Microsoft OneDrive because if my home burns or is flooded this HDD will probably be damaged.
My personal experience showed me that SSD (Crucial, OCZ and Samsung) is more reliable than HDD (Maxtor, Seagate and Toshiba).
I replaced my SSD because of the size (64, 128, 256) and I replaced 11 damaged HDD (6 system disks and 5 archive storages).
I HIGHLY recommend you use a spare SSD solely for your OS, even if the OS itself is paltry in size compared to the storage leftover. The reason for this, is that SSD's have a limited number of write cycles which scale pretty linearly with the total size of the drive, and by keeping one isolated to your OS, you can almost double estimated lifespan. For reference, the SSD I'm currently using has an endurance rating of 75 TBW due to being a much smaller SSD (120gb for the price of what you could get a 1TB SSD today), which is about 7 years of normal use. Coincidentally, I did a drive check up this morning, and I'm sitting at half that, and the SSD in question IS 7 years old.