Recommendations for a rendering PC? (Iray)
Soto
Posts: 1,450
Hi!
I am very happy with my Mac, but I am considering a more powerful machine exclusively for Iray rendering and 3D work (gaming here and there as an added plus, but not priority at all).
I honestly don`t know anything about computers, it`s all chinese and I don`t want to get scammed LOL
I am using this one already built up here as a reference point:
But I wonder if it is good enough, if something should be different... Basically I just want the fastest possible Iray rendering without exagerating and buying 2 video cards for instance. This is the place where I may end up buying, if it adds some info.
http://extremetechcr.com/tienda/37-gaming
Thanks in advance! :)
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Comments
I think a 1080TI is the goto graphics card for iray right now.
I'd suggest 32GB ram, and a 1TB SSD with 4TB storage drive too (you can never have too much RAM or storage, so add as much as you can afford!)
Yeah, you'll probably run out of RAM with 16 GB, 32 GB will probably work for many.
Also another vote on the 1080 Ti. Not only is it much faster, but it also has 11 GB of VRAM over the 8 GB, which will allow you to render bigger scenes.
If you need to shave the price a bit, dropping down to a Ryzen 1700 or 1700x should have no impact rendering with Iray, perhaps a very small difference running Studio (likely not noticeable unless you benchmark it).
Asesome! Thanks for the suggestions :)
What about peocessor? That Ryzen is fine? No need for i7?
What is said by others. The 1080 ti may be sufficient and you may not need a second GFX Card with it. But in case you would, you should pay attention to the PSU. 2 x GTX 1080 Ti = +500W so get a +800W PSU
Memory speed have some influence for Ryzen. Try to get some with a clock speed of 3000Mhz or better
I can answer that! The Ryzen is always fine. It is especially fine since you are wanting to do Iray rendering. Much, much better bang for your buck than an i7 for multi-core applications (which covers most non-GPU 3D applications).
You mean singlethreaded stuff, right? I can't think of anything but gaming these days where high speed with less cores is still the best deal, and he's specifically looking at 3D only. What modern 3D apps can only use 1-2 cores?
...however if you do big scenes a 1080 Ti will also ensure most of your render jobs will remain in VRAM and not dump to the CPU. Once the latter happens no amount of CUDA cores will help.
If the pictured PC is representative of your budget, I agree with most of the folks. Step down on the CPU and get the most GPU you can afford. That's what matters most in iRay and you don't want to buy the GPU again if you find the 1070 8MB insufficient later on(do you?). If your budget is tight, you can always add more RAM incrementally without losing your investment but if you settle for the lesser video card now, you will probably lose some money later when you upgrade.
If all you do is web browsing and playing videos and Facebook, why do you need a powerful processor? Why do you need 8 cores? And if you use iray a lot, that mostly uses the GPU. So why is a powerful multi-core CPU important?
As I recall, GTA-5 (a video game) also uses CPU, was well as GPU. Others rely mostly on GPU.
Video encoding software (if you edit and make videos for Youtube) probably relies mostly on multi-core CPU's, though some video editing software is trying to move to GPU's, with varying success.
As a software developer, I'm very aware that some tasks are not do-able with multiple threads, and some tasks are difficult to code with multiple threads, and writing multiprocessor software can very challenging. So multicore CPU's are great, but just don't assume that every application can utilize them, or is very good at it.
It depends on what you're using your computer for, and how the applications are written. And it all comes down to, if you have $1 to spend, where's the best place to spend it, considering the applications you're running? Maybe you should spend it on a more powerful CPU, maybe on a more powerful GPU, maybe faster storage, maybe more RAM, and so on. It depends.
It's not just a matter of faster = better.
Yes, IF you do big scenes. But that doesn't automatically apply to everyone. Personally, I've tried maxing my VRAM on my GPU with a big city scene from Stonemason, with 3 G3's, and I didn't max out my 8GB of VRAM on my GTX 1070. I've never maxed it out. And assuming I'm an average user, then maybe it doesn't make sense for some to spend $300 for 3GB of extra VRAM. On the other hand maybe some people need it. But we can't assume that everyone needs it.
By the way, as an example...
For me, I have a Ryzen 7 1700 with 8 CPUs, 16 threads. Do I ever use all of that? Well, the rare times I do video editing it helps a lot. And the VWD cloth sim I have in Studio makes use of them and makes a huge difference. However, VWD is going to be modified in the future to use GPU's. So would I be better off buying a better GPU instead of a high power Ryzen? Maybe.
And for some reason I decided to buy 64 GB of RAM. Do I need it? No way. Not even close. I was doing fine with 16 GB, though I seem to recall going over a few times. 32 GB would have been more than enough, but I just decided on 64 GB.
I do like the SSD which holds my OS and applications, and makes loading stuff much faster. But some may not think that's worth the price of an SSD.
...scene sizes for me average around 7 GB which means a fair percentage exceed that.
Have 7, 8 or 9 G2s/3s on a city street that looks like a "real" city street (litter & such instead of looking clean enough to eat off of) a number of emissive lights, and you can easily go overbudget on the VRAM.
As I've said before, sometimes the best recommendation for some users is to cut down your scenes to a more manageable size rather than spending big bucks on hardware. Smaller scenes are more responsive overall, in loading and previewing and rendering and memory usage. I tend to build my own environments (rooms, buildings, etc.) so that I can limit what's in my scene. But others like to buy pre-made environments that take a bunch of resources, in which case more, better, and faster might be a good idea. It depends.
If all you do is web browsing and playing videos and Facebook, why do you need a powerful processor? Why do you need 8 cores? And if you use iray a lot, that mostly uses the GPU. So why is a powerful multi-core CPU important?
It depends on what you're using your computer for, and how the applications are written. And it all comes down to, if you have $1 to spend, where's the best place to spend it, considering the applications you're running? Maybe you should spend it on a more powerful CPU, maybe on a more powerful GPU, maybe faster storage, maybe more RAM, and so on. It depends.
It's not just a matter of faster = better.
Did you bother reading the OP's question? He said exactly what he was going to do with the machine and what he wanted:
"...but I am considering a more powerful machine exclusively for Iray rendering and 3D work... " "... Basically I just want the fastest possible Iray rendering without exagerating and buying 2 video cards..."
For this person's 3D needs, faster is better, more cores are better and an i7 is a waste of money if you are on a limited budget.
Why aren't you even reading Hellboy's OP? He is doing 3D work. Where is web browsing and Facebook coming into this at all?
None of the rest of your post was relevant either. Hellboy wants a PC that can render in Iray and use his other 3D apps. This normally means choosing a CPU with a high number of cores, since apps that take advantage of multiple cores are standard in this area. For this, Ryzen is a much better bang for buck than i7. Only in applications that use 1-2 threads does the i7 start to win out because single-thread performance becomes much more important.
Therefore I can confidently say, for Hellboy's application, Ryzen is fine.
Feel free to provide a counterexample where an i7 comparable to Ryzen is cheaper, or some examples of 3D apps Hellboy might be using where he isn't going to want multiple cores.
Exactly! This is why he doesn't need an i7.
drzap, I was responding to Agent Unawares point about CPU requirements. Did you bother reading that?
Did you somehow completely miss that I was making recommendations for Hellboy, not some random web browsing office worker?
My point is he may not need a Ryzen or i7. Maybe he would be better off spending the money on a less powerful CPU.
I agree with his cpu recommendation. get the most cores you can afford. more cores = faster in 3d software and Ryzen gives more bang for the buck. Why pay more to get less?
In what way is more cores faster in iray rendering?
Any 3D work that is done with the cpu (including iRay) will benefit from more cores. Most 3D work these days is done on cpu.
Hellboy based on his previous work needs the better PC. Case closed.
Oh, well that's fair enough. When I said there's no need for an i7 because Ryzen was a much better bang for buck and you said "If the OP also runs some multithreaded stuff then maybe a higher power CPU is better" I kind of assumed you were suggesting the i7, not that he should ditch both options.
I wouldn't actually go a step down from Ryzen though, it was a very big upgrade for AMD with the two threads per core and the much better energy efficiency alone. So he could get an FX series which is still perfectly decent, but then he wouldn't be able to plug in a much nicer CPU down the line if he ever wanted to, which he will be able to do if he starts with a Ryzen. I just don't think it's worth it if you want a PC that can hold up 5-10 years. (Any day you don't need a new motherboard is a good day).
Also the 1700s are functionally the same as the 1800X so there's a hundred or so to be saved there.
It is faster, Iray supports CPU and GPU at the same time. Also he's not only doing Iray rendering, he's using other 3D apps which could be anything and the vast majority of the time are going to use CPU heavily.
drzap, I'll let others debate you on that one because it just ain't the case.
Anyone who knows anything about 3D work won't debate with me. It is a fact. The majority of work done in the industry is done on the cpu. GPU rendering is a new technology and has limitations. You are smart not to debate this one.
Maybe in some cases it's true, but not as a general statement. DAZ Studio's Iray renders with GPU. Blender's Cycles renderer uses GPU. I think the new Eeevee also uses GPU. I'm sure some big studios use big farms of CPU's to render, but this isn't a forum for movie studios.