PC Build
scorpio
Posts: 8,533
I've just had a quote from a local shop to build a new PC, I'd like to know if its a good build for rendering. Thanks
Would have helped if I put the specs
| Case | Game Max Vanguard VR2 Mid Tower 2 x USB 3.0 / 2 x USB 2.0 Side Window Panel Brushed Aluminium Effect Black Case with RGB LED Fans |
| CPU | Intel i7 8700K Coffee Lake 3.7GHz Six Core 1151 Socket Overclockable Processor |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P Universal Socket Dual RGB Fans Black Fan CPU Cooler |
| Graphics Card | Gigabyte Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GDDR5X WINDFORCE Stack 3X Cooling System Graphics Card |
| Primary Hard Drive | Samsung 860 PRO Series 512GB 2.5" SATA III SSD |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming 2.0 Intel Socket 1151 Coffee Lake ATX DDR4 DVI-D/HDMI M.2 USB 3.1/USB Type-C Motherboard |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX 32GB FURY Black Heatsink (2 x 16GB) DDR4 2666MHz DIMM System Memory |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master V1000 1000W 135mm Silencio FP Fan 80 PLUS Gold Fully Modular PSU |
| Software | Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64bit English OEI DVD Operating Software |
Post edited by scorpio on
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Comments
Assuming you're rendering in Iray, a four core processor should be sufficient. I'd also go for an 850w power supply. This should be more than enough for your 1080ti and the rest of the components.
I would suggest buying a smaller SSD and using it just for Windows and your application software. Buy a higher capacity hard disk for your files.
You should also consider Windows 10 pro rather than the home edition. You have a lot more control over updates.
Cheers,
Alex.
..For rendering in Iray, be prepared that your expensive 1080 Ti will only have about 9.1 GB of available VRAM for rendering due to W10 WDDM. Also with W10 Home be prepared to have your work interrupted from time to time by W10 updates and dealing with "buggy" updates as you cannot defer them and won't be able to rid yourself of some features you may not want.
I'd consider an AMD Ryzen or Threadripper as there is a back door which allows you to use W7 Pro.or 8.1, neither of which reserves a good portion of your VRAM like W10 does.
If it's within budget.. I'd say go for it. The bigger SSD and PSU will somewhat futureproof it.. and while W10 has it's foibles, it's been ok here. If you're hitting the VRAM limits, I guess you can dual boot Win7.. but that's up to you.
I assume there's a mechanical HD in there, or are you going to rely on extenals/network drives?
Coffee Lake is fine, but I'd suggest Ryzen due to the upgradability offered by the AM4 socket. AMD will be using it through at least 2020, so if you get the urge to upgrade your CPU in a few years, you'll still be able to, TDP willing. Intel doesn't always allow for that upgradability, frequently (relatively) changing chipsets and sockets with each new tick or tock. If the upgrade price isn't an issue, then no worries but I thought I'd mention it.
what will such a rig cost? I've been looking and looking.
2TB hard drive minimum for all that DAZ stuff that needs to be purchased.
About $2000 depending on where you get it. The 32 gb of DDR and GPU are what takes up the cost.
Sad thing is, that rig will play any game out very well on very high settings, yet we are concerned with rendering, LOL.
As to the OPs question, that is near top of the line, so depending on your scenes you should be fine for rendering for awhile.
I went with window 7 pro and ryzen and now I keep getting error messages that say windows can't update. Apparently Microsoft has blocked all updates to windows if you are running a newer processor. I read there's a patch though only I'm not sure I want to go that rout - anyone else use it? Have any problems with it?
+1
'Would allow you to get another 16 GB or RAM, but the system is very nice.
I'd get the 860 EVO SSD, the extra for the Pro is not worth it - not at all really.
Well unless you want quicker read/writes.. then yea, it is :)
Thanks all for the adice and suggestions.
The quoted price is pretty high just under 2700 English pounds, a bit more than I did want to spend.
With the MB you specified, you might consider an M2 PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe SSD (it has the socket for one). Read/Write times are 3-5x faster than SATAIII. On the down side, they cost about twice as much as the SATA.
Thanks for the info but I'm not interested in using an outdated operating system, I have 4GB on the card on my old machine and Windows doesn't appear to use a lot of that at all. I've not ever been interrupted by windows wating to update, I'm not sure why you have so many problems with Windows 10, maybe its your configuration.
Have a look at www.scan.co.uk - I managed to put together the specs for a Ryzen machine with a similar GPU, 64GB RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 2GB HD for about what you quote (or even a bit less) last time I fiddled around (thinking about getting an upgrade myself, though for now I've just added an extra HD to this system).
W10 has been working out for you? This is a relief to hear/read.
I have spent the last week going around with members of the Tom's Hardware Forum about a new build and only today was advised today that I should pass on ordering another copy of W7Pro OEM and purchase W10 instead. I completed ordering the components and my only concern is W10. I am very comfortable with W7 Pro and highly dislike using W10 on the pcs at work.
(I was advised that I could spend the $ on W7 and it could work, but it is not supported; to just take a breathe and make the plunge to W10Pro
)
For the most part Win 10 has been fine for me also, just have to turn off a few things and keep deferring updates if you have the pro version.
...I'm running W7 Pro on older systems (DDR3/LGA 1366) so no issues with VRAM or updates (I disabled updating back on Sept 30th 2016 when MS stopped issuing individual files and rolled everything into a bundled "all or nothing" process. Had too many issues with MS installed Nvidia drivers. Still using a video driver from 2015 and it has been very stable. Rarely get a BSOD.these days unless there is a power hiccup in the building. Much of what I have seen with W10 comes from people i know with older systems like I have. I cannot afford a brand new state of the art W10 system, so I must make do with older tech which, as I have seen, sometimes runs into compatibility issues (particularly peripherals and drivers for them) with W10.
As to VRAM, The larger the card the more memory is lost due to WDDM's reserving VRAM. I understand there is a way to circumvent this, by setting the system up to use the onboard graphics for your display (or an lesser card like the 4 GB one) and dedicate the 1080 Ti to only rendering only. if you go the dual card route then definitely a bigger PSU would be advisable.
I'm running W7 Pro so no issues with VRAM or updates ( I disabled updating back on Sept 30th 2016 whe they stopped issuing individual files and rolled everything into a bundled "all or nothing" process. Had too many issues with MS installed Nvidia drivers. Still using a video driver from 2015 and it has been very stable. Rarely get a BSOD.these days unless there is a power hiccup in the building.
10 Pro will let you defer updating, Home Edition doesn't. There are really no good times to schedule W10 updating (particularly a major update that can take up to several hours) as I often run Daz and Carrara render jobs overnight (particularly during the hot weather) and am active on the system during the day.
Saying you don't have issues with updates because you have not even updated in years is not exactly good advice. What you are doing is not normal. The overwhelming majority of users are going to be using their PC online, and thus need to keep their software up to date. That is not something to debate. Windows 7 is outdated, and will one day stop receiving any security updates. Perhaps if the user posting has no plans to ever use this machine online, then sure, you have a point. Otherwise, no, just no, and leave it there.
I have had 10 since it first released, and I have never experienced any "hours long update". I have had some long updates on the laptop, which is expected because the laptop is literal piece of junk with an i3 and the slowest 5400 RPM hard drive in history...it takes 5 to 10 minutes just to BOOT sometimes. It took about 45 minutes to do an update once. However my desktop has never taken very long to update. I don't think the desktop have ever taken more than 15 minutes to update.
Additionally, I cannot recall the last time 10 has asked to do an update in the middle of anything, rendering overnight or otherwise. The way updates are delivered have been dramatically changed. You do not need 10 Pro to defer updates, either. I have deferred updates.
The one legit complaint is indeed with how 10 will reserve a portion of VRAM off all cards in use. However, take note the user posting would be using the 1080ti to drive the monitor, so in that regard it mostly balances out. Its a non issue.
Ok....now my opinion on the build!
The CPU generally does not matter for Iray when you use a single GPU. However, if you ever plan on adding additional GPUs down the line, having more cores DOES help. A machine with more CPU cores and a multi-GPU setup will render faster than the same multi-GPUs being used with less CPU cores...even if the CPU is not being used in the render! This behavior has been tested by pro benchmarking, and has been observed here in these forums in Sickleyield's benchmark thread. I also happen to have made my own updated 2018 benchmark scene, posted in that thread (intended for higher performance machines.) For single GPU rendering, the CPU impact is almost negligible. You could even use a bargain bin CPU with that 1080ti if you really wanted, it would render the same as a 1080ti paired with a 8 core or 12 core. So it really depends on what your plans are. Personally, I would go with a Ryzen myself. They are cheaper, offer lots of cores, and this would allow you better upgrade options down the road if you decide to do multiple GPUs. If you are not playing video games, Ryzen has been tested to perform very well in computing tasks. Intel chips do perform better in video games, so again, it depends on your priorities. But not only is Ryzen cheaper, the motherboards for Ryzen are cheaper as well, so switching to Ryzen should save you money.
But if you really do want to save on CPU, you can. Iray is not like playing video games. As I said above, when it comes to single GPU, the CPU will NOT bottleneck a GPU rendering. You want proof? I have proof. There are people who did the benchmark after plugging a 1070 into an ancient Core 2 Quad PC, that is a PC from about 2007. A machine with 6 GB of old DDR2 RAM. The people who did this found their benchmarks rendered at the same speed as the people who installed a 1070 into a brand new machine. The rest of the machine literally did not matter. Iray is not a video game. If you do multiple GPUs, then the other stuff matters more. And certainly a newer machine will be more usable in the Daz app itself.
Here is that benchmark thread. It is loaded with lots of benches and info going back a couple years.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p1
A SSD is always nice, but it is generally better to have only the OS and primary programs on SSD, while using larger regular hard drives to hold storage, like video, pictures, and your Daz3D stuff. I guarantee you will go FAR past 500 GB for Daz content very quickly if you plan on doing this a lot. I have like...a lot, LOL. You can expand any way you want, with secondary internal drives or external drives. You can have Daz content on multiple drives, too. All you need to do is point the software to the correct runtime locations and you can have as many drives as you want.
A 1000 Watt PSU is quite overkill, especially if you plan on keeping it a single GPU machine. GPUs are pretty efficient now, especially the Pascal (1000) series. So if there is one spot to save money on, that could be it.
You could even save on the RAM by getting 16 now, and then getting the second 16 later. Your builder might not like it, but it really wont hurt to run with 16 for a while. RAM is the easiest thing to add and upgrade and can be done any time you like. Just make sure to get the same RAM (brand and spec) when you add the second 16 in if you decide to do this.
So there's 3 ideas for cutting cost. Use Ryzen, use a smaller PSU, and start with 16 GB RAM. (Again, you always get more RAM later.)
Yea, I mean I do what I can to mitigate any disasters too.. the machines all image their OS drives every week, and backup any work data daily. So should the machine ever have a bad update, it's just a case of case of rolling back at worst 7 days and then I'm off again.
I'm at the stage of life where I don't really have time to tinker.. I just need stuff to work. I did a test install of W7 on my work machine, and W10 feels a lot snappier.. so that's good enough for me.
And yea, no problems with rogue updates either, you just tell it your working hours and it wont interrupt you at all. I believe too, that unless the system is idle, it wont just go ahead and reboot during renders and stuff (at least, I've never had it do that and I leave the machine rendering overnight a fair bit).
In any case you can configure it to not to reboot when you're logged in, and to not do automatic updates. Even when you get the "You need some updates" pop up you can just click on it and then close the update window again, and it won't bother you again for some days. I'm still on 1709 though so I can't tell if they have changed this in later versions, but I don't think so. Whether you can do this in the Home version I don't know.
i've found a few systems at ibuypower that are pretty sweet for under $1800, but only 16gig ram. adding that extra 16 cranks it up pretty fast. Yes, and the graphics cards, but they have come down a bit lately.
I'm rendering via CPU right now, so having a decent nvidia card will be great.
The OP system is awesome, btw. ... wowsa
Quicker yes (on paper), but not by as much as one might think; this is especially from a real-world perspective.
I've seen a number of comparrisons show the Evo better; google for them, then you'll know I've not cherry-picked.
Edit: there are reasons to get the Pro - mainly centred around the number of writes the two are guaranteed for.
But even when a drive can no longer be written to, it CAN still be read from. Always worth remembering.
Yeah, the deals seem to better each year, LOL I got my system 2.5 years ago from Ibuypower (i7 6700K, ASUS mobo, 16 gb DDR5, GTX 970 4 gb, Win 10 pro and a few extras and it was just under $1500. For that price I could get another with a little better specs, but I feel like I am still breaking this system in, LOL. I am looking for a 1080 TI to upgrade and then I should be set for another couple of years.
A popular belief, but not true. I've done extensive testing, and my 1080ti has all but 0.9 GB available, which is only 8% of the 1080ti's 11GB. Very reasonable.
Another good thing about Windows 10 is the new Task Manager reporting finally gives accurate VRAM utilization.
Yeah, Windows 10 is fine. In fact I really like it, even though I generally despise all versions of Windows with a passion. it has some excellent debugging features that help you keep track all the important events on your system for the last week or so. Extremely useful.
And this whole "unwanted updates" with W10 I personally find to be a bit of a non-issue. I've had disastrous updates from other software applications, which actually took over my computer and crashed it, but W10 has been pretty much problem-free. Yeah, I do go thru and turn off a bunch of W10 "features" that I'm not interested in, but that's pretty minor.