Looking for Notebook Specs for fast Iray Renders
Rod Wise Driggo
Posts: 2,321
Sure, a desktop would be way faster but I don't have a space to place a full rig with external monitor. So I look for a notebook/laptop solution which does not have to be portable in terms of battery etc. but easy to store away if not in use.
I'm coming from a 2 year old MacBook Pro (2,9 i7 - 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SDD). As Apple is no longer using Nvidia the built-in Radeon Pro 560 with 4 GB is more or less usless for Iray rendering so its CPU only for me currently.
So any windows (sic!) machine with a decent Nvidia card should be way faster then my current rig. But what to look for in detail?
- How important is the CPU?
- How much RAM is suggested for windows? 32 GB or even more?
- Shall I look for a big SSD to maybe have my complete runtime on the machine. Use a 4 GB external drive currently which has two runtime folders but it takes ages to load a simple G8F due to the huge library. Or how does windows handle a SDD/HDD-combo?
- And what about the GPU? Does it have to be a GTX or RTX and with RTX 2060, 2070 or 2080? Or a pro version with more cuda cores. And is this mode-q or how it is called of any importance.
Thanks for any ideas or experience reports. I have a limit of approx. $2.500-2.750 but the cheaper the better ;-)
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Comments
It has to be a notebook? For 2500 you could build a pretty beast desktop.
You DID read the first sentence of the OP, didn't you:
Apparently not. I must have scrolled past the first paragragh somehow and missed it lol. Maybe the scroll wheel hit two notches instead of one or something.
Blackmagic eGPU
Laptops simply cannot provide enough airflow for them to be able to utilize the power of desktop graphics cards. The mobile versions are amazing, but Iray is demanding even on the most expensive GPU for desktops - of course, depending upon the user.
I primarily use Carrara, so I'm not savvy on what all Daz Studio can do. If it can allow you to Network render, then you can do all of your Daz Studio work on a decent laptop at quite affordable prices, and network your render to a PC in a different room with a pair of high-end graphics cards.
Just trying to help provide some options. It can be frustrating when all you want to do is Render, but....
With Carrara, I could spend a bit extra to go the route of rendering via GPU but I prefer to use its built-in raytrace engine. It's fast and it relies on CPU. So for a $grand, I've just built a new PC with an eight core cpu that hyperthreads to 16 threads (basically having 16 cores - as far as the render engine is concerned) and I'm rendering my animated hero with dynamic hair at 16 to 26 seconds per frame at 720p. That's flying right along! Carrara also allows us to network render to any other computer cores available to us through our network, which simply adds more cpu cores to the render. I don't do that, but the option is amazing.
RAM for sure, because you'll be getting into Windows 10, which requires a bit of ooomf to run well for this sort of thing - and it will run very well. 32GB should be fine, but more is Always the best!
I know that many people here use an i5 CPU and like it. Maybe it's fine for DS. I wouldn't recommend getting into graphics with anything less than an i7 though, which will rock. I mean, i9 is better, but i7 will rock.
I'm new to SSD and love it, but I don't feel qualified to comment on that. But with my 1TB SSD, even my previous SATA drives are lightning fast now, with my OS on the SSD. Amazing.
I've emboldened the line in your quote about GPU for a good reason. In this competitive market, nVidia released some GT cards failry recently that do not have cuda cores. Some of the software that requires nVidia GPU will not recognize them as compatible. Just warning ya. Please look at what the laptop comes with, and then look that up.
I've always had to render on a horrible, non-existent budget. So I have to build my own machines. That being said, however, I've been looking to get a laptop that can handle this stuff - a laptop that doesn't cost a fortune.
I didn't get one yet so I still don't know how well they'll work with Daz Studio and Iray, but HP has a line called OMEN that are a little thicker to allow for better cooling and they've also put a panel down there so that the user can replace stuff like SSD, GPU, RAM, etc., and they have a few to choose from. I saw a whole bunch online and they even had a really nice one at my local Walmart - I live in a tiny stick in the woods. The one at my Walmart was their previous edition which is no longer available - but there's a brand new one with the same specs, newer components and I think the price is the same. The one I was looking at was on a clearance sale since the new models were coming out at $999.99 and I thought it was an amazing value when it was on sale for $1,259 or something. It had an i7 six core CPU, RTX GPU (4GB dedicated gpu RAM) 16GB DDR4 RAM (Upgradeable to 32GB), 256GB SSD with a 1TB SATA for storage. The thing felt like a real piece of machinery. I really want one when I can.
Oh... here it is! At it's even cheaper. So if you can afford more, use this as a starting point of reference and move up on the various specs ;)
(clicking the image takes you to this computer at Walmart)
I really hope that some of this helps ;)
I had a Core i5 laptop with only the Intel integrated graphics. I wanted to get into this whole IRAY thing so I got an Asus VivoBook Pro 15. This was in early 2018. It has 16 gigs of RAM. That seems to be about as much as you can get in a Windows laptop without an extreme budget, but you seem to have a bit of an extreme budget so maybe it doesn't matter. However, nothing I've done with DAZ has maxed out that 16 gigs of RAM so I don't think you need more than that for DAZ... yet.
The laptop has an Nvidia GTX 1050 with 4 gigs of RAM. It rendered fast enough to satisfy me, and as a side effect, I was playing Grand Theft Auto at 60 frames per second with midrange graphics settings. But I have run into issues where the 4 gigs of video ram would get maxed out if I had maybe 10 female characters in the scene or just one dForce Strand Based Hair. So I'd say 16 gigs of ram is enough and at least a GTX 1050 but you may need more than 4 gigs of video ram.
This computer's Core i7 is so much faster than the i5 that I thought it was using the Graphics card to render. It turned out it was the CPU and I didn't have the box checked for the graphics card to be used. So I'd say definitely get the faster CPU you can get in case you exceed the graphics card memory and need to use the CPU. And theGPU is still faster if your render fits in its memory.
The laptop has an internal SSD and regular HDD. I have the executable files for DAZ and everything else on the SSD and all of the data files such as textures are on the regular hard drive. It doesn't seem to have any major issues with load time. I suspect the long load times you experienced are more to do with the speed of USB data transfer rather than the speed of the hard drive. But maybe I just have way less stuff loading.
I don't know anything.
The important question is what do you consider fast? Personally I wouldn't consider anything less than RTX for my next purchase. But I also wouldn't buy a notebook for rendering, for any reason. If I lacked space...I'd make some freakin' space, LOL. You could have a tower anywhere and either use a long cable or even streaming. If you own a tv with HDMI, then you could use that as your monitor. You have options.
For example, I have a laptop. But not for rendering, its a super cheap piece of junk that isn't even capable of opening Daz. Sometimes if I don't want to be in my PC room, I just stream my desktop to my laptop. Or my tablet. Or even my phone! I've done all of these. If your home network has good latency, this is a good option. You could totally build a super nice desktop and stream it to your existing notebook. You could even stream outside the home, though latency will go up depending on the network used. Still, I have had very enjoyable experiences streaming my desktop from hundreds of miles away.
It sounds like you just want to do this in the home, which makes this all the easier. Since its in home, if you did have any issues, you are right there.
But if you absolutely must go notebook, there's not much to say. You'll need a gaming laptop because they are nearly all that performce laptops cater to.
In my signature I have a link to a benchmark thread. You can take this test yourself and compare it to other results for an idea of what you might want. But most marks are for desktop gpus. You can expect laptop versions to be a good 10% or more slower while costing a lot more.
I would look at egpu for your mac laptop. If you have money to burn!! Get a nice laptop with a external port that will take egpu. Don't render with internal gpu it will kill your laptop quickly too much heat with Iray. If your laptop has thuderbolt I would use that port. Good luck
- How important is the CPU? - Others have already answered this, but for rendering with Iray in GPUmode, note exremely important. But it's always good to have a decent CPU.
- How much RAM is suggested for windows? 32 GB or even more? I you can fit it in your budget, 32Gb would be good. Having a bit of extra room is always good.
- Shall I look for a big SSD to maybe have my complete runtime on the machine. Use a 4 GB external drive currently which has two runtime folders but it takes ages to load a simple G8F due to the huge library. Or how does windows handle a SDD/HDD-combo? I'll defer to others here, since I use mine for other things. But a USB 3 external drive paired with a USB 3 port should work quite well.
- And what about the GPU? Does it have to be a GTX or RTX and with RTX 2060, 2070 or 2080? Or a pro version with more cuda cores. And is this mode-q or how it is called of any importance. Personally I would stay away from the q mode cards. While they will work, and will run cooler than non q mode cards, they also run slower. Thsi is just a personal thing though, but if your getting a thin laptop, I think a q-mode card would be a better choice, as the thin laptops often don't cool as well as the larger laptops. The plus to the RTX cards is they are faster than the GTX cards with RTX enabled aplications. The downside with DAZ, is RTX uses more RAM, reducing the memory available for storing textures and geometry (so you might need to use a scene memory optimizer for a scene that would easily fit in a GTX card).
Thanks for any ideas or experience reports. I have a limit of approx. $2.500-2.750 but the cheaper the better ;-)
I'm a huge user of laptops, almost all of my 3D work is done on a laptop (and has been for years). I recently purchased an MSI GT76 Titan, and It definitely will work well with DAZ. They are really big, but that means you have plenty of room for better cooling. You could get one in your budget range with a 17.3" screen, RTX 2070, an i7 9700K, and 32Gb RAM. I got mine custom built at Xotic PC, and was quite happy with the service and the laptop. here is a link to the same model I got:
https://xoticpc.com/collections/extreme-series-gaming-laptops/products/msi-gt76-titan-dt-091
Not only is this laptop large, but it also requires two power bricks to support the 2070 and the desktop processor. From reviews I read while researching my purchase, the i7 9700K (8 core, 8 thread) will run under sustained load at full clock speed (5GHz), which means if you need to use 3Delight or another CPU based render engine, the performance will be pretty good for a laptop. The only issue you might have is the size of this machine, so definitely look at the size specs to make sure it would work for you. But, since portability isn't hugely important, it might work well for you. If you turn the fans on high, it can also be rather loud, but mine has been really quiet while GPU rendering with (you can hear the fan, but it's not loud at all).
The HP Omen Dart linked looks pretty good as well. It might be a good option for a "smaller" laptop the the MSI GT Titan. There are a few others to, the Alienware Area 51 is nice, but it did have some heat issues, and Asus ROG laptops are nice as well. But I can easily recommend the MSI, since I have experience with it.
There could be some issues here, since Apple no longer supports any Nvidia drivers with the new OS. An external GPU will still require the drivers to be installed (I think people have done it, but it's not easy, and not without "risk").
Do you mean the RTX card ends up using more VRAM vs. a GTX card?
I’ve been following another thread that started a while back that may be of interest to the OP:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/372816/best-laptop-deals-for-daz-iray-rendering-3delight-under-2000#latest
Yes, that's what I meant, but you said it much better!!!
@DustRider "RTX uses more RAM"
I haven't seen this "issue" come up in any discussions about RTX cards. I might be willing to believe that the current version of Iray in Studio 4.12 uses more Vram, but have trouble believing it's an RTX issue. Are you sure is isn't more related to doing more complicated scenes since the RTX renders so much faster?
I have an RTX and GTX card and have not seen this at all. 4.11 used more VRAM across the board but 4.12 doesn't, at least not for me.
In regards to the op:
an eGPU is a dead end solution. Apple will not support Nvidia and Nvidia will not release drivers for Mac. That means you'd be stuck on an older version of the OS with no options and you'd never be able to get a new machine as apple makes downgrading the OS nearly impossible.
For a laptop in the $2500 range there are plenty of gaming laptops that will work. Get the highest number RTX card you can (2080 is better than a 2070 and on down the stack). At that price you shopuld be able to get at least a 2070.
CPU isn't terribly relevant and at that price you should get at least an i5.
RAM should be double the VRAM for best performance in iRay. For the cards you're likely to get 16Gb should be fine. RAM tends to be one of the places where easy upgardability stillexists in laptops so you should check the specs if there are empty RAM slots which would make doubling the RAM pretty simple.
Yes, it should be an RTX, you're spending enough to get it. Quadro's are essentially the same as consumer cards in laptops except they include support for 10bit color content creation, so if photoshop or the like matters to you you might consider a quadro.
You might want to also shop for an external HDD, if you don't already have one, as most laptops have pitifully small storage and 3d assets consumer a lot.
I just got a new laptop with a 2070 inside and it renders in similar times to the 1080Ti in my desktop.This is on DS 4.12. One thing to look out for is the type of 2070 you buy. I got a standard 2070, which is very similar to the one sold for desktops, but a lot of laptops come with a 2070 Max-Q. Despite the MAX in its name, this card runs at a much lower clock speed than a normal 2070, so consequently will render a good deal slower. The reason for this is that at the slower clock speed the GPU does not run so hot, and so the laptop does not need to have as big a fan. As such smaller, so called thin laptops, will likely have the Max-Q version inside, where as larger ones, like the one I have, are capable of running a standard 2070, which is quicker.
I am a former laptop user, having switched over as software demands overtook my laptop capability.
I generally cycle; when the laptop wears out, update the desktop. When the desktop wears out, update the laptop. I am currently on the desktop side of the cycle.
That said, I think your biggest issue is going to be screen space. DS is a screen space hog. Even while working on my laptop, I generally plugged an external monitor in. There was just not enough visual real estate to see menus and such.
Thanks! I was sure I read somewhere on the forums that RTX was consuming a bit more GPU RAM in 4.12 (1Gb sticks in my head). That seemed to make sense to me, since I seem to be dropping to GPU easier than I did with my 970m, which seemed odd since my GTX 970m has 6Gb vs the 8Gb I have with the RTX 2070. However, I just did a search for the thread where I read this, and couldn't find it. So I'm guessing that I either miss read something, or my memory is simply faulty. I've been way to busy with RL staff the past few months, so I'll defer to your knowledge, since I'm more confident with your recent memory than my own
@DustRider
I have read that Win 10 reserves some Video RAM for System usage regardless of your settings. Since this is a new laptop, were you running Win 7 on your previous one? Could that be what you wre thinking/remembering
Thanks, but no this was different than the Win10 reserving memory issue. But good guess, my old laptop is running Win7. The plan was with 8Gb of Video RAM, I would have about the same amount of Video RAM to work with as I did with 6Gb in Win7, but it "seems" like I have more problems with dropping to CPU than I used to. I don't remember what I was searching for when I found a thread where I thought (operative word here is "thought") someone mentioned that RTX cards with DS 4.12 use more Video RAM due to .... IIRC ... Optix 7 being on, and no ability to turn it off. As I noted before, I have not been able to find this anywhere, so I might well be wrong (and probably am). I could also be wrong about things seeming to take more memory on my RTX 2070, since I'm making new scenes and not checking old scenes, and some of the items used may just be more memory intensive.
As a side note, I really wish DS/Iray had an integrated utility to see exactly what the Video RAM usage is. Octane Render has a very effective memory management utility built into it. You would think that Nvidia could come up with something similar, then we wouldn't be guessing all the time.
Just jumping in here. As a former user of a laptop with DUAL GTX 1080 mobile chips, do yourself a favor and shoot for the 8 GB versions of the cards. I.E. 1070/1080/2070/2080.
The 'unholy' hybrid laptops that sport 3750H AMD APUs packing Vegas combined with a GTX 1660 Ti are interesting, but only sport 6 GB of VRAM. The APU thing is interesting in that you might be able to use it to drive your desktop environment while the 1660 Ti is busy baking a render, hence reducing the 'sluggishness' that happens if the screen GPU is busy baking a render.
This would also work with integrated Intel graphics, IF the manufacturer of the laptop in question hasn't locked out the iGPU. In my case, MSI locked out the iGPU from the BIOS completely, with no way to activate it/switch to it, so when the 1080s were rendering things got a bit sluggish during GPU based renders.
But yeah, do yourself a favor and shoot for 8GB of VRAM for your graphics if possible. It'd be nice if there was an 11GB mobile chip from Nvidia along the 1080/2080 Ti lines, but the last time I looked, there wasn't any option along these lines. There MIGHT be an option along the Quadro/Professional lines, but those tend to be pricey.
External GPUs have also been suggested in this thread. Note that you'll probably want a Thunderbolt 3 port in your laptop if you are doing the eGPU thing, and of course if you are staying in Mac Land, you'll need some sort of OS support. I'm in PC land, so I don't have any experience or suggestions for that, but I did note the comment above about Apple no longer supporting Nvidia GPUs. That doesn't sound right to me, but I'm not a Mac guy so I can't really comment either way.
eGPUs might be better for the life expectancy of your laptop though. Rendering generates a lot of heat, and some laptops won't cope well with the extra heat that can be generated while rendering in the longer term. Gaming oriented laptops may be designed to better cope with this, but not always.
If the laptop is a convenience only thing, you might also look at building a desktop system, and using your laptop just for building scenes, while renders are 'baked' on the desktop system, using networking or say USB sticks to move your .duf files around from your laptop to your rendering system. You might even be able fo use the laptop to run your desktop system remotely, but I haven't done that so others will have to make suggestions along those lines if it interests you.
Also, if you can find a laptop with 4K resolution, within your budget, that's an interesting choice, Or, IF you have a 4K TV where you are planning to work with Daz, it's an option. You could use a HDMI cable from your laptop to said TV to work with the Daz desktop environment, instead of having to squint at a tiny laptop monitor... just a thought. Even at 1080P I found this useful at times, as the laptop I'm currently typing on is 13.3"... it actually runs OK on a 4K monitor which is surprising considering the age of this laptop, but I usually use my 'dedicated' destop system with 4K monitor these days for Daz, as the hard drive is full on this laptop, and it has AMD graphics, not Nvidia.
You mentioned storage. Shoot for a 2TB SSD if you can, otherwise a 4TB HDD with a SSD alongside it is a decent choice. The SSD is useful for booting, but Daz isn't all that much faster with a SSD than it is with a regular HDD. You could put your content library on the HDD if your SSD is fairly tiny, without much of a performance hit, but still have your Daz .exe on the SSD so that it opens up a bit faster maybe...
4TB NVME SSDs are beginning to become a thing, IF your laptop has room for one. Sabrent currently makes one (it's a 4TB 2280 M2 SSD). It's a bit pricey, but not as much as I expected it to be.
This is true, and although windows wants it to stay that way and clearly does not want you to fiddle with this - control me? NOT - you can disable this feature. Firstly the changes will not take place (the reserved space won't be deleted) until windows updates, so it's a catch 22, if you are like me and turn updates off and because I hate updates that mess up my workflow, I let windows have their measle 7 GB or so of Ram.
You have to go into the Registry Editor (to find it type regedit in the search bar of your task menu)
*** Locate ReserveManager>ShippedWith Reserves (or is lost type this in the Registry Editors address Bar
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ReserveManager
Once you see ShippedWith Reserves duble click it and in the pop up window change the Value data from 1 to 0
Click OK and close the window BUT you will see no changes until windows updateswhich could take days or weeks.
For me, I choose to give windows the scraps it wants for reserved Ram.
Hi and thanks to everyone for the valuable input. Oh, and also happy new year.
Regarding my purchase of a better rendering rig, I'm now down to basically two options. Although I would like to stick to my MacBook Pro, an eGPU is not a valid option as there is no proper driver support especially for Nvidia cards. In addition more and more plugins tend to be windows only. So I might have to make the jump for windows anyhow. So my options are:
# Windows notebook
I'm thinking of a HP Omen gaming notebook or anything similar. There should be enough options in the $2.000-$2.500 space I guess. Regarding the specs I'm looking for
CPU: i7 or i9 - most notebooks seem to come with i7 still
GPU: RTX 2080 with 8 GB - no Max-Q for said reasons
RAM: 16 GB or 32 GB if possible
HDD: 512 GB or 1 TB SSD and 1 or 2 TB HDD
15" or 17" screen
My open questions:
- Is a HD resolution sufficient? Some notebooks come with 4K. Does windows support something like retina. And does DAZ studio run in a higher resolution. On the MacBook DAZ studio does not yet make real use of retina thus the interface is rather pixelated.
- Would it make sense to have a runtime with the data folder (all the morphs are IMO loaded once a Genesis figure is put in the scene) on the SSD or would it be sufficient to have a small SSD with windows and the main DAZ Studio program and everything else on the internal HDD. Should still be faster as an USB-connected external drive, right?
# Streaming
As some have suggested streaming as a valid option, I'm thinking about getting a desktop instead and stream it to my Mac via the internal WLAN. Don't have any experience with such a setup so there are a lot of questions regarding that option:
- Do I need an external monitor for initial setup of the machine?
- What is the proper software for remote controlling a windows desktop from my Mac?
- Are there solutions which integrate file transfer like to view the rendering process on the Mac, have the rendering done on the desktop and later save to the Mac or would it make more sense to save to a NAS which can be accessed both from the windows machine as well as from the Mac?
- Is there any lag or should that not be a problem giving a fast internal WLAN.
- And of course: What about the configuration. Should I even opt for more VRAN on the desktop RTX? Think 11 GB are affordable. The 24 GB version is costing more that a complete notebook :-(
Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.
As others have commented, take a look at MSI gaming laptops. If the Titan is too big and bulky (l think it weighs in at nearly 10 lbs, not including the two power bricks), consider the Raider series. XOTICPC has an online configurator that let’s you spec out their different builds to get exactly what you want. The benefit of the well-reviewed Raider series is that it doesn’t compromise on the GPU (you can get a non-Q RTX2080), multiple internal drives, plenty of memory and a core i9 processor, with a 17” HD screen that weighs less than 6 lbs. I would steer clear of the Stealth series as attractive as they are in terms of weight and dimensions because they all use max-Q GPUs due to heat.
Also, look into repasting the CPU to improve heat dissipation and minimize thermal throttling. Using liquid metal can drop your temps significantly, but if not applied properly, will risk shorting out your hardware. Non-liquid metal pastes (like Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut) won’t get you quite as good results, but can still drop temps 5+ degrees C, without the risk of hosing your system.
Good luck with your decision and I hope you share what you decide to do.
There's really no point in HEDT parts, like i9's in laptops. Get a top tier mobile i7 and you'll be covered. IMO 4k on a laptop screen is pretty pointless. I have a 27" 4k display and even at that size there isn't a whole lot of difference in image quality between 4k and 1440p.
For storage, gaming laptops tend towards more storage than other laptops but I'd just get the one you want, aim for a 500Gb NVME drive in the laptop and anything more is gravy. I have no idea of the size of your assets but mine could never fit on any HDD in a laptop.
Using a remote desktop to control DS running on a desktop from a laptop is certainly doable (you set it up and go). The desktop would absolutely need a monitor, keyboard and mouse. You're going to have to do all the setup until at least Windows is fully installed at the desktop..
Could you watch the render? Yes. You can see anything that can be seen on the monitor.
Yes, there is lag. Is it unacceptable. I have no idea what you'd consider unacceptable. but there's software at each end plus the actual data transfergoing on. Even the purpose built game streaming platforms have lag.
You don't need to buy any software. Remote desktop software is built into both OS's. You would need the Microsoft Remote Desktop clinet app from the Mac appstore.
I have never tried this from a Mac to a PC but I use remote desktops from Windows to Windows and windows to Linux every day. I was able to find plenty opf infor for PC to MAC, tech support uses this sort of thing a lot, but relatively little for Mac to PC so your results may or may not be accetable. I'd find someone who has done this and make sure there aren't any gotcha's.
The upside of a faster CPU is in the event you need to render a scene too large for your graphics card to handle. The 8GB of VRAM in the RTX2080 is pretty good, but it wouldn’t be too hard to exceed that with multiple figures or complex environments. Of course, “faster render time” is a relative concept
Hey guys,
after thinking about whether to get a PC notebook or a PC Desktop which I might access through by MacBook a friend came up with an interesting idea. He is using a external render cube from his MacBook with blender. Does anybody know whether DAZ studio/iRay supports something like this. Would be too cool to have the render visible on my Mac but the heavy lifting done on a machine somewhere else.
Thanks for any feedback!
It currently works, with an old enough version of the MacOS, but as I understand it Iray support for Mac is coming to an end, and I'm not sure that future drivers will be available either, so it may be an option without a future.
Thanks but that is not what I meant. Configuration would be more like this:
> MacBook Pro would be the machine where DAZ studio is running and I'm working with.
> Windows Desktop with nVidia Card would be the machine where the rendering would happen (probably running iRay server or VCA).
Both should be connected via WLAN. As mentioned blender should support external render solutions.
With DAZ studio there is an Advanced Tab on the Render Setting pane which holds the sub-tab "Bridge [BETA]"
which allows you to connect with either a "Visual Computing Applicance (VCA)" or an "Iray Server" as it seems.
Found info that Iray server can be bought for 295$, also found some info on VCA. Question is whether this might be a good solution
and what a proper hardware for running Iray Server/VCA would be. Did anyone try out or use such a solution?