Dedicated render PC

[Jamie3D]

Hey folks,

Alongside building a new and improved workstation, I'm also looking to build a powerful dedicated render PC. The budget is kind of open right now so any suggestions regardless of price would be great.

Here's what the custom pc builder gave me and that's come in much cheaper than I expected so I'm assuming a lot more can be done:

CGDirector.com Parts List: https://www.cgdirector.com/pc-builder/?=6LZ96

CPU: AMD Threadripper 3970X 3.7GHz 32-Core Processor ($2074.35)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 ($79.90)
Motherboard: Gigabyte TRX40 Designare XL-ATX sTRX4 ($629.00)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660 6GB - EVGA XC Gaming ($409.98)
Memory: 64GB (4 x 16GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 C16 ($364.99)
Storage PCIe-SSD: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 Solid State Drive ($139.99)
Power Supply: Seasonic Focus GM-650, 650W 80+ Gold Power Supply ($99.99)
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 780T ($292.99)
Total: $4091.19

Again like my new workstation I'll be primarily working within Maya and Arnold for now with an eye to potentially move to GPU rendering in the future.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jamie.

 

[Alex Glawion]

The PC looks good, apart from the occasional price-inflation on some parts which is pretty normal right now. The build is heavily specialized towards CPU rendering, so if you plan on transitioning to gpu rendering in the future, be sure your GPU is stronger than the one you have in the build right now. A RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 would be a good start. And if you need more performance later on you can add more GPUs.

 

[Jamie3D]

The PC looks good, apart from the occasional price-inflation on some parts which is pretty normal right now. The build is heavily specialized towards CPU rendering, so if you plan on transitioning to gpu rendering in the future, be sure your GPU is stronger than the one you have in the build right now. A RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 would be a good start. And if you need more performance later on you can add more GPUs.

Thanks Alex, I'm curious why I'm seeing some PCs costing up to 15k and the likes online? While I'm not trying to start my own renderfarm or anything I am trying to build a very good render pc, do you have any advice on what I could add to this build to beef it up?

Thanks,
Jamie.

 

[Alex Glawion]

Where are you seeing these 15k PCs? Mostly that price is when you buy pre-built and the companies just mark-up their prices by a huge amount. Building yourself is always a lot cheaper.

Also, the build you have in the first post, has a really weak GPU which is fairly cheap. If you built in a strong RTX 3090 for 1500$ or even multiple of those, you'll get close to a very high budget.

 

[Jamie3D]

Where are you seeing these 15k PCs? Mostly that price is when you buy pre-built and the companies just mark-up their prices by a huge amount. Building yourself is always a lot cheaper.

Also, the build you have in the first post, has a really weak GPU which is fairly cheap. If you built in a strong RTX 3090 for 1500$ or even multiple of those, you'll get close to a very high budget.

Yeah they definitely are very over priced pre made things I'm sure. Could you recommend storage? I would be looking for the full 256GB of RAM and maybe 10 - 16 TB of HDD. Also would that PSU you sufficient? If I did go for the weaker GPU for now since I'm only going to be CPU rendering is it easy in the future to simply purchase a better GPU, as in would I run into much issues around installing a new GPU?

Thanks.

 

[Alex Glawion]

You'll need a stronger PSU if you upgrade your GPU in the future. To be on the safe side I'd go with a 850W PSU which will be able to drive any of the GPUs currently on the market.

There are high-capacity HDDs from Seagate. The Seagate Barracuda (I think compute pro).