New workstation for Maya, Zbrush, After Effects, Nuke, Houdini, V-Ray, Redshift

[schizo]

Hello!

I'm shopping around for a new workstation, as I want to start contracting remotely. I've been working in 3D at commercial studios for a while, but have never been super interested in hardware, which has changed quite a bit and is way more expensive since I last built my last personal PC many years ago; so I'm catching up learning about the latest components. I'm leaning towards ordering from a pro workstation builder, because as a novice builder am afraid of screwing something up with expensive parts, or a liquid cooling system or something not optimized in the build due to my inexperience. Thoughts? After shopping a bunch of builders' configuration sites, I'm finding Falcon Northwest seems maybe slightly cheaper for comparable builds from companies, but I'm open to suggestions.

I used CG-Director's nice PC Building app, and tried others as well... while a good start, most seem to base usage on either modeling/animation OR rendering, but I will likely be doing both. I'll mainly be using Maya (from modeling to rendering), Photoshop, After Effects, Zbrush & Nuke. Rendering will likely be in V-Ray, but I am also looking to start dabbling in GPU renderers like Redshift or Octane. I also want to learn some Houdini, Substance and Unreal. So I need both CPU and GPU power, but don't have a huge budget. Ideally I will get something that won't lag too much in any area, but also won't break the bank.. perhaps that is too much to ask for!

Basic specs I am considering using Falcon's configuration tool:

CPU: AMD Threadripper 3960X 24-core
Cooling: Falcon 280mm liquid cooling (not sure what brand it would end up being)
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-XE
RAM: G.Skill RipJaws 64GB (4x16GB) 2666MHz DDR4
GPU: Nvidia EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB
OS drive: Samsung 980 PRO M.2 SSD 1TB
Data drive: Samsung 2.5" 870 QVO SATA SSD 4TB
Power supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 1000w

This build is about $7099, which is a lot for me. It seems that for $7K, I should be getting 32-core, so based on my intended usage, do you see somewhere I can cut back on? Maybe I could scale back the GPU. But it sounds like 32-core CPU, 64GB RAM and 24GB GPU are many artists' recommended minimums.

A few questions:
1. CPU - is the AMD 3960X 24-core sufficient, or would I really miss having an AMD Threadripper 3970X 32-core? Or on the flip side, can I even get away with a regular AMD Ryzen instead of a Threadripper?
2. RAM - I can upgrade from G.Skill RipJaws 64GB 2666MHz to G.Skill TridentZ 64GB 3600MHz for an additional $163... but is it worth it?
3. Some configs I see use a 3rd smaller disk for scratch data. Is this recommended or really necessary?
4. OS drive - I saw one YouTube video recommending 2TB, but that sounds to me like overkill? I'm thinking 1TB is more than enough.
5. Data drive - I read recommendations of 4TB. What is recommended if doing Houdini sims? Again, I would just be learning Houdini at first. But want to have enough in case I really get into it. Also, I read SATA is better if you need to recover data, but SSD is better for video editing? And any benefit of 2.5" vs 3.5"?

Am I being overly cautious with self-building, and is the money I can save really worth trying to build it myself?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!

 

[Alex Glawion]

The lower core count CPUs have higher clocks, meaning you'll see faster active work, but slower cpu rendering performance. Redshift, because it uses your GPU(s) makes better use of fast CPU clocks than lots of cores. If you do lots of CPU Rendering, though, like V-Ray CPU Rendering, more cores equals faster render performance.

I'd go for that RAM upgrade. You're investing a good junk of money into the PC, and although the additional money spent for the higher clocked RAM won't be proportional to the performance increase, you don't want to cripple your CPUs performance by using slow RAM. Again, if it's mostly cpu rendering you do, with lower complexity scenes, fast RAM won't make a difference, but if you do lots of active work, I'd make sure your CPU is supported as well as possible by it's surrounding components, and that includes RAM clock speed and latency.

I (as a fellow 3D Artist) have a variety of discs in my PC, but they are mostly meant for backups. If you ignore those, I only have 2 NVMe SSDs, one for the OS/Software, one for my active Projects. A third scratch disc is helpful in video editing, but for 3D workloads not really needed. You could offload your swap file, hyberfile to that third disc, but if your main OS disc is large enough, not needed, and won't improve performance.

I started with a 256GB OS disc, had to upgrade to 512 2 years later, and am now already almost nearing a full disc, so I'll have to upgrade once again. 1TB is the minimum, especially when you, as you said, use a lot of different programs that have large libraries. You'll also most likely have a lot of different versions on your PC. I've got like 5 Cinema 4D Versions alone, because there are projects that were made with older versions. Adobe CC as well, lots of Versions just take up lots of space.

I have a 1 TB NVMe SSD as my data drive / project drive. BUT, I only keep active projects on it. If a client or project is done, I move it to an HDD NAS after a while. With Sims, you can easily fill up 4TB in no time. You'll have to move or get rid of some caches regularly. In my opinion it's just not worth it to have huge amounts of project files that aren't used anymore on expensive and fast drives. Just move them onto longterm storage HDD / backup to free up space for your active projects every couple of months or so.

You can't compare SATA to SSD. The first is a bus interface, the other is a storage device type. What you need are PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs that you plug into M.2 connectors on your Motherboard. There's nothing better than that. Your DATA drive should definitely be an NVME SSD like the Samsung 980 Pro. This drive is even more important in terms of performance demand than the OS drive.

I wouldn't buy drives because one is easier to recover data from. If you get to that point, you've already lost. Keep regular backups. I backup my active projects every day, and have redundant backups on HDDs that I do every month in different physical locations.

Your build looks good overall! Just swap the data drive with an nvme drive.

By building yourself you usually save around 20-30%. There isn't much you can do wrong, there are tons of videos and articles on how to put everything together. Sort of like an advanced lego set.

The main benefit is, that you learn how this stuff works and can easily swap out parts and troubleshoot any future issues, without having to send your PC back to where it came from without having a replacement.

 

[Jerry James]

CPU - is the AMD 3960X 24-core sufficient, or would I really miss having an AMD Threadripper 3970X 32-core? Or on the flip side, can I even get away with a regular AMD Ryzen instead of a Threadripper?

Well, depends whether you'd like better single core performance for a boost to viewport performance or would you prefer more cores for better CPU rendering performance. If you're using a GPU renderer and don't plan to use more than 3 graphics cards, a Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core CPU would be a great middle ground to enjoy the best of both worlds.
PS. For cooling, either get a good 360mm AIO or go with a quality Air Cooler. The 280mm coolers aren't that much of an improvement to warrant the price increase.

RAM - I can upgrade from G.Skill RipJaws 64GB 2666MHz to G.Skill TridentZ 64GB 3600MHz for an additional $163... but is it worth it?

Yep, with AMD processors, the sweet spot is 3600 MHz. You'll have a noticeable improvement when moving around the viewport within complex scenes. Worth it.

Some configs I see use a 3rd smaller disk for scratch data. Is this recommended or really necessary?

It's recommended. The reason - you'll have tons of data writing and re-writing when working on projects. If you're using your primary SSD for this, you'll reduce its lifespan by a good margin as their life depends on the total data written to it over its lifetime.

OS drive - I saw one YouTube video recommending 2TB, but that sounds to me like overkill? I'm thinking 1TB is more than enough.

No hard recommendation here. But yep, 1 TB should be enough for your OS drive.

Data drive - I read recommendations of 4TB. What is recommended if doing Houdini sims?

I remember sims needing a substantial amount of RAM, but storage not so much. Anything works and pretty much depends on your project sizes. I'd go with as much you can get for a reasonable amount of money so you don't have to bother with a storage expansion anytime soon.

And any benefit of 2.5" vs 3.5"?

Nope. Just a form factor change.

Am I being overly cautious with self-building, and is the money I can save really worth trying to build it myself?

Definitely worth it, I'd say. You can save money and also tweak a build for your exact use case. Win win.
PS. We have plenty of guides to help you with the building process too.

 

[schizo]

Thank you both for your thoughtful replies! Some great info to chew on.

After my original post (and before your replies), I had inquired with a local builder in L.A. that I found on eBay called "impeccablepc". He quoted me around $6500 for the following build. I then looked up parts pricing on Amazon (indicated in parentheses):

Case: NZXT H710 ($173)
Motherboard: ASRock TRX40 Taichi ($544)
CPU: Threadripper 3970X 32-core ($2621)
RAM: G.Skill 64GB (2x32) TridentZ 3600MHz ($319)
Graphics: Nvidia RTX 3080 10GB ($2149)
OS drive: Samsung 970 EVO plus 1TB ($141)
Data drive: Samsung 970 EVO plus 2TB ($280)
Liquid cooling: Corsair H150i PRO XT 360mm ($141)
Power supply: EVGA SuperNova 1000W 80 PLUS Gold ($144)

So the parts on Amazon add up to $6512, and he's quoting me about the same for the build. The quote reflects savings on tax & shipping as I would be picking up locally, but I would still expect a build to cost more than parts, unless he is getting some super deals. He claims that they use no used/refurbished parts, only new stuff. Does something seem fishy here? He doesn't have much of an online presence outside of eBay but does have a 100% feedback rating. I'm not opposed to trying to build myself, but if it's going to save some time having it done. He said it would take around 5 business days, which is not too bad considering other major builders are at least a month to deliver.

 

[schizo]

Update... I see Amazon doesn't necessarily bring up the cheapest 3rd party vendors of new items. By using Google Shopping instead, parts total gets down to just under $5500. So by attempting a build by myself, I would save about $1K.

 

[Jerry James]

Update... I see Amazon doesn't necessarily bring up the cheapest 3rd party vendors of new items. By using Google Shopping instead, parts total gets down to just under $5500. So by attempting a build by myself, I would save about $1K.

Yep, that sounds about right wrt the premium most builders would charge. Of course, if peace of mind of not having to build yourself and troubleshooting support (if available) are worth the extra, go for it. Otherwise, we're here to help if you do get stuck anywhere

 

[schizo]

Quick question on graphics cards. I'm learning that with graphics cards, there are several manufacturers of Nvidia RTX cards. For example, looking at EVGA brand - just for an RTX 3080, I see many versions such as XC3, XC3 Hybrid, XC3 Hybrid Copper, and FTW3. I'm also reading some manufacturers are now making "low hash rate" versions of RTX cards, which evidently curbs sales to bitcoin miners and helps supply. How to navigate which version of an RTX 3080 is best suited for 3D rendering and my build? The articles I've read comparing card benchmarks don't specify which "flavor" they used. Just don't want to make a mistake purchasing. Thanks again

 

[Jerry James]

Quick question on graphics cards. I'm learning that with graphics cards, there are several manufacturers of Nvidia RTX cards. For example, looking at EVGA brand - just for an RTX 3080, I see many versions such as XC3, XC3 Hybrid, XC3 Hybrid Copper, and FTW3. I'm also reading some manufacturers are now making "low hash rate" versions of RTX cards, which evidently curbs sales to bitcoin miners and helps supply. How to navigate which version of an RTX 3080 is best suited for 3D rendering and my build? The articles I've read comparing card benchmarks don't specify which "flavor" they used. Just don't want to make a mistake purchasing. Thanks again

Most cards will perform similarly unless they're badly made. They'll just have minor boost clock differences here and there, but nothing substantial enough to affect work. On the higher-end (3080/3090), it's generally a good idea to avoid twin fan models to be safe from any potential overheating issues.

For GPU rendering, we always recommend blower model cards, which are better suited to stacking (using more than two in a single system).