PC build for Houdini Indie, and Maya Indie!

[simhachal kumar]

I’m a beginner (started 6 months ago) and I was thinking about a PC build for Houdini, Maya. I want to know if going with a CPU with more cores benefits Houdini simulations - does it matter as I am just starting out?
For Pyro FX, Fluids, Particle, DestructionFX, Grains, etc.,

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is like the base CPU, I’m considering. I play games too. And, money is not a problem. But, don’t want to spend on something I won’t use/benefit at all.

I want the PC to last for a while. 3-5 years, or perhaps, even more.

PC spec, I’m thinking:
1. CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
2. GPU: ASUS TUF RTX 3090
3. RAM: 64GB (4 * 16GB 3600MHz CL18, DDR4)

I read on the internet that AMD may have plans for a new AMD Threadripper with 16 cores (waiting for CES 2021.)

Software I’m gonna use:
1. Maya Indie
2. Houdini Indie
3. Redshift (for rendering.)
4. Zbrush too (sometime later, 1-1.5 years later when I’m good enough with modelling. Heard Zbrush benefits from more cores.)

As I said earlier, can afford, but don’t want to spend on something I won’t use. I know 64GB of RAM is too much for a beginner, and I read that DDR5 is gonna be out in 2-3 years.

Should I go for AMD 5950X (when in stock) instead, or should I wait for the Threadripper 5000 series?
Or, Is AMD Ryzen 5900X fine?

 

[Jerry James]

You might find this thread interesting We were just discussing something similar here as well - PC Workstation for Cinema 4D Simulations (X-Particles & TurbulenceFD) & Houdini | CGDirector Forum

As for your spec, I think it's great. But the 3090 isn't good value at all. The VRAM is it's only selling point. Are you sure you need that much additional VRAM for your work? If not, I'd go with an RTX 3080 instead. Let me know if you were able to find answers to your questions in the thread above

 

[simhachal kumar]

Thank you!
Sorry, I was too excited and didn't check if there is a thread already on this site regarding on the same topic.

I have a gaming laptop with RTX 2060 and want a better viewport performance. I thought RTX 3080 may not make much difference as it has only 10GB of VRAM. 24GB is too much, but, there no GPU in between, and I don't want to go for AMD. I use redshift, too.

I read on the internet that Maya uses only 1 GPU for the viewport. So, I thought of RTX 3090 will be a good option.

 

[Jerry James]

It really depends on the scenes and the kind of work you need to handle. I know professionals who scoff at anything less than 96GB VRAM and others who are just fine with 10GB. Better viewport performance will come with a better CPU as actions like moving around a scene, transforming, and so on are dependent on its single-core performance. You can check viewport benchmarks for Cinema4D here (they should represent the experience you'd get within most professional viewports) - Cinema 4D Viewport Performance Benchmark & Scores (Updated Results) (cgdirector.com)

Just to know what your usage is like, could you open up some of your typical scenes and check your VRAM usage while you're working? You should be able to see it in Windows Task Manager > Performance (tab) > GPU > Dedicated GPU memory usage

 

[simhachal kumar]

I mean render view performance.

I was using Blender & Unreal engine before moving on to Maya, and Houdini (found about Indie versions.) Due to space constraints, I deleted those files (Unreal project files, Quixel bridge). I was learning applying materials, textures (all those base colour, normal maps, bump, specular, etc., a few times volumetrics, simulations in Blender).
RTX 2060 was taking more than 15 seconds to load those textures. Sometimes Blender used to crash.
With i7 8750H, it used too slow (particularly unreal engine).

I kinda don't have those files, I mean. And, I have been a little busy lately due to projects, and submissions; I am doing my MBA in marketing. I was thinking about getting back to learning those parallelly while learning modelling in Maya. So, I thought RTX 3090.

I will be learning Maya, and Houdini for now.

Additional Info: I was a mechanical engineer in my graduation, kinda have an idea on 3D Modelling, btw. I mean to say that is the reason I was learning applying textures parallelly.

Thank you for your quick reply. I will check my GPU usage and will choose the GPU accordingly!