Professional Workstation Upgrade

[validPixel]

Budget (including currency): 5-10k

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: SideFX Houdini, Nuke, Redshift 

 

So I am looking into building a new desktop to do some potential freelance (more of a consideration now that everyone is working from home), and some personal testing.

The main software package the I use is SideFX Houdini, so that is the main package to build around (I will probably game a bit on it but that is not the focus).

 

OS:

Right now my plan in to run linux on the machine since Houdini is much more stable on that than it is on windows (will most likely be running popOS!).

 

I am thinking of building around:

• AMD Threadripper 3960x
• Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000
• 64 gb ram (open to suggestions on brand/speed)

So far those are the 3 basic components that I have settled on, Houdini is kind of a hog for every resource on the computer.

Houdini has a lot of openCL implementation for running simulations, so that means you need the onboard video memory to be fairly high, and the more cuda cores the better for that.

 

What is the objective:

1. Something a little future proof/can be upgraded - I would like to be able to put in multiple GPUs down the line/or add more ram
2.  No Overclocking (it is more about consistency for production work than peaking the performance)
3. Able to hook up to a color accurate monitor (for proper colour display and grading)
4. Air cooling (I am not the biggest fan of water cooling or introducing another fail point to the system)
5. Have a machine that is a monster for production work and can do a bit of gaming on the side

What I need advice on:

• Which motherboard to buy? I don't have any preference in this, but something that can handle multiple GPUs would be nice for expanding down the line
• Storage, i definitely want a nvme drive for the OS and Apps, and a fast ssd to use for caching things too (brands and suggestions would be great).
• Cooling I am leaning towards Noctua for fans.
• Case suggestions, since I want to air cool something with good air flow would be great and being quiet would be nice
• Power Supply, taking suggestions for this.

Monitors:

This is something that I also want to upgrade, that can be further down the line though.

I would like to replace my 2 12+ year old monitors with something that is HDR compliant and maybe has a decent refresh rate for the odd time I game.

Hooking a 3rd small monitor up to the system to use for code would be a bonus.

 

[emosun]

You could also opt for a dual socket AMD eypc setup and just run it with a single socket cpu for now. It'll give you a wider upgrade path down the line if your software can tax any hardware that is available. otherwise a single socket consumer level threadripper setup will run out of upgrades a lot sooner than a workstation/server platform.

[SupaKomputa]

Take the newly announced RTX3090 with 24gb vram.

[validPixel]

16 hours ago, emosun said:

You could also opt for a dual socket AMD eypc setup and just run it with a single socket cpu for now. It'll give you a wider upgrade path down the line if your software can tax any hardware that is available. otherwise a single socket consumer level threadripper setup will run out of upgrades a lot sooner than a workstation/server platform.

That is definitely an interesting idea, i wonder if the lack for PCIE gen 4 would hurt performance though?

 

15 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Take the newly announced RTX3090 with 24gb vram.

I was shying away from consumer cards of the off chance that i start linking cards together with a nvLink down the line.

From what I understand, the consumer cards don't actually share their vram when you do that, it is more for just dual sli in games (at least nVidia does not advertise that they would share vram like they do for their professional cards). 

[emosun]

16 minutes ago, validPixel said:

That is definitely an interesting idea, i wonder if the lack for PCIE gen 4 would hurt performance though?

No , not really

If we pretend you bought a similar rig several years ago from today... the pci-e generation wouldn't be an issue modern day. The lack of cpu speed would be , along with most likely the drive and ram speeds.

The biggest upgrade issues with older hardware usually end up being that you hit a cpu limit or ram speed limit. everything else usually isnt much of a problem on older systems.

[validPixel]

9 hours ago, emosun said:

No , not really

If we pretend you bought a similar rig several years ago from today... the pci-e generation wouldn't be an issue modern day. The lack of cpu speed would be , along with most likely the drive and ram speeds.

The biggest upgrade issues with older hardware usually end up being that you hit a cpu limit or ram speed limit. everything else usually isnt much of a problem on older systems.

Thanks that is definitely something to keep in mind. Are there any sort of config sites for these processors/boards?? I usually use pcpartpicker for checking the compatibility of components, but they do have server stuff listed? Would a server board require more tuning in the bios to get up and running compared to a consumer board??

[SupaKomputa]

13 hours ago, validPixel said:

I was shying away from consumer cards of the off chance that i start linking cards together with a nvLink down the line.

From what I understand, the consumer cards don't actually share their vram when you do that, it is more for just dual sli in games (at least nVidia does not advertise that they would share vram like they do for their professional cards). 

Quote

NVIDIA TITAN RTX NVLink Bridge

The TITAN RTX NVLink^™ bridge connects two TITAN RTX cards together over a 100 GB/s interface. The result is an effective doubling of memory capacity to 48 GB, so that you can train neural networks faster, process even larger datasets, and work with some of the biggest rendering models.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/deep-learning-ai/products/titan-rtx/#:~:text=NVIDIA TITAN RTX NVLink Bridge,of the biggest rendering models.

Assuming the 3090 is the latest titan, you can use it.

Same goes if you search for "2080 ti Nvlink"