My first build for rendering.

Rex1549 · August 10, 2021

Budget (including currency): 2000€ (but any less would be great, I'm on a strict budget)

Country: France

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Blender (including simulating fluids and rigidbodies), Light gaming at 1440p (most modern game I own is TW : Three Kingdoms)

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): CPU : Ryzen 7 5800X (Overkill ? Worth going higher for a 5900X ?)
Cooler : Noctua NH-U12S redux because cheap (enough for a 5800X ?)

Mobo : GIGABYTE B550 AORUS Elite V2 (just need something that wont blow up and that includes M.2 slots with some expansion options)

GPU : RTX 3080 (will buy later in 2022 when the shortage stops), GTX 1060 (second hand for use until the 3080 comes down in price)

RAM : Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz 2x16GB (upgrade later to 64 GB for rendering large scenes) (is 3600MHz enough ? worth going for 3200 or 4000 instead ?)

Storage : Sabrent Rocket 4.0 NVMe QLC 1TB (upgrading later but 1TB should be fine as a start)

PSU : Seasonic FOCUS 850W 80+ Gold (cheap-ish, reliable, reputable, powerful enough for a 3080 + 5800X combo ?)

Case : BT CORSAIR 275R Airflow in white (to match my current mouse. And I know, I'm OCD that way) because it includes fans and is cheap. (any other suggestions for cases ? I have no knowledge in that area)

Wh0_Am_1 · August 10, 2021

Whether you need that CPU depends on how much baking you expect to do and which render engine you choose to go with. If you are fine with cycles (with out Nvidia RTX acceleration) you can render on your GPU and share your RAM with your GPU. Also do not get rid of that 1060 you can use it for rendering other projects, working on other projects, running games on it while rendering on your 3080 or vice versa. I would recommend factoring that in to your power calculations.

Rex1549 · August 14, 2021

On 8/10/2021 at 11:26 AM, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Whether you need that CPU depends on how much baking you expect to do and which render engine you choose to go with. If you are fine with cycles (with out Nvidia RTX acceleration) you can render on your GPU and share your RAM with your GPU. Also do not get rid of that 1060 you can use it for rendering other projects, working on other projects, running games on it while rendering on your 3080 or vice versa. I would recommend factoring that in to your power calculations.

I don't think I will keep the 1060. I'm still quite slow at animating so I won't be rendering all the time. On top of that, I plan on rendering overnight or while I work on a laptop so if I want to game I can just pause the render.

I usually render with cycles and the OptiX ray acceleration is one of the main reasons I'm going with an RTX card in the long run. Also, their AI denoiser is temporally stable so should help me pump out more frames on the animations I make with less render times.

But I'm mostly worried about CPU cooling. If I'm baking physics sims, my CPU will be under a pretty heavy load and I'm not sure the NH-U12S redux is performant enough to keep temps under control. Is it worth buying the NH-U12S for 10€ more or going for a full 100€ NH-D15 ?

Wh0_Am_1 · August 14, 2021

3 hours ago, Rex1549 said:

I don't think I will keep the 1060. I'm still quite slow at animating so I won't be rendering all the time. On top of that, I plan on rendering overnight or while I work on a laptop so if I want to game I can just pause the render.

Depending at what settings you are rendering at these scenes and the scale they may take hours or even days to render a frame sure if you are willing to cut corners and are working on small scenes in a not-that-complax rooms with relatively low poly counts and ray counts you may be able to cut that down to only a 5 to 15 minutes but cycles does not support pausing renders so you will have to toss whatever frame you are rendering. But one way or another you are going to want to have a back up GPU or device capable of meeting your needs in the mean time. Honestly the work setup I would recommend for an aspiring blender user that is not sure if they can keep a fast GPU fed, is for you to render on the 1060 24/7 while you game, and work on blender scenes with the faster 3080 with Optix while using Rendered view

3 hours ago, Rex1549 said:

But I'm mostly worried about CPU cooling. If I'm baking physics sims, my CPU will be under a pretty heavy load and I'm not sure the NH-U12S redux is performant enough to keep temps under control. Is it worth buying the NH-U12S for 10€ more or going for a full 100€ NH-D15 ?

Should be good enough for short bursts but I would recommend a beefier cooler if you plan to perform long bakes.

Rex1549 · August 16, 2021

Thanks for the info. You make some good points. I think I may end up keeping the 1060 and going with your idea.

I've also opted to go for a bigger NH-U14S cooler which is much cheaper than the NH-D15 and is quite performant, even if it almost doesn't fit in the case (5mm to spare !).

I've gone and ordered the parts now and I'll be building the computer in the coming days.

Thanks for your help !

Wh0_Am_1 · August 17, 2021

17 hours ago, Rex1549 said:

Thanks for the info. You make some good points. I think I may end up keeping the 1060 and going with your idea.

I've also opted to go for a bigger NH-U14S cooler which is much cheaper than the NH-D15 and is quite performant, even if it almost doesn't fit in the case (5mm to spare !).

I've gone and ordered the parts now and I'll be building the computer in the coming days.

Thanks for your help !

Your welcome! and welcome to the LTT forums!