Build for professional 3D work

[Kiraitsu]

Hi everyone,

 

I am professionally a Lighter/Compositor/Look Development artist working at a major animation studio and I am looking to upgrade my home computer to take on some personal projects out of work.

 

Budget (including currency): ~$3000

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mainly Houdini, Maya, ZBrush, Renderman, Nuke. And some occasional gaming but not the focus here.

Other details: I am not sure whether to go Ryzen or Intel so I have made two builds in PC part picker. I am leaning more toward Intel for now as it seems to save me a couple of bucks while having more cores for rendering, but Ryzen was a build I was originally recommended so I'm not sure if it's better or not.

 

In addition, for the Intel build, there is a mention in the compatibility notes about the CPU cooler bracket maybe not fitting, how could I make sure about that? 

And on the CPU cooler note, I've selected the Noctua fan one but I would really like to switch it for an AIO water cooled one. I just have absolutely no experience with these so I don't know how to pick one. And if I'm rendering for extended period of times I need to make sure it stays as cool as possible. Any advice on that front?

 

Intel part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/tzLjTn

Ryzen part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PYZrKp

 

I am eager to read what this community has to recommend

 

Thanks!

 

[brob]

The note regarding an LGA1700 bracket for the NH-D15 is cautionary as older stock may not have the necessary hardware. The bracket is available from Noctua with proof of purchase.

 

There are issues running 4x32GB on both platforms. If you really must have more than 64GB of memory I'd suggest waiting a few months to let things mature. The other option would be to use an Intel CPU with a DDR4 motherboard. 

 

An AIO is a very good idea for both CPU. Artic Liquid Freezer II 360 has excellent performance. It uses a thicker than usual radiator which eliminates some popular case choices. It will fit in the 5000D.

 

Why not use an NVMe drive instead of the SATA Samsung 870 Evo?

 

Edit: a DDR4 option

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K 3 GHz 24-Core Processor  ($569.99 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 56.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler 
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z790-P WIFI D4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($239.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($289.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($169.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($169.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: Asus TUF GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card  ($1199.00 @ Amazon) 
Case: Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW ATX Mid Tower Case  ($174.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($199.99 @ Best Buy) 
Total: $3013.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-19 00:48 EDT-0400

[SorryBella]

1 hour ago, Kiraitsu said:

how could I make sure about that? 

Noctua will ship you for free, as @brob says. Honestly both sides are hard to cool on air without an aftermarket contact frame, so AIO is definitely the go to when the money suffice.

 

Also, have you make sure that youre going to need 128GB in your workflow? Its not only unstable but it might also be excessive for your workflow. But here's a quick rebuild with all of these in mind, still under the 5% overbudget.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 4.5 GHz 16-Core Processor  ($569.00 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: EK AIO Basic 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($133.98 @ Newegg Sellers) 
Motherboard: ASRock B650 PRO RS ATX AM5 Motherboard  ($212.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory  ($229.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory  ($229.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($122.99 @ B&H) 
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($122.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: MSI VENTUS 3X OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card  ($1182.92 @ Amazon) 
Case: Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW ATX Mid Tower Case  ($174.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Gigabyte UD1000GM 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($148.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $3128.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-19 00:35 EDT-0400

[Kiraitsu]

Thank both of you for the insights!

1 hour ago, brob said:

Why not use an NVMe drive instead of the SATA Samsung 870 Evo?

To be honest, no particular reasons if not to save a couple bucks (even though my budget is rather flexible) as I intended to work from the NVMe and use the SSD for storage. But their price are not that different I could easily get the 2 NVMe if it's recommended.

 

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

Also, have you make sure that youre going to need 128GB in your workflow? 

I am currently operating on 64Gb of RAM and I have had a couple of instances in the past, where when rendering, it could not load the entire scene and failed. I ultimately used my computer at work to handle these files. Alongside the CPU for faster rendering, increasing my RAM is one of my main objectives with this new build.

As, for waiting a few months as @brob suggested it's going to be tough since I am handing off my current machine to my wife which is in need of one rather quickly.

How unstable would be to operate with 128Gb? What kind of major trade-offs would I be looking at by going with DDR4 instead of DDR5? What would you guys recommend ultimately when it comes to performances/stability overall?

I am sorry, I am not really well versed in the computer components realm so I'm not sure what would be the differences.

 

Other than that, I quite like both of you guys' suggested lists. Thanks a lot!

I noticed you both went for a different CPU. Is there any particular reason, or is it just a matter of preference at this point? I looked at some benchmark and they seem to be basically the same.

Also, you both went for the 4080. Is the upgrade to a RTX 4080 over the 4070ti that worth it?

[SorryBella]

55 minutes ago, Kiraitsu said:

I noticed you both went for a different CPU. Is there any particular reason, or is it just a matter of preference at this point?

To me it was really cooling constrains of 13900K, but then i remember at how Maya does like to favor raw core count than architectural differences. The other option to go here would be 7900X3D but i ended up abandoning it because of that, and if we went 7950X3D we would just ended up throwing even below 4070Ti which is suboptimal when all of the apps youre using scales well with CUDA, or dont even have openCL options at all which completely ruled out Radeon GPU.

1 hour ago, Kiraitsu said:

Also, you both went for the 4080. Is the upgrade to a RTX 4080 over the 4070ti that worth it?

Its not even a lot of tweaking, for the AMD its to abandon the X series chipsets as realistically it has all the feature sets you need, even if you need 10 gigabit later on for example. For the Intel you did have to shed more going with DDR4 board and DDR4 kit. But it does come with consolation that again, DDR4 memory controllers are super mature (X99 chipset was out in August 2014, while X370 was out in February 2017, 9 years and 6 years respectively for Intel and AMD) compared to DDR5.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/g8VZpH

CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor  ($417.94 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Frost Commander 140 95.5 CFM CPU Cooler  ($61.49 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 UD AC ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($194.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5200 CL36 Memory  ($219.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Silicon Power A55 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($84.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Western Digital Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($159.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: PNY XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card  ($1649.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Fractal Design Focus 2 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($79.98 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex III Gold 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($114.99 @ Newegg Sellers) 
Total: $2984.35
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-19 06:26 EDT-0400

 

An alternative build with a lower powered CPU and a higher power GPU. It seems that the 13700k will perform reasonably well with your 3d applications listed since viewport performance is mostly dependent on speedy individual cores.

 

However I am fairly inexperience with the renderman render engine and all my performance assumptions are from other renderers. Assuming that renderman does also have nvidia optix, a more powerful GPU + weaker CPU should trump a more powerful CPU + weaker GPU by a fairly large margin. This is with the assumption that renderman also behaves like how other hybrid GPU+CPU renderers behave and I might be mistaken. 

 

I'm not sure if renderman loads the entire scene(when rendering) in the GPU vram or the system ram because most renderers do it in the GPU vram and maybe the system ram if there isn't enough GPU vram. Since you're having issues with large scenes, the 24gb vram on the 4090 may help you a lot more. 

[brob]

7 hours ago, Kiraitsu said:

How unstable would be to operate with 128Gb?

 

It's not so much a stability issue as the need to manually tune memory and the drop in speed.

 

I have not seen a DDR5 motherboard memory QVL that includes a 128GB kit. Nor have I seen a 128GB DDR5 kit available from any of the popular manufacturers. Although Corsair has announced 24GB and 48GB memory modules.

 

[Kiraitsu]

Thanks everyone again for the explanations!

 

In the end, I think I am going to go with @brob's suggestion as my understanding is that going with 128Gb of RAM won't hold much difference between DDR4 and DDR5 as things stand right now. If not for the price or future-proofing in which case I am more of the type to wait long enough to swap the entire system anyway.

 

5 hours ago, Kinda Bottlenecked said:

However I am fairly inexperience with the renderman render engine and all my performance assumptions are from other renderers. Assuming that renderman does also have nvidia optix, a more powerful GPU + weaker CPU should trump a more powerful CPU + weaker GPU by a fairly large margin. This is with the assumption that renderman also behaves like how other hybrid GPU+CPU renderers behave and I might be mistaken. 

Renderman does have an XPU rendering option but this is exclusive to the paid license and I'm only using the non-commercial license at home so my rendering will be exclusively CPU based.

 

One last question, when it comes to building, as this will be my first time installing a AIO CPU cooler, do you have any recommendations as to which side and orientation is the most optimal?

[brob]

59 minutes ago, Kiraitsu said:

...

One last question, when it comes to building, as this will be my first time installing a AIO CPU cooler, do you have any recommendations as to which side and orientation is the most optimal

 

Top as exhaust may be tight with fans mounted underneath.  https://ibb.co/ZmHPFgR illustrates a successful installation. Note how the AIO slightly overhangs the top edge of the motherboard. To successfully complete the installation the motherboard has to be installed first along with any cabling along the top edge. An alternative is to mount the fans as pull on top of the case frame, the top cover will hide the fans.

 

It may be possible to mount the AIO in front or side. In those positions the tubing connections should be at the bottom so there may be issues given the GPU length. 

 

If front as intake will work that would be my first choice. Side as intake second. And, top as exhaust third.

[Kiraitsu]

Amazing! Thanks a lot for the advice!