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3ds max Rendering Computer - 32, 16, or 8 threads?

Quadlazer
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I'm looking for raw CPU rendering power to speed through scanline renders in 3ds max.

 

The scanline renderer is all CPU based, and I do not plan to use a GPU accelerated renderer any time soon. Scene size and textures should fit into 32GB of RAM, but I also use After Effects, so 64GB or more is a nice bonus, and also future proofs the build a bit. I want to stick with water cooling, not only because I want to overclock, but these processors will be pegged at 100% almost all the time, so I want efficient cooling that isn't too noisy. Because of a limitation in Windows Processor Groups, 3ds max is limited to utilizing 36 cores max.

 

As mentioned, the GPU is not very important, and will only really be used for the Nitrous viewport acceleration in 3ds max, and perhaps a few filters in After Effects. CUDA is actually important for some of these GPU tasks, so I'll stick with nVidia. I stuck a GTX 960 in these samples, cause it's good enough. I could probably use a 750Ti without any major detriment. No Quadro needed or wanted. I will never be playing games on this PC.

 

Money is not necessarily an issue, but I need to keep this within reason. No $8000 Xeon E7 18-core processors unless you can actually prove it is the best bang-for-the-buck choice. I managed to stay under or around $3000 total, just for reference. I'm in Southern California, and can do local in-store pickups.

 

So with all that in mind, I built 4 systems:

  • A Devil's Canyon machine with 4 physical cores and 8 logical cores (plan to overclock to 4.6Ghz)
  • A Skylake machine with 4 physical cores and 8 logical cores (plan to overclock to 4.6Ghz)
  • A 5960X machine with 8 physical cores and 16 logical cores (plan to overclock to 4.5Ghz)
  • A dual socket Xeon machine with 16 physical cores (8 each) and 32 logical cores (stock clock)

A crude calculation of (gigahertz * logical cores)/cost gives us these numbers:

  • Devil's Canyon = 36.8Ghz, $42/Ghz
  • Skylake = 36.8, $47/Ghz
  • 5960X = 72, $33/Ghz
  • dual socket Xeon = 76.8, $40/Ghz

Of course that's all rubbish, because the increase in performance is not linear with each additional thread, especially the hyper-threaded ones (my estimate is each hyperthread is only about 20% the efficiency of a physical one; in some cases, they will actually slow down the render). All sorts of inefficiencies will slow down the systems, with the dual socket system hiding the most, I believe. But that is where the internet has failed me. I can't find benchmarks comparing systems like these, specifically using the 3ds max scanline renderer. Cinebench and 3dmark mean very little to me, and not even Autodesk tests much hardware. Closest I found is a user benchmarking thread for Vray in 3ds max.

 

Here are all the PCPartPicker lists. Which do you think would give the best performance for the money? Also, if anyone has experience buying and using Engineering or Qualification sample processors, I'd like to hear from you.

 

Devil's Canyon Build

 
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($269.98 @ Micro Center) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($109.58 @ Micro Center) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($118.78 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($237.37 @ Newegg) 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($43.18 @ Newegg) 
Total: $1568.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-19 02:43 EST-0500

 

Skylake Build

 
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($388.78 @ Micro Center) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($109.58 @ Micro Center) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170M-PLUS Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($134.98 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($237.37 @ Newegg) 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($43.18 @ Newegg) 
Total: $1735.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-19 02:42 EST-0500

 

5960X Build

 
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor  ($971.98 @ Micro Center) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($109.58 @ Micro Center) 
Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($201.85 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($237.37 @ Newegg) 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($43.18 @ Newegg) 
Total: $2385.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-19 02:41 EST-0500

 

Dual Xeon Build

 
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 V3 2.4GHz 8-Core Processor  ($679.30 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 V3 2.4GHz 8-Core Processor  ($679.30 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H55 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($54.78 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H55 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($54.78 @ Newegg) 
Motherboard: Asus Z10PA-D8 ATX Dual-CPU LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($408.22 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($273.28 @ Mac Mall) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($154.42 @ NCIX US) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($237.37 @ Newegg) 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($43.18 @ Newegg) 
Total: $3062.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-19 02:20 EST-0500
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Dual Xeons any day of the week. 

CPU: Intel i7 - 5820k @ 4.5GHz, Cooler: Corsair H80i, Motherboard: MSI X99S Gaming 7, RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 2666MHz CL16,

GPU: ASUS GTX 980 Strix, Case: Corsair 900D, PSU: Corsair AX860i 860W, Keyboard: Logitech G19, Mouse: Corsair M95, Storage: Intel 730 Series 480GB SSD, WD 1.5TB Black

Display: BenQ XL2730Z 2560x1440 144Hz

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Any other model you would recommend? There are so damn many...

As you said Max can't take advantage of more than 36 threads so I would imagine that your sweet spot is right where you are.

CPU: Intel i7 - 5820k @ 4.5GHz, Cooler: Corsair H80i, Motherboard: MSI X99S Gaming 7, RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 2666MHz CL16,

GPU: ASUS GTX 980 Strix, Case: Corsair 900D, PSU: Corsair AX860i 860W, Keyboard: Logitech G19, Mouse: Corsair M95, Storage: Intel 730 Series 480GB SSD, WD 1.5TB Black

Display: BenQ XL2730Z 2560x1440 144Hz

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In that case, is just buying new Xeons best? There seems to be a trend in people buying used Xeons on eBay, but I'm never sure of the quality. Also, I see "engineering samples" and "qualification samples" there a lot, and was wondering if they are worth trying since they are generally so much cheaper.

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