rendering pc for poor architecture student?

[cgbeige]

i7 3770k is a good start. what's your budget?

[AJ1]

You might be able to get away with a low end dual socket setup for around 1600.

You wont need a GPU if its a render slave, so you can put all your money into 16+GB of RAM and as much CPU as possible.

-AJ

[olson]

I'd suggest checking out the AMD FX-8350 for a budget build. For the money you can't beat it. Also be sure to check out if you can get a discounted copy of Windows through your school (or a general academic reseller). I was able to get a copy when I was in school for like $10 from the bookstore. :thumbsup:

[shapemaster]

Thanks for the replies!

Would it make sense to have high cpu speed and ram with a low-end gpu? In my understanding I'd still need a pretty decent gpu for everything else beside rendering, right?

Is it possible to get a dual quadcore system with a budget of 1600? Is it better to have less but faster cores or more but slower?

If I had to choose between more ram or more cpu, which is it?


Sorry about all the questions, I'm trying to understand what factors to consider when building a 3d-work-specific pc. :)

[AJ1]

Well if your just doing arch viz, you probably don't need to go too crazy with the GPU.

I do mostly still stuff with millions of polys, and I get along just fine with my $60 GPU. My view frame rate is pretty slow, but it doesn't slow me down at all for static modelling work.

I would suppose if your doing lots of animation and particle crazyness, having that extra realtime view performance would help.

I would look at cinibench scores of various platforms, and see what offers the best bang for your buck. A high end single socket 6-8 core setup will usually outperform a low end dual quad core setup in raytracing.

This ones 570 and scores an 11.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492

These two are 600, and would score around 9-10.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117270

-AJ

[lehmi]

If your budget is limited I would not consider buying a dual/multi socket socket system.

The CPUs are usually more expensive and slower than the desktop cpus. You can can decent single socket motherboards for less than 100 bucks. Good multi socket boards usually cost 3 to 4 times as much. PSU will be more expensive etc. etc.

Just build two systems for comparison and you will see that any single core system will beat dual socket systems if it comes to cost per speed.

Plus: If you build 3 renderslaves instead of having one huge machine - if one of the PCs is crashing the renders before you go to bed. Two are still rendering. If the big single machine crashed - lots of render hours lost.

Plus: If you don't have to render but only work - a single socket workstation will suck a lot less electricity while you can turn off the rendernodes and save energy and money. When the huge machine if always runnign in idle it will waste your money.

Just buy similar machines, built and update them, install all the software and then clone the disks with clonezilla. Of course theres a number where the cost of software licenses and OS will be higher than the benefit from the desktop / consumer price, but that is pretty high imo.

:)