Gaming PCs for Professional CG with Cinema 4D and Redshift

#19

I have to second 3DFluff on this.

Lately I have completely revitalized my old 4770k machine with a 2080Ti for Redshift and it is 90% as fast as my beastly Threadripper, also with a 2080Ti.

This has made me think that if you go the GPU route your PC basically becomes nothing more than something that powers the editor, prepares frames for the GPU and can provide the storage for your frames (which can also be a network drive by the way).

So yea, all my old workstations are getting a nice GPU upgrade.

#20

I’m really excited to get going with this beast of a PC - childishly so … my current main workstation at home is like 4 years old - but has a single Quadro P4000 added …

Love to have a threadripper but have to draw the line somewhere …

If you have a bunch of PCs or even a Farm at a studio? You probably take a different route?

My build is for hardcore 1 PC motion graphics and rendering.

#21

The build above if you’re in the UK is done for good value so far from what I’ve been told.

ask for Chris at https://www.meshcomputers.com/ if you’re in the UK

#22

If you’re in the US: https://www.avadirect.com/greyscalegorillasystems

I was inspired by these guys with their specs (but told they didn’t have enough cooling power for their machines)?

#23

If you’re mainly interested in creating Real-Time I think gaming PCs / Laptops will be the perfect option no?

#24

Enjoy the machine! I’m torn between a laptop for taking to potential job interviews (as I will be working with real time engines like U-render and unreal) and building a new franken-PC at home with a much smaller budget.

I wish the AMD 3950x was available at retail price. I may have to settle for a 3900x and re-using my Vega 64 from my Mac eGPU.

#25

If you have a good tip for a laptop I would be interested. At the moment I am looking for a 15" with a RTX 2070 (non Max-Q if possible). The MSI GL63 comes close. I don’t want to have a work machine that screams GAMING and it wouldn’t hurt if it stays below 2k€ (I am not doing 3D as my main job, but need a decent machine for it nonetheless).
But I am still waiting to see if AMD comes around with something interesting…

#26

Why not max q? they seem a better choice in general

#27

I’ve not found a 2070 non-max Q variant that doesn’t scream fast and furious RGB hell.

The best looking 2070 laptop I found (Max Q only) is the Razer Blade 15 inch in silver. No light up green logo, just clean looking silver. It also has thunderbolt 3 port for adding an eGPU (and charging off it). I have heard bad things about their customer service and reliability, though. Some reviewers say to buy from a store like Best Buy and get their warranty, but that gets more expensive than even Apple Care.

I’ve also been eyeballing the Maingear element, which lets you disable the light bar up front and RGB in the keyboard. It optionally comes in silver with Win 10 Pro for a $100 up charge on the highest tier model. They seem like the better deal in terms of what you get for the price. It only comes with a 1 year warranty. It also has TB3.

I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to PC laptops. With Apple, I know my way around and we have a great local Apple certified shop, so service is a breeze. I’ve built PCs before, but wonder if I just need portability now.

#28

If you’re looking for a PC or Laptop for work with Real-time / Gaming - the better it runs games the better it will work for you running Unreal and Unity etc no ? Sorry not an expert this is just thinking with my own common sense and with a 2 grand PC or laptop you should be fine - correct me if I’m wrong anyone :slight_smile:

#29

But make sure you get some advice depending on what software you’re using - ZBrush / Maya / Max / Substance etc

#30

Clevo clones have “business” appearance.

Go here for serious reviews:

Go here for users opinions -
http://forum.notebookreview.com/
You should not read the main page reviews it is just trifle and fluff or worse.

#31

@ BubbleGum & Fluff: yeah, the max-Q variants are optimized for very thin Laptops. But they are way weaker. So I wouldn’t say "better choice in general). I have to admit however, that I might be biased due to some articles and youtube videos…
A 2080 Max-Q can be slightly outperformed by a normal mobile 2070 in some scenarios, but it would still have more cores. It seems they would be more or less on par. It is more or less the same with the 2070 max-Q and a normal mobile 2060. Price-wise the 2070 and 2080 max-Q are similar, but there is a larger price gap between 2060 and 2070 max-Q. The question is also how heat production compares between a 2070 and a 2080 q-Max (or 2060 and 2070 q-Max). There are also two max-Q variants with 80W or 90W, the more powerfull version is however pretty rare.
I guess I will wait until the AMD announcements around CES, but given that RTX can speed up some renderers and I just bought Cycles4D I will most likely go with NVIDIA again (this is of course its own field of discussion: if you have an AMD card that out performs RTX cards in many aspects and Vulkan compute support comes to these renderers, than RTX might be meaningless soon)

#32

What country are you in ?
A big batch just landed in the UK. OCUK, for example have them in stock at retail price.

#33

US here. It’s going for $1300 American dollerydoos on one of our big retailers, Newegg.com. I think that’s just 3rd party sellers taking advantage of shortages, though. Another one of our decent retailers bhphotovideo, is selling it for $900. Holiday buying frenzy plus new release = craziness for the short term!

@christianS - thanks for the explanation - all the offerings are all over the place and I did not realize those differences. A lot of PC makers offer a full 2060 and then go to 2070 Max q and 2080 max q up the model lines.

#34

Hopefully threre’s a big batch coming down the line in the US soon, as well. That retailer (the UK’s biggest) got less than 10 CPUs on launch. They just got delivery of 1000 more. It looks like AMD actually didn’t delay the launch quite enough. The US is quite an important market, so I’d be surprised if a general uptick in supply doesn’t feed through to you guys soon. Hold tight fam…
Now to sell my 3900x…

#35

Yeah , I’ve got a couple of colleagues that needed_ a high-end laptop (because they live in the EU & travel to various countries for work, inc UK) & went Razor - one of them is very happy - the other had multiple dangerously swelling batteries etc and will never go there again. For our work mobile powerhouse (ie no illusions of really running off battery etc) we went for an MSI - it’s equipped with (off the top of my head) an 8-core intel & a 2060 or something similar. It’s pretty decent & no reliability problems so far.
As ever, unless you’re really convinced you need mobile, you’ll get so much more power, value & upgradability from a desktop. It’s even worth considering if you split your budget between a laptop & a desktop, you can sometimes do better than pouring all the money into a ludicrously high-end laptop.

#36

This is essentially correct. The content-creator will generally prefer more, slightly slower RAM (to save money) compared to the gamer, might prefer a higher-quality screen with lower referesh rate vs a 120hz gamer screen but these are fairly trivial things. There is & always has been a big overlap between a strong gaming system & a strong CG system. More to the point is finding that perfect balance point between power, convenience & reliability in the mobile platform. If you can possibly avoid it, I’d say don’t. If you have to, you’ll need to do a lot of reading reviews and deciding exactly what matters to you most in a mobile system.

#37

My wife is a desktop hater and went with one of these GS75 Stealth:

She loves it!

#38

Thanks guys !