Gaming PCs for Professional CG with Cinema 4D and Redshift

#1

Hi,

I’m looking into finding a really powerful machine for Use with Redshift and Cinema 4d - that’s a real workhorse PC for heavy duty GPU rendering but also as all-round as possible for CG.

My Primary Software is Cinema 4D, After Effects, Redshift and possibly Arnold, but I’ll also be modelling and using it for all-round CG work possibly also Maya, and also ZBrush / Substance Painter etc.

This is a real massive investment for me at the moment, so I need as much bang for my buck or British Pound / Euro :), as possible - hence going for a gaming build rather than a purely professional VFX Workstation. I previously always got my HardWare from Escape Technology in London (UK) which have always been very reliable machines in general but cost more.

Here is the best offer I’ve found for £6’000 in London - UK. That’s $7’890 or 7’100 Euros including tax or VAT here in UK

(Bear in mind these are UK prices which are more than US prices)

1.Model: AMD Ryzen Threadripper Super Workstation
System Base Price: £ 2082.50
Thermaltake View 71 Tempered Glass RGB Full Tower Gaming Case, 3 x front USB ports /HD audio [upg £ 95.00]
Corsair 1200W 80 PLUS Platinum HX1200, Fully Modular Power Supply unit [upg £185.00]

ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming, AMD TRX40 Chipset, ATX Motherboard PCIe 4.0, 3xM.2 [upg. £185.00]

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X Gen3 24 Core TRX4 CPU/Processor 48 Thread, 4.5GHz Turbo, PCIe 4.0, 280W, CPU

[upg £ 625.00]
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
Thermaltake 360mm Floe Riing RGB AlO CPU Water Cooler, 3 x 120mm PWM Fans [upg £ 80.00]
64GB 3000MHz DDR4 (4x16GB) - Corsair Vengeance LPX (8x DIMMs, 256GB max.) [upg £ 290.00]
2 x EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XC GAMING Turing Graphics Cards [upg £ 1745.00]
3 x DP, 1 x HDMi, 1 x USB-C /GPU

Primary: 512GB Samsung 970 Pro M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD [upg £ 137.50]
Secondary:1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD [upg £ 75.00]
Integrated 7.1 High Definition 8-Channel Audio
2 x RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x S/PDIF-Out (Optical)

4 x USB 2.0,7 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A,1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button

Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit [upg £ 25.00] – licensed, installed, DVD back-up
Lifetime Warranty - (Lifetime Labour,1 Year Parts,1 Month Collect & Return)

I was inspired by the guys ar Greyscale Gorilla who have made some great looking custom builds using similar Gaming intensive Hardware:

I’m no hardware expert so any advice at all from anyone be great - What do you think?

Nick

#2

I would give this site a lookover and try their PC building tool

#3

I second this and have been looking at it myself after the Mac Pro announcement

#4

Ok, in short, thats potentially a great machine, but it seems you’re paying extra money for parts that wont help and in some areas make it worse.

Case: That’s a poor case for any machine that will be producing so much heat. The flat glass panels massively hinder airflow. Go for something with more mesh panels like a fractal meshify, that alone will drop your temperatures by a good 10c. Of all my recommendations, this would be the most important.

cpu: Thats a cool cpu, but if youre taking the gpu render engine route, theres very little else on a computer that will use so many cpu cores outside of 3d rendering. you could knock a grand off by going with a top end ryzen 9 3900x 12 core 4.6ghz cpu. That will still give you top speed in everything other than cpu 3d rendering. This would also mean a significantly cheaper motherboard, theres no need at all to pick a £500 motherboard these days, half that still gets you everything you need.

SSDs: Theres not any reason to go with multiple small ssds anymore. Just keep your os, caches and work all on one giant fast drive. Go for a single 2TB nvme m.2 ssd. Preferably a new gen 4 5000mb/sec drive, but even a gen 3 3500mb/sec drive will be plenty fast.

Also, lol@ the new mac pro prices

#5

Perfect

Thanks Troyan - Yeh I’ve had a look at CG Director over the last few weeks but I want an expert to give support and don’t trust myself to build it :slight_smile:

3DFluff - that’s brilliant feedback - I’ll pass this on to the guy that’s building it for me. Great help !!

I’ll get him to requote and post back on here to see what people think.

Thanks

#6

Any other comments be great too for advice on gaming builds that are uselful for CG- Cinema and Redshift etc

But for individual render intensive machines super important to have loads and loads of cooling - which gaming PCs aren’t so concerned with I don’t think?

And also the other CPU comment 3DFluff mentioned affecting motherboard size / power / price a gem too for my quoted build - thanks

#7

That’s very handy!

#8

Also a goldmie:

And this is what Im refering to with the case:

Get the blower style cards that eject the heat rather than the “swirl it around” fans. Otherwise 2+ cards start to slow down due to heat build up.

#9

Hi Again - here’s my revised build following everyone’s advice. Thanks again.

The guy building it if you’re in the UK and looking for a workstation works at Mesh Computers - https://www.meshcomputers.com/

Downgraded the CPU along with motherboard and got a no frills case with more cooling power for a massive saving - as the GPU is the priority for this workstation (as advised by 3DFluff):

comes in at £ 5,318.00 / 6,374.91 Euro / $7,087.17 including tax / VAT

1.Model: Matrix AMD Ryzen R3900X SUPER

System Base Price: £ 1749.17
Fractal Meshify S2 Black Midi-Tower Case, Black, 3x 140mm Fans, USB 3.1, HD audio [upg £ 65.00]

1200W Platinum Corsair HXi Full Modular 80+ Platinum Power Supply unit [upg £ 160.00]

MSI MEG X570 ACE ATX Motherboard PCIe 4.0, Triple M.2, 2-Way SLi/3-Way CrossFire, 2.5G/GbE/WiFi, USB 3.2
[upg £ 95.00]

AMD Ryzen™ 9 3900X CPU, AM4, Zen 2, 12 Core, 24 Thread, 3.8GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo, 64MB L3, PCIe 4.0
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste

Thermaltake 360mm Floe Riing RGB AlO CPU Water Cooler, 3 x 120mm PWM Fans [upg £ 110.00]

64GB 3000MHz DDR4 (4x16GB) - Corsair Vengeance LPX [upg £ 270.00]

2 x EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XC GAMING Turing Graphics Cards [upg £ 1745.00]

Ports on graphics card: 3 x Display Ports, 1 x HDMi, 1 x USB-C

2TB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD [upg £ 307.50]
No hard drive – Minus –[£20.00]

Integrated 7.1 High Definition 8-Channel Audio
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN Port

1 x Line In,1 x Line Out,1 x Mic-In,1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Combo

2 x RJ-45 Ethernet,1 x S/PDIF-Out (Optical)

2 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports

2 x WiFi Antenna connectors

Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit- – licensed, installed, DVD back-up

Lifetime Warranty - (Lifetime Labour,1 Year Parts,1 Month Collect & Return)

Free Technical helpline(UK)

2. Extended Warranty options:

A. Lifetime Gold Warranty - (Lifetime Labour, 2 Year Parts, 1 Year Free Collect & Return) [£ 70.83]

B. Lifetime Platinum Warranty - (Lifetime Labour,3 Years Parts + 3 Years Free Collect & Return)(Band 2) [£ 123.33]

Courier Delivery

Let me know what you think - good build and good value or does it have any weaknesses ?

#10

Looks good to me, should rip through renders at a good rate.

#11

No $400 wheels or $1000 monitor stand? How is that even considered a pro workstation these days?

#12

This is by far my most expensive workstation ever :slight_smile: I’ve sold my car and going all out with this buy

#13

Agree with everything Mash said.
Got the same CPU & case, both are great.
Wanted a 3950x really but availability was near-zero & thought I’d just save the money, the 3900x is tidy too.
I will say if you do a lot of x-particles fluid sim & Photoscan photogrammetry stuff, those Threadrippers will destroy anything else by a long way - so CPU rendering is not the only thing they excel at. There are a range of other specialist tasks they excel at but you probably know if you’re working in one of those niches.
I went big air (be quiet dark rock 4 pro) instead of Water cooling but that 360 cooler should be all good.

#14

Thanks buddy (Decade) - yeh I’ll be using some Dynamics / Simulations but not a priority for me. GPU Rendering and as all-round for the rest as possible for Motion Graphics and High-End Rendering.

#15

Yeah, it’s a great all-rounder & with 2 2080ti’s should be fairly monsterous for GPU rendering.

#17

Thanks all - and feel free to copy the build and get someone to build it for you if you’re no expert like me.

As I say this is by far the most powerful machine I’ve ever looked at buying.

If we share our specs for the best builds for PCS in this community sure we can all save money and get going with our work a lot faster.

#18

Current website - www.nicholasgood.myportfolio.com

#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