Need advice on budget PC for rendering

[raryko]

Hello, I have been looking around for a couple of weeks to buy a good PC for rendering, I work with 3d Max and Photoshop. This is my first attempt to build a PC. My budget is around 800 Euros. I am currently living in Germany and I have found here a web page ( http://www.csl-computer.com/shop/index.php?pl=logo ) where the computers are relatively cheap, but I have some problems regarding the graphic card.

 

The selected parts are:

 

CPU: Intel ® Core ™ i7-2600, 4x 3400 MHz, including Intel ® HD graphics core, Intel ® Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 (TBT 2.0) with up to 3800 MHz

 

CPU cooler: Silent cooler for socket 1155/1156

 

Hard Drive: 2000 GB SATA Seagate ® / Western Digital ®

 

Memory: 16384 MB (16 GB) DDR3 RAM, Samsung ® / Elixir ®

 

Graphics: NVIDIA ® GeForce ® GTX 550 Ti, 4096 , VGA, DVI, HDMI

 

Mainboard: ASUS P8H67-M Pro, Socket 1155, Intel ® P67 Express Chipset, 4 x SATA, 2 x SATA III (6 Gb / s) , 2 x USB 3.0 , 4 x USB 2.0 2 x front USB, 1 x PCIe X16 , 1 x PCIe x16 @ x4, 2 x PCI, 1 x PS / 2 (Combo Port) 7.1 audio

 

opt. Drive: 24 × multi-format DVD burner (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD ± R, DVD ± RW, DVD R9 (DL))

 

Sound: 7.1 controller integrated onboard ALC892 HD-Audio

 

Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN, DSL capable

 

Card Reader: 8.89 cm (3.5 " ) 10in1 Card Reader

 

Housing: Cooler Master Elite 333, black / silver front bezel in the mesh design

 

Power Supply: 450W LC Power PSU

 

This is the page for the computer: https://www.csl-computer.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=4128&cPath=5_128&XTCsid=ortos746dtf02t6326i9u0oc03 the price that you will see on the web page includes Microsoft Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit and Microsoft office starter 2010, but I will not buy these two, so the price will be a bit cheaper.

 

The problem is that I found another PC, around the same price, but with a NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580. Which one is better for rendering with 3d max and vray? Or should I buy instead of these two the GeForce GTX 600, 3072 MB?

 

I would like to order the computer next week, so it would mean a lot if you guys can look over the configuration and tell me if it`s a good rendering PC.

Thank you in advance.

[AJLynn]

I wouldn't bother with a low end Quadro card. The Geforce 550TI is a midrane card, but the Quadro FX580 is three generations older and is much less powerful. Which 600 series are you talking about? The 640? That's too new for me to comment on. The comparables I'd consider are the Radeon 6790 and 7750. The 6790 is a bit faster than the 550TI, and the 7750 a bit slower, but the advantage of the 7750 is that is uses much mess power. It doesn't even need a dedicated power cord.

[RyderSK]

I would switch the motherboard to Z77 and buy the new ivy bridge 3770k for the same price as 2600k. And I wouldn't buy graphic card at all, and use the intel HD, it's more than powerful now.

 

With the money you will save, buy a nice 120GB SSD.

[raryko]

Hello, and thank you both for you helpful reply`s.

 

@ Andrew, I made a mistake in my previous post, I am considering to buy the GTX 560, 3072. The price difference from the GTX 550 Ti is not so great, but I am wondering about the performance, since the 550 Ti runs in DDR 3.

 

@ Juraj, to which Z77 did you refer to? Also, is the 3770 K powerful enough to render complex exterior scenes?

 

Thank you again for your help.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Also, is the 3770 K powerful enough to render complex exterior scenes?.

 

3770K is one of the fastest, if not the fastest Quad core CPU on the market today (at least @ stock speeds) so its more than capable to render anything. CPU speed limits rendering times only, so in theory you can pretty much render anything within your OSs and renderer's RAM utilization capabilities regardless of CPU speed...

 

Z77 is the new Intel chipset that was launched along the new 3rd gen "Intel Core" cpus (3xxx designation), like the i7 3770K.

An asus mobo with similar features to the one you've posted above will be some 20-30 euros more expensive - due to it being newer, blah blah.

The 3770K is priced within 10-15 euros of the 2600K (or less, depending on region).

 

 

Keep in mind that the 550ti series of nvidia Fermi GPUs (192 cuda cores / 192-bit mem) is also way slower than the GTX 560ti (384 cores / 256-bit mem) / GTX 570 (480 cores / 320-bit mem) and GTX 580 (512 cores / 320-bit mem). Including different clock speeds, its about 1/2-1/3 slower, thus the price difference and wattage requirements.

 

Speaking of watts, the 450W "no-name" PSU that is mentioned in the above specs, is probably not a good idea...

A quality 550W PSU will be more than enough, but focus on the "quality" portion.

[RyderSK]

Dimitros is right, never save on good PSU ;- ) It doesn't bring measureable performance like cpu and gpu, so people often try to save money here, but that is recipe for disaster. Good PSU will keep your computer stable, quite and also help with electricity bills, saving you money in the long run.

[raryko]

Thank you both for you responses, I will change my PSU to 550W, also I will keep the 3770K and the Z77.

About the graphic cards, the one that I can afford is GTX 560, but not the Ti, I`m thinking not to buy one, like Juraj said earlier, but can I render complex scenes only using the 3770K? Will buying the GtX 560 increase the performance?

Thank you for your help

[Dimitris Tolios]

I still do not understand if you are custom building / ordering your tower, or getting one ready made from this vendor.

 

The GPU is irrelevant with rendering speed in most scenarios, unless you are using a GPU accelerated Renderer: most likely Octane / IRay / Vray RT GPU.

 

If you are using a regular version of Mental Ray or Vray etc, the graphics card is used only while you are modelling and positioning your cameras etc, for what is called "viewport acceleration". Obviously a faster card is better in complex scenes and will allow you to orbit around your scenes smoothly and fast, preview large textures etc, but that's all before you press the "render" button.

 

GPU accelerated renderers do require massive ammounts of VRAM to load your whole scene and textures in the card in order for it to render it, but for viewport acceleration etc, that is not as important. Getting card with a massive buffer like the 550 with 4GB ram is pretty much useless, as these cards use slower ram chips and memory bus, being actually a lot slower than the top of the line GTX cards which rely on 1-1.5GB of way faster DDR5 for pretty much anything. Just like with the PSU where "label watts" don't say much about their quality, the same goes for GPU RAM buffer...more is not always better.

 

So, just like with your card, I would try to get the best bang for my money in a stable PSU too. If you are not bying one of the hi-end GTX cards, you want need more than 500-550W of a quality PSU. Quality = Seasonic / Enermax / Antec / Corsair / OCZ / Coolermaster / Thermaltake etc. There are many generic PSUs that will fail after you stress them past 50-60% of their rated output, simply because the manufacturers of such devices cut a lot of corners and use poor quality components. A PSU that fails, on a good day will cost you downtime till you replace it, on a bad day it might kill your motherboard and/or GPU...on a really bad day it might even get your CPU and HDDs with it...

And guess what: people do not get punished for getting cheap PSUs, simply because they don't stress their PCs enough to figure out their limits...but rendering complex scenes as those you are aspired to, are guaranteed punishment, stressing all your cores, perhaps for many hours etc...it's worse than any game and office program, thus if the PSU is inadequate, you will probably regret it pretty fast, either with you system being unstable and crashing, or (knock-knock) something burning out. Get a quality one, 80plus certified and rated ~500-550W if you are in a budget. Do not go above 600-650W unless you are planning on getting a GTX 570/580 or more than one graphic cards.

 

And yes, you will be able to render pretty complex scenes with 16GB of RAM and render them quite fast with the 3770K.

If a complex scene will render, is a matter arranging it in order to fit in your memory (setting up proxies etc if needed - read this fast tut on basic proxies).

If it fits, it will render. The CPU defines how fast it will render.

If you want room for a future upgrade, get 2x8GB sticks instead of 4x4GB to leave some slots free on your mobo, yet keep in mind the crazy renderings people have been doing over the years with 1/2 that...I hardly use more than 4-5GB total when rendering, and most of my simple scenes use like 1-2GBs (the renderer alone).

[raryko]

Thank you again for your detailed response. I am custom building from this shop, found it to be cheaper than the others here in Germany.

I will be careful choosing my PSU, thanks to your list, hopefully everything will be ok at first, I will try to work without a graphics card, and if that does not go well I will later buy one. Also thank you for the suggestion regarding the 2x8GB sticks.

 

I have been working until now with 4GB using proxies, but I want to make an improvement and to jump from my laptop to a good PC.

Thank you all very much for your advices, you cleared my head I am really glad I posted my questions here.

[AJLynn]

Is this for a render node or a workstation? (A workstation has a monitor, keyboard and mouse and you do work on it, a render node is just for sharing the workload after you hit the render button.) If it's a workstation, don't use Intel onboard graphics. It's slow, and it eats system memory. Don't skip out on a real video card to afford an SSD.

 

A video card does a lot of the work to run the on-screen 3D display as you are working on your project in Autocad, Max, etc. - that's shared between the CPU and the video card. When you hit render, the video card idles and the CPU takes over, unless you are running a rendered that's specifically designed to run on the GPU (the video card) instead (like iray, Octane, Vray RT-GPU but not regular Vray).

 

A 550ti is fine for most purposes in Max, Autocad, etc. It's faster than what I use, and it's a reasonable price point, so I'd say it's a good choice if this is for a workstation. You don't even need the 4GB version if you don't run one of those GPU renderers. If it's a render node, go cheap on the video card.

[raryko]

This will be a work station, but I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The problem is that with the changes that I have made, I am just above 800 Euros, without the SSD, so what I was thinking, is not to buy a video card now and add it later to my new system. This would be probably better I think, because later I can afford to buy a better video card.

 

Thank you for your advice.

[AJLynn]

Skip the SSD and get the video card.

[RyderSK]

Skip the SSD and get the video card.

 

No, I disagree. I know what reputation on-board graphic cards have, but the new one that comes with Ivy bridge is very decent. Actually quite on par with lower range cards that quite suffice for viewport. I would rather buy good 180GB SSD now, and then decent graphic card.

 

Edit: Ok, I saw 550ti can be bought for around 100euros these days, so not big investition, but I would still rather keep quite computer with new intel HD 4000 and buy proper video card later.

Edited May 1, 2012 by RyderSK

[AJLynn]

Onboard video cards are weak. In tests they are slower than real video cards that cost $50-60. The current ones are only fast in comparison with even worse onboard video cards - and we're only talking about maybe a 25% improvement over the previous generation. They take RAM from the system, and in addition to the GPU being slow the RAM is slow. Try doing anything with a very complex model on the screen or any of the D3D effects in recent software versions and you're in trouble.

 

SSDs only speed up loading, not working. They are less important than video cards.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Yeah, I'm kinda with Andrew on that subject...SSD is nice for launching you applications and overall responsiveness of the system while launching plugins etc, but...that's it...oh, and you are one of the first to load the map for the new match in your FPS...

Most likely you won't get an SSD large enough to contain your model/texture libraries, so you will be tied to your HDD anyways.

 

HD4000 in Ivy Bridge is an impressive upgrade over the HD3000 the 2nd gen had, but that's not "great" by any stretch of imagination, as the latter was simply the worse integrated GPU of it's generation...in the long run, it's simply not pathetic as mostly laptops with no dedicated GPUs were despite having a nice i7/i5 CPU. Something that cheaper AMD APUs had done quite some time now...Intel just matched that GPU performance, and its unlikely it will get much better any time soon.

 

Just like "cubic inches/CCs in engines*", watts are a good measure of power potential: if it doesn't suck as much power, most likely it cannot keep up talking same generation architecture...cheap dedicated desktop GPUs like the 550Ti suck 75+ Ws...that's what the whole 3770K needs to run 4 cores, 8 threads AND graphics...surely, the HD4000 in Ivy is "newer" than 550Ti in age, but they did not re-invent the wheel...

 

In actual 3Dmark performance (i don't know how it "feels" for viewports, never tried any of 550ti or HD3000/4000) the HD4000 is barely touching the mid/weak range of dedicated GPUs for laptops by ATI/nVidia, and the 550ti is as faster as the HD4000 is in comparison to the HD3000...

And having a 2012 gen desktop barely matching my 2009 / $800 laptop's mediocre 128bit ramdac Radeon's performance, is a big leap for intergrated graphics for Intel, but still simply embarrassing for something aspired to be treated as a 3D workstation.

 

* compare apples with apples tho - engine displacement in comparisson with consumption in comparisson with outpup - most likely a "pathetic" american 4.0L V6 with 200PS, consumes comparable amount of gas with a hi-rev 2.0L @ 200 PS output. 2nd thermodynamic law assures that nothing is coming out of thin air, or produces vastly more for less.

Edited May 2, 2012 by dtolios

[raryko]

Thank your again for your detailed answers. I appreciate your advices, but my problem is that I will go way over my budget with buying now a decent video card, so that`s why I want to buy one in the next couple of months and for now settle with the HD 4000. Don`t get my wrong I understand the importance of video cards and I was not saying that I will rely on the HD 4000 for the long run, but I think it is better to wait a bit and buy a proper video card instead of buying now a cheaper model.

 

Thank you again for your help.

[RyderSK]

Well, you persuaded me guys then. But just for example, one of my workstations feature only passive 5570 AMD, which I don't think is even faster then HD4000, and I don't have much trouble navigating quite large scenes.

 

My logic wasn't against the card, but for the priority of buying it in reverse. With SSD now you can already setup everything and then just add the video card without making anything redundant. Buying cheaper video card now will make it obsolete. It does save a bit of money.

[AJLynn]

Juraj, your 5570 is 50% to 100% faster than an HD4000 in benchmarks.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Well, in the long run I believe that he can live with the HD4000 for some time...again, I don't know how complex the scenes he will be processing will be. Maybe what he has in mind is workable with some arrangements.

 

I also believe that the SSD is hard to justify when you are cutting corners for your GPU that much.

 

Better to invest the difference in getting a quality PSU, 2x 8GB Ram sticks instead of 4x 4GB etc, in order to make room for some decent upgrades in the future - including an SSD ofc, as a 3770K system after all has the potential to be a performance, and not a budget PC.

And if he won't be excited to try CUDA only accelerated apps, he might concider buing a Radeon instead of a GTX in the future, as I do believe those tend to be faster for viewport acceleration (talking mainstream -> high end side), and ofc quite decent for OpenCL (VRay RT GPU only). When the drivers work for the latter.

[Roodogg]

I'd be very tempted, with that budget to have a look at an AMD Bulldozer machine or a reconditioned dual Xeon.

[Dimitris Tolios]

I'd be very tempted, with that budget to have a look at an AMD Bulldozer machine or a reconditioned dual Xeon.

I'd be thrilled to have a potent AMD CPU that could match an i7 2600K in rendering performance...unfortunately the best of them struggle to match the i5 2500K in rendering performance.

 

Ivy bridges will pull further ahead, and the savings are not that great, as most stuff other than the CPU will be just as expensive in both sides: mobo will still be in the $160-170 range i.e. you will end up saving something like $50 over a i5. The simpler and cheaper the system, the more attractive AMDs are - especially for render nodes on a budget. But in this case I don't know...depending on his previous system ofc he might find an FX impressively fast - because they are. Just slower than the latest intels.

 

Same is true with Xeons: the older models that are afordable, are not capable to surpass the 2nd and 3rd generation "mainstream" i5/i7s. Those that can, are most likely way out of his league cost wise just as a mobo/2x CPUs.

 

Add into account higher PSU requirements, and usually pretty hefty price premiums for ECC Ram modules etc, you need to spend more just to match the latest gen of i7s.

 

AMD needs to pick up...without her stronger in the game, Intel will keep feeding us Tick

+ ... com on AMD...you have to do the "tocks" Athlon 64 and 64 X2 did to the industry!

[Roodogg]

Well that's a little more insight but having said that... what do you think about this refurbished system... simply for raw processing speed. Add GPU, RAM and OS and the total would be around £600. Also please consider that I don't really know what I'm talking about

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-T5400-Workstation-Twin-Intel-Xeon-2-83GHz-E5440-Quad-Core-CPUs-/160796218031?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item25703392af

[Roodogg]

PS. I am specifically highlighting the above link as it has (2x) Xeon 2.83 GHz with 12mb L2 Cache. As far as my research goes, that's almost as fast a rendering speed as you're going to get with a new Sandybridge at half the price. If I am going wrong, please let me know!

[Dimitris Tolios]

This is exactly what I was talking about...

As a coincidence, this is the workstation I am writing this msg from @ work...

Dell T5400, only with Dual E5420 @ 2.5GHz, 12GB Ram and a slightly better Quadro 512MB…

...it's nothing crazy by today's standards. The GPU is terrible tbh, and the one included in that auction is worse! My card clips graphics from Revit all the time...

 

Unfortunately I don't use 3DS / Vray @ my daytime office so I don't know how it performs...for single threaded applications is not that fast though, not really faster than my i7 laptop (turboboosts to similar Hz) that is the only thing I can have side to side with it. The machine is relatively silent and has a 875W 80+ PSU. But...still not as good as it sounds for a "dual Xeon" by today's standards.

 

The price is not that bad, no doubt, but then you have ECC Ram, which DELL sells for $360 or something like that for 2x4GB sticks, and I don't know how cheap DDR2 667 MHz ( PC2-5300 ) ECC is used anyways...surely not cheaper than DDR3 PC1600 and way slower. You will end up spending more to bring certain components up to date, but you will still be stuck with 8 cores (8 threads) 2 generations behind, slower RAM, slower SATA, etc. The PCIe advantages it had over the mainstream mobos etc, are now standard in Ivy Bridge i5/i7..nothing to gain other than a serial port and a parallel port which no mobos have nowadays. Ofc the machine is usable for small projects. ffs, people did wonders on slower machines 3-4 years behind the T5400...still, you can buy more with "Current" systems for the same price.

 

PS. I am specifically highlighting the above link as it has (2x) Xeon 2.83 GHz with 12mb L2 Cache. As far as my research goes, that's almost as fast a rendering speed as you're going to get with a new Sandybridge at half the price. If I am going wrong, please let me know!

 

So, this system will be around $580-600...but you need a lot of upgrades to make it decent. I would say you need $800 at least to get it up to 8GB Ram and a "OK" GPU.

I believe you can build a 2600K within a $800 budget, including most of these, probably better (more ram, more HDD) should you buy used items or mix a few used (Mobo/GPU/CPU) and new.

Edited May 7, 2012 by dtolios

[RyderSK]

Actually, it's possible to buy pretty cheap ECC ram these days, it's the price for motherboards and case for those that ups the Xeon solution into heaven (or price hell). I would already have one :- ). The only truly feasible Xeon solution today is the sandy bridge based one, and it's just so expensive.

 

Xeon 5540, is very slow and old. Both of those are about same power as i7 2600k I would say judging from benchmarks.