A new PC for Corona

[Lnt]

Hi,

Since recently i start working exclusively with Corona, ive decided to buy a second PC just for renders.
Unfortunately this is a low budget PC, so i seek for advice in order to get something as good as possible since i am totally clueless about PCs.

The budget is 1300 eu ( ~ 1400+ usd ), the market is eastern Europe.
Unfortunately i don't plan to upgrade it any time soon so this is all i got for now.

Thanks

[juang3d]

IMHO with this budget you can get a pretty good 5820k with 32Gb of RAM, a ver good render node for a low budget, I don't have time to give you a full config, but basically an Asus motherboard, a closed liquid cooling system and a low cost GPU :)

I'm sure others here can be more precise :)

Cheers!

[Juraj]

a second PC just for renders

So only a 'node' ? The first computer will still be your workstation ?

[Lnt]

IMHO with this budget you can get a pretty good 5820k with 32Gb of RAM, a ver good render node for a low budget, I don't have time to give you a full config, but basically an Asus motherboard, a closed liquid cooling system and a low cost GPU :)

I'm sure others here can be more precise :)

Cheers!

Thank you, thats a good direction to start looking

a second PC just for renders

So only a 'node' ? The first computer will still be your workstation ?

Someone else will use my old PC probably, so i will need a PC where i can do the modeling+ texturing.

[Txamo]

I do not recommend ASUS motherboards, warranty work fatal if you have a fault or problem, at least in its division workstation and server motherboard. I myself have had an ASUS Z10PE-D8WS, problems with SATA controller (Windows 7 and Windows 10) did not know how to solve the problem and merely not give me solutions and tell me that they would try to seek a solution by driver, every message exchanged took 3 days, the company located in the Czech republic for all Europe (for the workstation server division), only give service in English (if you speak fluidly perfect), if you want to do it by phone you have to call up there and a lot of problems more, I pass supermicro and no comparison. I'm not a supporter of liquid cooling pre assembled, I work with NOCTUA and temperatures are virtually the same and do not have the problems it can create one liquid.

Sorry for my bad English.

[Juraj]

Juang correctly suggested i7 5820k as the ultimate choice for this kind of budget. Because 1300 euro is good budget, don't think of it as low :- ) If you're not building true universal solution which is equally oriented on gaming/real-time stuff and which would warrant higher-end GPU, you can comfortably fit more expensive LGA-2011v3 platform with the best value oriented 6-core available. I would go for high-quality parts which will serve for years, and if you ever want to dive into more GPU oriented stuff, you will just buy it in next generations as upgrade option.

Example workstation based on LGA-2011v3 platform that doesn't include regular storage:

i7 5820k   +/- 400 euro

Any "entry-level" 2011v3 board. Asus is the higher-end choice here, and most popular brand, but if you go with their lower-range Asrock, or alternatively MSI/Gigabyte, all the same good. Asus has the most user-friendly UEFI if that is of any interest.
Asus X99-A, MSI X99, Gigabyte X99 - 200-250 Euro

32GB memory. Go for best-value oriented modules with low-profile modules with no gimmick type of heatsinks. They don't matter.
Crucial, Kingston, Corsair  DDR4 2400Mhz (if you find good deal with higher clock, good, if not, don't sweat it, go for price)    150-170 euro

Main drive SSD 250GB, go value-oriented, performance difference is negligible.
Samsung 850 EVO  250 GB  +/- 90 euro

CPU cooler: Either high-end Air tower, or CLC system of your favourite brand (Corsair, NXT, etc...). Depends on what you like. I consider high-end air cooling to be personally better choice unless you go for better 2x240/3x360mm CLC systems that already spiral costs into 150 +/- euro territory. We need more budget oriented stuff, but one which lets you overclock maximally and keep it stable&quit.
Noctua-NHD15  +/- 90 euro

Tower: Personal choice. Fractal is great value oriented evergreen with perfect minimalist look, some good silencing and comes with great stock coolers.
Fractal Design DefineS (cheaper brother of R5)-  +/- 85 euro

Reputable brand based (Seasonic, Superflower, Corsair, BeQuiet, Enermax,etc..) 80+ standard, at least bronze level PSU. Overclocked i7 six-core will reach up to 300W, similarly can high-end GPU. So look for 650W/760W for some future proofing if you plan to upgrade GPU in future, or want you PSU to ran in semi-passive mode.
Seasonic G Series 650 W  +/- 120 euro
(personally, I do always suggest going higher, with silver/gold based PSU, because 24/7 rendering for years on overclocked machines will put higher stress than regular use and gaming, and you will sleep comfortably you have higher-grade hardware (capacitators,etc..), but if budget is concerned, reputable brand + bronze 80+ is OK)

Low-end GPU, because 3dsMax doesn't utilize it any good anyway for viepowert performance (with Nitrous, it's great on low-end card as well) and Corona is pure CPU based and will be in near future.
GTX 750ti  +/- 100 euro.

<1300 euros including VAT



Alternatively, you can build more universal machine with better GPU if you switch to LGA-1151 platform, which would yield you only quad-core (but highly over-clockable) and let you buy 960/970 GTX GPU instead.

i7 6700k  +/- 350 Euro
Asus/MSI/Gigabyte Z170 motherboard +/ 120-150 euro

You save about 100-150 euros here which you can spend on higher-end GPU.


Alternatively x2 - You can try scavening for used hardware, either full workstation, or parts. Esp. GPUs loose their value quickly today (CPUs don't ).



//Why 32GB memory over better GPU. Because 32GB is easily used in current rendering today, while better GPU (970 vs 750Ti) provides only minimal benefit for viewport performance in newest 3dsMax releases.

[Lnt]

Wow Juraj this is awesome, thanks a lot

I will go with your suggestions and hopefully i can buy everything next week.

This is what i chose so far:

Cooler:
http://noctua.at/en/nh-d14
Not sure if this is the best chose, there are a lot of coolers around the same price, and i am not sure what to look for.

Processor:
http://ark.intel.com/products/82932/Intel-Core-i7-5820K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
Was wondering if other more expensive processor will have a noticeable difference in render time ( 80-100 more $ then this one maybe )

MB:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5123#sp

Memory:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/luke-hill/crucial-ballistix-sport-2400mhz-32gb-ddr4-memory-kit-review/
This are the cheapest 32gb one i found

SSD:
SSD Kingston HyperX FURY 240GB ~ 80E

GPU:
GeForce GTX 750 Ti OC 2GB DDR5 ~ 130E


I still need a case, should i go with anything that can keep all this components or there are some better?
Also, you think that more fans are needed or just that cooler.

Thanks again for your help.

[Juraj]

ND14 is older version of ND15, it needs a new tray to work with latest CPUs, but I think they supply it for free just make sure your vendor has it, otherwise Noctua would have to ship it :- )
Otherwise it's almost identical just cheaper a bit.

5820k is the best deal, because 5930k has the same over-clockable performance. I.e, you will run both in 4.0+ Ghz, but you will save money with 5820k. 5930K has also 40 PCI lanes compared to 28 in 5820k, this can be difference if you run 4 high-end GPUS :- )

You don't need more fans if you buy Case that already has 2 or 3 which you need for proper push-pull setup (horizontal for silence or vertical for maximum exhaustion).
Fractal does cost 80 euro, but already comes with 3 very high-end fans (each costing 10 euro separately). This is important to calculate when you choose your case, it's not just the price of it.

Good cases like the Fractal, are modular, they let you keep inside only cages (for HDDs,etc..) you need, which gives you better air-flow and better temperatures for your overclocking. If you go for cheaper, make sure you read some reviews on them on internet.

Crucial Ballistic is excellent choice. I use it in my most high-end Xeon build for years :- )

[Lnt]

Thanks again,

I will go for http://noctua.at/en/nh-d15 then.
And with a Fractal Design case.


Following your recommendations, im around 1200 EU without the monitor.
Any keyboard/mouse you like under the 100 EU mark?

At this rate, ill promise that once i install my OS, i will name my PC "Juraj" xD

[Juraj]

Any keyboard/mouse you like under the 100 EU mark?

Not really, the options are too diverse and I am quite conservative. I personally use Logitech MX, because I don't need many buttons and I like strong ergonomic shape (but it's still not good enough because I am strongly running towards Carpal tunnel :- (. The recent version of this mouse, MX Master costs almost 100 euros though...

Lot of people prefer various version of gaming mouses, which have tons of buttons. I have zero experience here, seems to be very personal choice.

For keyboards, I personally use basic MicrosoftSculpt and other we have include basic flat Microsoft/Logitech keyboards. I like at least partial silence in office so none of those hardcore mechanical keyboards that surfaced recently in gaming communities :- ).

At this rate, ill promise that once i install my OS, i will name my PC "Juraj" xD

Our PCs are named in that fashion :- )   Juraj1, Juraj2, Veronika1,etc..

[Ondra]

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-73P2620-Enhanced-Performance-Keyboard/dp/B0002376KW

everyone in our office loves them ;)

[sebastian___]

5820k is the best deal, because 5930k has the same over-clockable performance. I.e, you will run both in 4.0+ Ghz, but you will save money with 5820k. 5930K has also 40 PCI lanes compared to 28 in 5820k, this can be difference if you run 4 high-end GPUS :- )

Does it makes sense to buy a CPU with more lanes not for multi GPU (or maybe just 2 gpu's) but with one or maybe two PCI ssd ? Which I think can use some extra lanes.
Those PCI ssd in addition to one or two regular sata SSD (plus some disk based hdd's)
And what if one of the main program used is not very good in using multi cores.

[Juraj]

It's quite hard to saturate those PCI lanes and they never actually bottleneck your GPU (you can run it on 8x lanes even if it's 16).

PCI-e SSD takes up 4 lanes, so even with 3 of them, you still retain 2x8 SLI option for Dual GPU.

Not sure I understand about the 'using multi-cores'. 5930k does have only nominal benefit in base frequency, but 5820k can clock to same rate manually. There is no actual (single-thread or multi-threaded) performance difference between them once you over-clock.

But still, in the end, it's budget option. People don't try to save 100 +/- euros just so they could later afford 2000 euros worth of SSDs and GPUs down the road :- )

[sebastian___]

Thanks. And I was thinking that probably if someone is using a program which can use only 2 or max 3 cores, it would make sense to buy a type of CPU which doesn't have many cores (like maybe 4 cores) but has a higher frequency. And thus it will work better for programs which are mainly single or 2 cores based.

 But is powerful expensive CPU with less cores - able to match a less expensive CPU but with 6 or more cores in a renderer like Corona ?

[Juraj]

Multi-threaded performance is always Frequency x Core amount (x family generation). So Quad-core at 4 Ghz, would provide same performance as Octa-core at 2 Ghz.

The matter is, the Octa-core can also be clocked to 4 Ghz. So it's same performance in single-thread, but twice in multi-thread. Hence why there is no such thing as expensive quad-core, and cheap octa-core. There is only expensive octa-core, because it can do everything quad-core can and more.

While it's true that some quad-cores can potentially over-clock in home conditions up to 5Ghz, even that won't reach the performance of Hexa-core at 4.5Ghz. Hexa/Octa-core is simply superior in most conditions.

Corona is always using all available threads, and scales perfectly (<100perc.). Archaic 3dsMax is using mostly single-core, but otherwise, you would be hard-pressed to find any modern application that doesn't utilize multi-threaded allocation. Most games still cap at quad-cores but this is workstation thread :- )
And even if your application is limited, it doesn't mean the OS is. Windows will allocate those threads to something else, multi-tasking workflow is quite a norm today.


There is catch to this when it comes to high-end E5 Xeon range. The very top CPUs in this range (2699v3,etc..) already have absurdly low clock (2.3Ghz) but obscene amount of cores (2x14 + HT). This makes them powerhouse for rendering, but poor performer in single-threaded task. Since E5 Xeons cannot be overclocked (technically, they can... 3-5perc. by BLC strap but this is not the real deal), they can only turbo-boost. And they would still turbo only up to 2.6 +/- Ghz. Here, it makes sense to go for higher-clocked with lesser amount of cores like E5 2687WS(Workstation) which would be 3.6Ghz and 8-core, which would at cost of slightly less multi-threaded performance, offer vastly superior single-threaded, making it far more versatile CPU. But they cost identically :- )