Messages

1

Hardware / Re: 9950x3d in a "silent" build? Case choices

« on: 2025-03-20, 13:29:52 »

Hah, the company name is "CoolServer" which seemed a bit cheeky to me plus you can't really find their website online so I bit my teeth really hard when making the purchase... But alas, here I am with a nicely cooled 96 core CPU running at 400W. And its been doing so for a couple of months so it seems like a cool purchase I guess.

The other Epyc node has Noctua U14s tower coolers because they actually have an SP3 cooler, there ain't one (or hasn't been, haven't rechecked) for SP5 that isn't a jet engine.

The other company btw was Silverstone and their XE04-SP5 cooler - which I thought was what I was going to end up with but the "CoolServer" thingy seemed bigger and thus quieter. Backup plan was to order the Silverstone one in case the other one was giving me trouble.

As for cases, I am using Fractal Design Torrent for all my builds at the moment. Airflow is quite nice as its pretty much the best rated airflow case out there? Plus you can do multi GPU (if thats your thing especially given how Nvidia is lately) as there isn't a PSU blocking you at the bottom so that bottom card can have more of an overhang (you might need to remove the bottom fans though). Depends on your motherboard as well of course.

For my next set of builds I think I might try the Fractal Design North XL. If you don't mind loosing that GPU overhang because of the PSU then the North XL also imho seems like a cool choice for a CPU build...

One, if you're crazy enough, you can slot 3x 140mm fans in the front and 2x 180mm at the top. I'm pretty sure that creates some turbulence but it also probably slaps for when it comes to bringing in fresh air or taking it out (depending on the orientation).

On top of that, especially if you're running a 2S (2 CPUs on one motherboard) Epyc system you can use the mesh side panel + the little fan bracket thingy that mounts to the side. That thingy would then direct the airflow straight onto the VRMs which are problematic with those types of builds as its all server gear that expects 8000RPM fans blowing pretty much directly over those components.

Even my 9654 in the Torrent tends to reach 80c (maxes out at like 82c) on its VRMs. That is still in spec (100c is the limit) but it also isn't exactly miles away from passing it. I currently don't have AC in my office though so keep that in mind lol :)

Also, there's other cases out there that are really cool as well. I'm just sticking to Fractal Design because they've been quite reliable for me.

2

Hardware / Re: AMD 9950x

« on: 2025-03-18, 11:39:38 »

A little off-topic but I see this processor is not that far away in bencharks than my own threadripper 3970x that I bought for 3-4x the price (some years ago). Is the consumer line of AMDs now that capable?

Pretty much yes I'd say. The Zen 2 Threadrippers are now like 5 years old and we had 3 succeeding Zen generations in between. The "problem" however is that the top end also got a lot faster which means sure, the 9950x is as fast / faster as the 3970x but then the top end chip is still like 2.75x faster than the 9950x :)

They come with issues though, right? I mean, threadrippers. At least with corona. That's my impression after several years of reading here on the forum that those using them were not able to get the full performance. So I was always hesitant to spend that kind of money on more problems.
Is that true do you think?

There's been issues in the past yes but at the same time not everyone experienced these issues in the same way.

Some were bigger like in C4D where we had noticeable issues with SMT / more than 64 threads and that really prevented you from working. Some users were affected while others not which made figuring stuff out rather hard. That said, it is fixed now.
Then we had some issues on certain newer builds in 3ds Max where the UI was quite stuttery although IIRC it wasn't just Threadrippers affected. That should also be fixed now.

There's still things the team is looking into, like a faster UX in general that seemingly affects Threadripper users more than others (sometimes disabling SMT can help speed things up a bit). Then again, we also have Threadripper users that don't notice these issues at all so... It kinda depends but nonetheless arguably the things we are trying to improve now aren't showstoppers necessarly.

I'm on a 5995WX and I very much appreciate the fast(er) IR and overall rendering experience :)

3

Hardware / Re: 9950x3d in a "silent" build? Case choices

« on: 2025-03-18, 11:32:11 »

Honestly I'm not sure if these cheaper coolers are "that bad" to begin with in terms of reliability. From my understanding the biggest issue can pretty much only be the fan itself - which on most of the coolers I think you can replace anyway. The other issues I can't help but think are pretty rare like the liquid inside the heat pipes evaporating... But someone can correct me if I'm wrong :)

That said, I do always buy Noctua just in case because I am under the impression they double check things, have multiple proper mounts for multiple sockets etc...

Oh and I guess I should mention that I do also have a 9654 Epyc for which there's like only 2 air coolers out there that aren't jet engines - and there I opted for a completely unknown firm but hey, it works fantastic on a 400W CPU for half a year now already. Pleasantly surprised to say the least.

4

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Infinite Ocean

« on: 2025-03-13, 10:12:41 »

Howdy! I suppose it could be a number of things - the Infinite Ocean 1.5.4 shaders not carrying over to Corona (depending on the shader we'd have to explicitly add support for them) or just a setup that needs to be re-thought :)

I'd suggest posting more details about the issue you are having. I myself am not familiar with Infinite Ocean so it is quite hard for me to say.

The other solution would be to contact support directly.

5

Hardware / Re: New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-13, 10:06:34 »

Wait? You know we can't WAIT! ha. I know, but I like to wonder if things live up to the hype, not that Apple over-hypes anything (wink, wink). Seems that if anyone is in the market for one of these, and in particular coming from a much older machine, that the M4 Max would be the best bang for the buck. The M3 Ultra is two Max chips connected together, but their performance does not simply double because there are two CPUs. Back in the G5 days, two CPUs meant twice the speed.

I keep seeing that the M3 Ultra Studio can have an obscene amount of unified RAM and cores and large language model A.i. applications would benefit. I'm sure the extra cores would help 3D CPU rendering, but at such a crazy extra cost, not for me.

Solitaire will run at 240 fps so that will be nice too.

Hah yes, I completely understand :) I'm much the same when a new Threadripper or a Xeon (<- been a while) gets released. And then I'm incredibly disappointed to see just a single Cinebench run tested :D

Not to single out any of the reviewers but Tom's Hardware ran Blender tests so those can be indicative of the performance uplift number you can expect - ballpark numbers of course.

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/apple-mac-studio-early-2025-review

So unless I'm getting this wrong the 16 core M4 Max studio goes for around 2500$? If that is the case it might not be a bad deal for everyone that is on the Apple train?

I mean yes, any current gen 32 core Threadripper will be about 2.5x faster although more expensive (probably around 4000$ for the build)... And a 96 core Threadripper will probably be 4x+ faster but will cost a lot more (13000$ for a build)... But nonetheless having options in the lower / middle part of that budget segment is imho a good thing.

6

Hardware / Re: New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-11, 14:03:34 »

Honestly I've never owned a Mac so I can't really tell you much about the performance of these chips outside of what is available online. That said, I am pretty confident in saying that Geekbench isn't that usable of a benchmark for when it comes to assessing rendering performance.

I suppose it'll be best to wait for reviews / benchmark entries?

7

Hardware / Re: GPU - 3ds max

« on: 2025-03-07, 10:13:59 »

If your workloads don't necessarily demand CUDA support imho AMD can be a really good cost effective solution which will give you loads of VRAM for a good price. Unfortunately there's _a lot_ of workloads where CUDA is, at the moment, necessary. Plus you could imho argue that if you do have a CUDA vs HIP (<- AMD) choice inside your software of choice then the Nvidia solution will probably be quite a bit faster and energy efficient. It isn't always the case though but overall CUDA is the way more versatile choice right now.

Personally, but feel free to disagree, I'd also avoid professional GPUs and stick to consumer ones just like James Vella said.

If you don't know why you'd need a "pro" GPU then you probably don't need it anyway unless you're buying it for two reasons - you want the form factor (2 slot card aka you can fit more of them into your case) or the VRAM.

That A4500 is Ampere generation whereas a 4080 is Ada. Ada is quite a bit faster and energy efficient so unless you need the 20GB VRAM buffer I'd definitely rather go with the 4080 imho. It'll be better in every way imaginable (except for VRAM and a couple of pro features) and cheaper probably.

Also, the 5xxx series seem to be having more issues than we've seen in a generation of cards possibly ever :) Besides the cable issues, missing ROPs and slightly faulty drivers you probably can't even buy one because the stock is nowhere to be found it seems. You'll also get a fairly mediocre performance boost compared to the previous gen and with some cards (like the 5090) a proportionally higher power consumption as well. Truly an "interesting" situation Nvidia created here.

8

Hardware / Re: old threadrippers and win11 upgrade?

« on: 2025-02-17, 17:37:51 »

Yup, can confirm. Just flip the TPM setting to firmware (or anything but disabled) and the Zen 2 / Zen 3 Threadrippers work with Windows 11 :)

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Volumetric optimisations

« on: 2025-02-01, 12:48:36 »

Hmm, the only other things besides the step size that I can think of right now would be messing with the GI vs AA balance and or changing the MSI to something like 1 (although of course that'll clip the intense rays a bit so it means less realism).

10

[C4D] I need help! / Re: More fireflies in video render

« on: 2025-01-15, 15:45:30 »

I'd suggest lowering the MSI (Max Sample Intensity) to a lower value - 1 or 2. That could help as well :)

It does sound like you're doing something funky somewhere in your workflow because generally the fireflies should be minor and even then they should be cleaned up rather nicely by any of the denoisers.

11

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen builds

« on: 2025-01-15, 12:48:27 »

Oh and for everyone looking to buy a TR system Q2/Q3, IceGiant is back with an expensive but probably really good cooler (wait for reviews of course) - https://www.icegiantcooling.com/products/icegiant-titan-360-tr

12

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen builds

« on: 2025-01-15, 12:28:56 »

4.8ghz is considerably higher than the 3.5ghz stock boost so this seems like a pretty hefty overclock already - could be the AI overclocker doesn't want to go past certain threshold (W, amps etc)?

You could try setting PBO to level 1 which I believe will move you up the AMD's curve to the point of where you reach 90c.

13

[C4D] I need help! / Re: More fireflies in video render

« on: 2025-01-10, 11:55:12 »

Howdy! To me it looks like you have one of the AI denoisers enabled when doing Interactive Rendering whereas the final renders are without any denoising.

So if you want to have a matching image to the IR one you ought to enable the same denoiser for your final renders as well.

Or let it render longer :)

14

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Linear mode in texture slot

« on: 2025-01-09, 13:52:19 »

davetwo's short and sweet answer would be the technically correct one. It is how "data" maps should be loaded.

Then again you might see some assets out there that were created "incorrectly" in a sense that the roughness or bump map wasn't loaded in as linear and that is how the original author intended it. While it is technically an incorrect workflow if you want the results to match you'll need to load those maps incorrectly in yourself as well.

15

[C4D] Bug Reporting / Re: Blue Screen

« on: 2024-12-16, 11:52:36 »

Howdy! Getting a blue screen indicates something is wrong with your system configuration - could be overheating, wrong drivers, a dying SSD or RAM and all sorts of not so wonderful things. Corona can't quite cause that for you.

I would recommend first looking at the health of your SSDs and memory and then maybe check the CPU temperatures as you are rendering. That would probably be the first thing I'd do myself.