Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

[GraceKellyPerfect]

Hello people,
I was wondering is there AMD CPU available that can turn Corona Interactive into "real-time renderer"  (whenever I change something in the scene, Interactive Render turns into blocky mess for second or two before image is cleared) . How close are Threadripper 3990X and similar powerhouses to this?

[lolec]

Hello people,
I was wondering is there AMD CPU available that can turn Corona Interactive into "real-time renderer"  (whenever I change something in the scene, Interactive Render turns into blocky mess for second or two before image is cleared) . How close are Threadripper 3990X and similar powerhouses to this?

It depends on your scene. But for simple scenes. Pretty close.

[GraceKellyPerfect]

Hello people,
I was wondering is there AMD CPU available that can turn Corona Interactive into "real-time renderer"  (whenever I change something in the scene, Interactive Render turns into blocky mess for second or two before image is cleared) . How close are Threadripper 3990X and similar powerhouses to this?

It depends on your scene. But for simple scenes. Pretty close.

Could you give me example of what is your definition of simple scene? Studio scene with one object? Small interior scene?
Thanks

[romullus]

whenever I change something in the scene, Interactive Render turns into blocky mess for second or two before image is cleared

You may want to play with Corona settings to see if you can improve your IR experience. Setting IR subsampling to 0 will get rid of blockiness and turning off fast preview denoise may help with messiness. You'll find the former in render setup>system>system settings and the latter in render setup>performance. You can also try to increase image upscale factor to 2 in system settings, this would greatly increase IR performance at the significant loss of image quality.

[lupaz]

whenever I change something in the scene, Interactive Render turns into blocky mess for second or two before image is cleared

You may want to play with Corona settings to see if you can improve your IR experience. Setting IR subsampling to 0 will get rid of blockiness and turning off fast preview denoise may help with messiness. You'll find the former in render setup>system>system settings and the latter in render setup>performance. You can also try to increase image upscale factor to 2 in system settings, this would greatly increase IR performance at the significant loss of image quality.

I'd also recommend checking "dissolve with previous image"

[Tom]

Any of you guys running the Silverstone IceGem 360? AIO for 3990x?

Interesting thing. Looks like almost no reviews although it has been out since January?

Here is a review that looks interesting (I didn't watch it entirely):

[Tom]

Hi guys,

This is my first post here (second to be honest), so apologies if I'm doing anything wrong here.
First of all, big thank you to all of you for the valuable knowledge you share here, it is highly appreciated.

I'm setting up my new machine which will be dedicated to Arch Viz Corona renderings. I will have someone building the machine for me as I don't want to go through the process myself: I built from scratch a dual Xeon workstation few years ago: in the end it worked really well but I just don't have time to choose each and every component myself, then checking online if they are compatible or not.

So basically I'm coming here to expose the custom setup I've ended with so far, and I hope you guys can give me advice on it.
I ended up with two different setup, a 3970X based, and a 3990X based. The goal is to flag any absurd component choice that could have a negative impact on the overall rendering performance of the machine.

# BUILD 1:
Chassis: be quiet! Silent Base 802 - Black
Motherboard: Asus TRX40 Prime Pro S
CPU: AMD Ryzen ThreadRipper 3990X | 4.3 GHz | 64 Cores 128 Threads
Graphics Card: Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC V2 - 8GB
RAM: 128GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200MHz (4X32GB | 16-18-18-38)
CPU Cooling System: Noctua NH U14S TR4-SP3
Primary SSD: 500GB Gen4 Aorus M.2 NVME (R: 5000MB/s | W: 2500MB/s)
Secondary SSD: 1TB Gen4 Aorus M.2. NVME (R: 5000MB/s | W: 4400MB/s)
First Hard Drive: 4TB Seagate Ironwolf 5900RPM 3.5"
Chassis Fans: 5 x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140mm Fans
Power Supply Unit: 1200W FSP 80+ Platinum - Modular

# BUILD 2:
Chassis: be quiet! Silent Base 802 - Black
Motherboard: Asus TRX40 Prime Pro S
CPU: AMD Ryzen ThreadRipper 3970X | 4.5 GHz | 32 Cores 64 Threads
Graphic Cards: Asus RTX 3090 TUF Gaming OC - 24GB
RAM: 128GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200MHz (4X32GB | 16-18-18-38)
Cooling System: Noctua NH U14S TR4-SP3
Primary SSD: 2TB Gen4 Aorus M.2. NVME (R: 5000MB/s | W: 4400MB/s)
Chassis Fans: 5 x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140mm Fans
Power Supply Unit: 850W MSI MPG 80+ Gold - Modular

The store doesn't have a lot of options to choose from for each component unfortunately: I am mainly concerned about the RAM which is 3200MHz in both cases, whereas you guys in this forum talk more about 3600 if I'm not wrong. I'm not sure why the store doesn't provide an option for 3600, anyway I hope these 3200 RAM sticks will do well.

So I plan to go for one of these two builds, not sure which one yet, unless you guys tell me there's something wrong with them.

I need a pretty strong rendering power as I don't have any render farm at the moment plus I don't plan to rely on cloud rendering solutions neither (or exceptionally e.g. when something goes wrong with a client and I find myself having to render multiple 8k images over a night): so I guess I'll probably go for the 3990X build, but, again, I'm happy to have your thoughts on these builds and your advice on the best strategy for the future as I may want to expand my rendering power gradually as I'll get more jobs.

Thanks in advance for your knowledge and advice!

[Tom]

Hi guys,

I would greatly appreciate your insight on my configuration.
Thank you

[romullus]

I'm not colour blind, but i have problems with reading that colourful text, especially the orange one. If you really want to get help, maybe you should stick to plain text formating instead of clowning around with colours?

[Tom]

Thank you @romullus : done!
You're right, plain text is better

[dfcorona]

I just bought the Silverstone IceGem 360 TR4, now I see the Alphacool Eisbaer Pro Aurora 360 for TR4.  I haven't installed the Silverstone yet. What do you guys think, should I return the Silverstone for the Alphacool?  I would put links to both, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed too in the forums.

[Nejc Kilar]

@CrocsBlancs

Looking at those specs I think generally speaking you're good. The only thing that I would reconsider in your place is that 850W PSU for the 3970x and a 3090. AFAIK you are going to be pushing close to its limits if you'll be running the 3970x AND the 3090 full speed so I'd personally feel quite a bit more comfortable with 1000W+ there. Especially if you'll enable PBO.

Memory wise, I dunno, what you've listed seems great. Running a couple of different rendering benchmarks I can't really notice a difference between 3200mhz and 3600mhz (on a 3970x) and the timings on those modules you've selected seems tight enough. To be 99% sure whether that memory is going to work you can check the motherboards QVL list (on their website) but from what I'm seeing on the forums, most non QVL stuff typically works anyway.

Cooling wise, the 3970x does get toasty with the U14s but it is still within spec. If you can splurge extra I'd consider the Thermal Syphon IceGiant but since you're within spec with the U14s I wouldn't prioritize it. The 3990x appears to be easier to cool so the U14s supposedly does an even better job there.,

As for storage, well, 1TB seems a bit on the low side but I reckon you'll be shuffling projects to the HDD once you've completed them. It really depends on how big your projects get too but I'm thinking you've probably taken all that into the account already. Besides, want more space? You can always plug in another SSD later :)

All of the above is of course just my humble opinion :)

[Tom]

Thanks so much for your answer @Necj Kilar,

All of what you're saying makes perfect sense, and yes you're right about the PSU being a bit weak to run both a 3970X and a 3090, but I will probably go for a cheaper GPU afterall: a 3060 should be enough. In that case, do you still think 850W is too low then?

Also I don't know that much about PBO: it looks like a kind of automatic OC isn't it? Is PBO available both on 3070X and 3090X? Are there any prerequisites to enable it?
Any useful links are much appreciated.

About the CPU, I'm still not really decided if I go for a 3070X or a 3090X, but I will probably go for a 3090X even if it's way more costly: I know I could also build a render node with the money I'd save if I go for a 3070X instead, but my office is pretty tiny so I will save space if I have only one 3090X machine instead of a 3070X + one render node (or two?), not to mention I will also save time by not choosing components, building the node, configuring the network, deploying software and plugins updates ... And in the case I have to render very complex scenes and/or very high resolution images, I will hire an online render farm. What's your advice?

Thanks again guys, I do value your help a lot,

[Nejc Kilar]

You are welcome! I mean I'm just thinking out loud here so don't take everything I say as fact. Truth is, I'm a little new to Zen as the 3970x is my first Zen workstation since... Well, since I was a kid sporting an AMD Athlon. Not that I didn't like Zen or Zen+, on the contrary really but at that point in time I already owned a server grade WS  that was and still is speedy :)

850W for a 3970x or a 3990x with a 3060 should be good enough in my opinion. If you aren't doing a lot of GPGPU stuff then going with a lower tier GPU makes perfect sense imho because it won't help you render faster with Corona at all and the Nvidia AI denoiser will work really fast on the 3060 too. Save some cash and buy an extra SSD or something :)

You can think of PBO as sort of an automatic OC yeah. AFAIK there aren't any prerequisites but lower temps and a thing you can't control anyway - power consumption of the chip. To enable it you basically turn it on in the BIOS and that's it. On my ASUS STRIX XE GAMING motherboard it actually came set to AUTO which I think just means ON - as evident by the CPU boosting up to 90c when it ain't explicitly disabled. Not quite sure how it works honestly because I was under the impression that the CPU's wattage should skyrocket with PBO being on but from what I can tell that didn't really happen. The boost clocks are a nice addition although I can't quite see them making a huge impact either. Honestly, somebody who knows more about PBO should probably speak up :)

As for tiny spaces and multiple nodes... Well, the more rendering power you cram into a single package the less heat output you'll have in that room plus it'll be one less machine to mess around with - so just like you said, less worrying about the different updates and all that stuff. If you can splurge for the 3990x and it makes business sense to do so I think that's the way I'd go. It'll last you longer because it is faster for rendering (not so much for other stuff though) and you'll have less machines to tend to.

[Tom]

Thank you for your advice @Nejc Kilar, always good to have the point of view of somebody else :)

I found a really good article about the Threadripper 3990X and the PBO feature: https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x-cpu-review/all/1/
It's worth having both a strong cooling system and PSU also: the store I will buy the workstation at is running out of Corsair PSUs at the moment, so I'd have to go for a 1200W FSP 80+ Platinum - Modular instead. As I didn't care too much about hardware stuff until very recently, I've never heard of that brand before. Is FSP good?