Question C4D Redshift Build

[Channel96]

Hi guys,

I asked this question in 2019 but instead opted for a MacBook pro at that time, since I thought I'd be cruising around client studios with my hardware.
Now that it looks like working from home will be a more permanent fixture of my life, it might be a sensible time to invest in a PC workstation for GPU rendering.

I mainly use Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and C4D. I've been getting along with standard renderer so far but it feels overdue time I got into Redshift/Octane. Also interested if anybody would recommend a Mac Studio for this purpose as ideally I'd love to stick by Mac but not sure this is going to be a great workhorse

back in 2019 I was looking at this -

CPU - AMD 2nd Gen 16 Core Ryzen Threadripper 2 2950X
Motherboard - Asus ROG ZENITH EXTREME X399 Motherboard
GPUs - 2x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB DDR4 3000 MHz RAM
PSU - Corsair HXi 1200W Full Modular 80+ Platinum
Cooling - NZXT 280mm Kraken X62 RGB All In One CPU Water Cooler
HD1 - Samsung 860 PRO 512GB 2.5” SATA SSD/Solid State Drive (OS)
HD2 - Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 2TB M.2 PCIe (Current Projects)
HD3 - Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 250GB M.2 PCIe (AE Cache)
HD4 - WD 2TB Red Pro 3.5" SATA3 Enterprise NAS HDD/Hard Drive (Overnight Backup)
Case - NZXT White H700
Warranty - 1st year on-site, 2nd and 3rd Return to Base

But I understand a lot has changed since then including a new 3090 RTX card from NVIDIA. Is one of those enough? What else should I be upgrading in this list?

Best,
M

 

[Inthrutheoutdoor]

Although that rig may work ok for your purposes, it is outdated by today's standards, at least on the cpu, mobo & dual GPU areas...

If you plan to stay with AMD based rig, then the new Ryzen 7 series (or even the Threadripper series) would be right up your alley, but based on my CAD experience (on diff apps but with similar hardware requirements), I would strongly suggest you invest in at least 128GB of very fast ram, or even 256GB, and the corresponding compatible mobo..

Your case, cooler & PSU should work well, regardless of the other parts you choose, but I would recommend upping your cache drive to 2TB, and your backup drive to at least 8TB, perhaps 16TB, depending on if you store your final renders on it or not....

Also, dual GPU setups finally died a slow, painful death over the past 3 years, and a single 3090 or 4090 will easily handle anything you throw at it for the next few years or so anyways...

The Adobe apps will run great on either platform, and now that Redshift/Octane has native Mac/ M1 support, apparently with great results, that may be something to consider before making a final buying decision.....

But if you do choose to get a Mac, get the maxed out version of whichever one you buy, 'cause they are not nearly as upgradable later on as windows machines are

 

[Channel96]

Although that rig may work ok for your purposes, it is outdated by today's standards, at least on the cpu, mobo & dual GPU areas...

If you plan to stay with AMD based rig, then the new Ryzen 7 series (or even the Threadripper series) would be right up your alley, but based on my CAD experience (on diff apps but with similar hardware requirements), I would strongly suggest you invest in at least 128GB of very fast ram, or even 256GB, and the corresponding compatible mobo..

Your case, cooler & PSU should work well, regardless of the other parts you choose, but I would recommend upping your cache drive to 2TB, and your backup drive to at least 8TB, perhaps 16TB, depending on if you store your final renders on it or not....

Also, dual GPU setups finally died a slow, painful death over the past 3 years, and a single 3090 or 4090 will easily handle anything you throw at it for the next few years or so anyways...

The Adobe apps will run great on either platform, and now that Redshift/Octane has native Mac/ M1 support, apparently with great results, that may be something to consider before making a final buying decision.....

But if you do choose to get a Mac, get the maxed out version of whichever one you buy, 'cause they are not nearly as upgradable later on as windows machines are

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of feedback I'm after. I've been out of the loop for so long that I no longer have a handle on what the best components are.

Is the Mac Studio practical for Redshift? I'd rather go with that if possible but if the PC build blows it out of the water on GPU speed then it probably isn't.

Interesting what you say about RAM as I remember a few years ago people often sidelined the importance of it in favour of GPU and CPU speed

Thanks again

 

[Inthrutheoutdoor]

I would suggest you search for feedback on Redshift's Mac performance over maxon's website if they have a user's forum or at some other mac-centric websites like macrumors.com...

However, given the recent positive news about the studio's general/overall performance, I would think it would be quite suitable for that app. But I don't know about the GPU performance specifically, or if there has been a side by side comparison with a similarly spec'd windows machine...

As for the ram, my early CAD experience taught me that having tons of available ram was at least, if not more, important as cpu & gpu specs...

to wit: my 1st CAD machine came with an i5 cpu, 32GB of ram & a weak-ass 8GB Radeon workstation card.... everyone at the office were constantly complaining about the excessive time it took to manipulate and render our drawings. Finally the mgmt agreed to spend the $$ to upgrade us to new machines that came with 64GB of ram, i7xx cpu's and a slightly better 10GB GPU.... this helped a little, but even after upgrading those new machines to 16GB GPU's, it was still painfully obvious that we needed moar CPU horsepower and moar ram too.... Well, we finally we got it, with the last move to i9 cpu's & 256GB of ram.....

that was in mid-'21, and in June this year, we again upped the ram to 512GB and suddenly, everyone was really, really happy and our productivity soared over 25% in less than 1 week, yee haw