[SOLVED] High-End Workstation for CPU Rendering ?

[ilmattiapascal]

Hello there,

i am ready to buy a new workstation for architectural visualization. (3DS Max + Vray CPU Rendering)

My budget is around 4500/5000€ (possibly monitors included)

My idea is to buy:

CPU : AMD 3970x Threadripper (i never had anything by AMD, i always sticked with Intel. Is it good ? does it have compatibility problems with Adobe Suites, or Windows, or whatever ?)

GPU : 3080 when it will be avaible. For the moment i would put my "old" 1080 inside the new workstation.

Motherboard : ASRock TRX40 TAICHI ( i m in the dark here....i usually work at home so i don't have many PC's or servers to plug, just two render slaves...i always sticked with entry level motherboards...)

Cooler : Noctua NH-U14S

RAM : Corsair Vengeance LPX 32Go (2x16Go) DDR4 3200MHz C16 OR G.Skill Trident Z Royal 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 what do you think ? G.Skill is so cheap compared to corsair...i always had Corsair Vengeance, but i m open to other ideas.

STORAGE : Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 2TB + Samsung Evo 970 1TB

POWER : Corsair RMx 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified (is it ok ? )

CASE : Fractal Design Define R5 ATX

for the monitor i have to see...i have to sell my old FULLHD monitors and maybe i will get 2 Dell 27 4K UHD Monitor - S2721Q

What do you think ? I planned to buy the 3970x for a while, but i have cold feet...i know some guys in archviz who were really disappointed by the last Threadripper generation (2990X) saying that they had problems with compatibility, and so they came back to intel x-treme and use threadripper 2990x only as render slave.

any ideas or enhancement to this list would be much appreciated!

thank you in advance!

have a great day!

 

[Dj0gany]

So the price of the 2 monitors on amazon is around 650$.With shipping i would say 700$.Also the GPU is 700$. So the rest ($4400 USD) is for the build it self.Take a look:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kxHFTJ
I kept everything the same except the cooler,storage and the powersupply.
I put a water cooler inside since with this budget,why not.
Also for the power supply i went with more wattage since i think 1000W is a bit on the edge here.With 1200W i think you can even go with 2 3080's or 1 3090,but that would be out of budget.
For m.2 i went with 2x2TB instead of 1TB m.2 and a 2TB m.2.
Also idk why would you want to put such a beatuiful build,in a case that doesnt even have a glass side panel,but its your choice.I would have definitely gone with something like 011 dynamic from Lian Li.

 

[ilmattiapascal]

Thank you for your reply and for your time.

Yeah i would like too 2x m2 2TB but idk, wherever i look the price is much higher here in europe. Something like 400$ instead of 299$.

yeah water cooling....i never ever had a watercooling system and i am afraid to damage things while installing it....is it easy to assemble ? i will have a look; i had already Noctua on my old PC and i was never disappointed; so when i saw that it was ok also for the 3970x i thought "great!" .

Also idk why would you want to put such a beatuiful build,in a case that doesnt even have a glass side panel,but its your choice.I would have definitely gone with something like 011 dynamic from Lian Li.

Why a glass panel ? is there any performance improvement or it is just to have fancy colors to look at ?

 

[Dj0gany]

Thank you for your reply and for your time.

Yeah i would like too 2x m2 2TB but idk, wherever i look the price is much higher here in europe. Something like 400$ instead of 299$.

yeah water cooling....i never ever had a watercooling system and i am afraid to damage things while installing it....is it easy to assemble ? i will have a look; i had already Noctua on my old PC and i was never disappointed; so when i saw that it was ok also for the 3970x i thought "great!" .



Why a glass panel ? is there any performance improvement or it is just to have fancy colors to look at ?

If the prices of m.2's are high in ur country,just 1x2TB m.2 is more than enough.Water cooling is generally better than air coolers in both performance and noise.Also not every water cooler is better than a air cooler,your noctua will do the job fine if not as good as the water cooler would,but again if ur putting this much money for a pc,why not buy a water cooler.Glass panel is just a personal preference,but the fractal case you put in ur build has a side panel with vents,which is way more airflow efficient than a piece of glass.If u want performance,go with the side panel with vents,if u want looks,then go with a case that has a glass side panel.Not that glass panel would affect cooling performance drastically,its just more beautiful than a normal side panel with vents.

 

[ilmattiapascal]

If the prices of m.2's are high in ur country,just 1x2TB m.2 is more than enough.Water cooling is generally better than air coolers in both performance and noise.Also not every water cooler is better than a air cooler,your noctua will do the job fine if not as good as the water cooler would,but again if ur putting this much money for a pc,why not buy a water cooler.Glass panel is just a personal preference,but the fractal case you put in ur build has a side panel with vents,which is way more airflow efficient than a piece of glass.If u want performance,go with the side panel with vents,if u want looks,then go with a case that has a glass side panel.Not that glass panel would affect cooling performance drastically,its just more beautiful than a normal side panel with vents.

ok thank you. In fact for my old PC i had the Fractal Design R4 and i love it because it's so silent..it's always a big black block of course, but i am not interested in RGB.

Can i ask you an advice on the RAM ? Do you think 3200Mhz x C16 (corsair vengeance) is better than 3600Mhx X C18 (Corsair, or G.Skill) ?

 

[Dj0gany]

3200Mhz x C16 is a really good low profile ram,with decet speed for lets say ryzen 5 1600-3600.For the CPU u will be using,its not enough.So yeah 3600mhz x c18 is better than 3200mhz vengeance.I would suggest overclocking ur ram to see if u can get close to 4000mhz,it would help you.

 

[kanewolf]

With a threadripper, you want ram that is sold as a 4 DIMM set. The threadripper is a quad memory channel CPU.
To get more memory bandwidth, you would have to look at Xeon Scalable. Some of those CPUs are 6 channel memory CPUs.

 

[ilmattiapascal]

Urgh now you begin to speak a language that i barely understand (DIMM, Xeon Scalable etc etc)

About the 4 DIMM set: you say that i have to buy 4 memory stick right ? i wanted to buy 4 32GB sticks; is it ok ?

About RAM power: I found strange that the G.Skill Trident Z 128GB with 3600 and C18 is nearly cheaper than the Corsair Vengeance 3200 and C16 (520$) . And Corsair Vengeance with the same set up of G.Skill (3600 + C18) is waaaaay more expensive (750$). I always had Corsair Vengeance, but could you please explain if it's worth the 200$+ difference ?

Again, thank you for your time!

 

[kanewolf]

Urgh now you begin to speak a language that i barely understand (DIMM, Xeon Scalable etc etc)

About the 4 DIMM set: you say that i have to buy 4 memory stick right ? i wanted to buy 4 32GB sticks; is it ok ?

About RAM power: I found strange that the G.Skill Trident Z 128GB with 3600 and C18 is nearly cheaper than the Corsair Vengeance 3200 and C16 (520$) . And Corsair Vengeance with the same set up of G.Skill (3600 + C18) is waaaaay more expensive (750$). I always had Corsair Vengeance, but could you please explain if it's worth the 200$+ difference ?

Again, thank you for your time!

I didn't say you HAD to buy 4 memory sticks. I said that the maximum performance from the Threadripper CPU is achieved with 4 memory sticks.
What I also said is that getting memory sold as a SET is optimal. So buying one part number that has 4 memory sticks is better than buying 4 part numbers of one memory stick.
I am not a "max memory clock speed" person. The few extra % performance aren't worth the extra cost to me. With a rendering workload, spending money on cooling is probably money better spent.

 

[ilmattiapascal]

Sorry for bother you again, but i wanted another quick tip:

if i put the exact code of the RAM on the motherboard QVL i cannot find it. Is it a problem ? both for Corsair and G.Skill. I found them both (same frequencies, same size) but not the exact code (as i saw it on amazon, or official website).

 

[kanewolf]

Sorry for bother you again, but i wanted another quick tip:

if i put the exact code of the RAM on the motherboard QVL i cannot find it. Is it a problem ? both for Corsair and G.Skill. I found them both (same frequencies, same size) but not the exact code (as i saw it on amazon, or official website).

QVL is the list of parts the motherboard manufacturer has tested. They are GUARANTEED to work. If you memory isn't on the QVL, then you don't have that guarantee. The risk is low.