What kind of hardware setup do you recommend for IRay renders
Lilnymph
Posts: 11
I'm wanting to buy a new system that can handle doing Iray renders quickly. I've done some research on what people recommend, and I've found that the machine I want runs around $4k. Should I have at least two GTX 980's?
I was looking at the Slad Pro by Digital Storm, the specs are:
Processor: Intel Core i7 5930K 3.5GHz (Six-Core) (Unlocked CPU)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-X99-SLI (Intel X99 Chipset)
System Memory: 32GB DDR4 2666MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series
Power Supply: 1000W Corsair HX1000i (Digitally Controlled Power)
Optical Drive: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD (250GB Samsung 850 EVO)
Storage Set 2: 2x Storage (2TB Western Digital/Seagate/Hitachi)
RAID Config: RAID 5: Performance + Drive Failure Protection (Recommended) (Requires 3 HDDs)
Graphics Card(s): 2x Dual (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Digital Storm Vortex 120mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler (High-Performance Edition)
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Comments
Two comments. One - Raid 5 won't work unless you add a 3rd 2TB drive; I'd suggest an external USB drive to back up to and go with a mirrored setup on the internal drives. Two - more of a question - what kind of case and how many fans?
I will admit that I've given up on raid/mirrored drives and just do weekly backups to alternating external drives; almost as effective and easier to work with.
I'm running the same CPU on an Asus X99 E-WS Motherboard and using a Noctua heatsink/fan combination; I've run 100% CPU usage for over 24 hours without exceeding 60 degrees C. But my case has six fans to move the air efficiently (3 120 mm intake, 2 120 mm exhaust, and a 210 MM top-mount exhaust - and there's a 120 mm fan on the heatsink).
Other than that, looks like a good system.
Your rig looks very good to me.
Agreed that RAID isn't worth the expense and headache. IMO, $4K is about twice as much as you need to spend for the same configuration and performance. I have bought many computers from Cyberpowerpc.com over that last tne years because I can't build them as cheaply on my own.
I had configured a RAID 0 when I first started using DS 4, I saw no speed increase from my internal SATA's and no speed decrease when I went back to single drive using DS content, loading, saving, etc.
If you going to use two 980's over one Titan X you will get the benefit of the combined CUDA cores and faster renders but not combined GPU RAM. At the time of this writing two 980's with 6GB each come out to 4096 Cuda cores and a combined total of 6 GB RAM available at render time. If you plan on using Iray for large scenes with lots of props and figures you may run out of space on the combined cards RAM quicker than you would with the Titan X which has 12GB RAM, but you will render scenes that fit under 6 GB somewhat faster.
What StratDragon said. If you're a serious render junkie who likes big scenes, get a single bigger card rather than two smaller ones. I wish I had gone for a Titan instead of my own two GTX 980's, and I'll be switching to that in the next few months if sales go well.
And remember that a "big scene" in Iray is not about the geometry - Iray will chew up millions of polys in jig time if they're untextured! It's about two things:
1. Number of large textures.
2. Number/size of transmissive objects.
Humans in a scene can add both of those things (4096x textures and transmissive skin shaders) and large architecture sets are also common culprits for big textures. Consider tiling architecture shaders for objects in deep background or out of focus.
or you could make multiple scenes and fit them in post work but honestly I hate doing that.
it would have liquid cooling and 4 fans.
honestly, I've been using DS3 for most of my renders, still, and render each layer seperately and then pull it all into photshop and paint from there. Now that I want to use the genesis 2 models, i don't have much of a choice but to learn DS4.8, so I'll still be rendering mainly one person scenes, but I'd eventually like the capability to add more props and backgrounds in the future.
For a 4k budget I would be tempted to go with 3 titan Xs and put less priority on CPU since it does not contribute that much for Iray rendering and system ram will only help in running large scenes in daz studio but not rendering in Iray unless you do 3Delight, video card ram is more important. You will need a 1100W+ power supply if you do go with 3 titans X. Raid is also not that important for rendering.
My system has a 3+ year old core i7 950 and 24Gigs of ram and neither are a bottleneck to my two Titan Xs. I already plan to go with a 3rd titan x over upgrading cpu in the future. I use MSI afterburner to overclock Titan Xs for extra performance boost. I would also recommend using MSI Afterburner even wihtout overclocking since Titan X by default prioritizes low fan speed over performance. Meaning it will underclock in order to keep fan noise down.
With my setup I can render 2 figures at high resolution in under 2 minutes and once all shaders are loaded it take less time to render again when adjusting tonemapping. For example I change the exposure while rendering and render will be done in around 30 seconds. An indoor scene with just emmisive shaders for the ceiling lights will take around 8-10 minutes at 1500x1500 resolution.
so one or even better two titans are better than 3-4 gtx 980 Ti but even just one titasn is better?
also few computers looked at give you the options of number of drives and type, 2 drives, 4 drives, and 2+ addition of 5 swappable drives. Out of these options what combination of ssd and mechanical best like I'm guessing from everywhere read at least have one ssd 1Tb, the mechanicles offered mostly 2Tb some configs 4Tb but read even a small ssd is better than having a large mechanical drive