Where do people wanting to buy a machine just for rendering shop?
mambanegra
Posts: 586
Does anyone have any recommendations of where to buy a nice machine that can be upgraded down the line that would make a good iRay renderer? I'm a mac user, so iRay is CPU only (nearly all Macs have AMD or Intel graphics). So, I'm looking for a machine that will sit beside my desk to act as a render station.
I think the CPU doesn't even have to be particularly powerful, as long as mother board and powersupply can support a decent GPU card. I built computers back when I used windows before, but it's been 10 years or more since I switched to Mac, so I'm completely out of the loop...but, I'm not afraid of using a screw driver and other drivers. The computer will not run anything except DAZ studio and windows remote desktop (and some sort of AV when it gets connected to the internet).
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Your location? For the US, try newegg.com.
Definitely Newegg. I think I bought my case on Amazon. Once you need more performance-specific hardware it starts becoming much cheaper to build than buy assembled.
Scan is good in the UK, though I've used them only for parts (so far).
Shop around for better deals than Newegg or other popular retailers. The used market can be risky, but as long as you put the effort into it, you'll find good deals on good hardware.
Newegg has started to adopt Amazon's concept of linking to other sellers, so if you shop there, be sure it's coming from Newegg, otherwise, you may as well buy it from the real seller.
I picked up a pair of used GTX 780 Ti from one seller on Ebay a while back for about $500, while most people were asking nearly that for just one.
which model mac?
Hello! I'm a PC enthusist and have custom built all of my rigs. If you're willing to build your own PC, the site I use to find the best deals is http://www.logicalincrements.com
It's updated frequently and is broken down by good value. A good iray rendering machine is very similar to a good gaming PC. Depending on what your definition of "good" is, it could be pricey. I have 16 GB of RAM, one 780 and a i7-4770 @ 4.4 Ghz and my renders still take a good amount of time.
Yep. I have two GTX 980's and I would characterize my render speed as "adequate" (really I should've only bought one, we didn't know yet that Iray can only load the scene to one card, and the two 740's can handle the monitor). When I can afford it I will trade up for a single larger card. I have about half a good used car invested in my main box counting software, and that is cheap compared to what some of my fellow PAs are using!
https://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex_comparison_chart.html
A man can dream.
US
https://pcpartpicker.com/
Canada
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/
Built my whole PC from scratch with the help of partpicker.
I build my own; i'm also in the UK, if you need assistance, can offer some.
Is the GTX 970 a reasonable starting point?
I'm using a retina iMAC from last year. So, I do have thunderbolt 2. Have you tried an external GPU? I've read mixed reviews about the hassles associated with getting one to work (and stay working). I left the PC world to avoid those sorts of hassles.
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com
Greetings,
Well... As with most things, probably sort-of. I'd say you should think of it as getting a solid 3.5GB RAM (and 1664 CUDA cores) card for a bit cheaper than normal, because of those issues. The 980 is better (real 4GB, and a bunch more cores (2048, IIRC)), but disproportionately more expensive.
That said, I'm running with CPU-only on my iMac, and a GTX 740 (384 CUDA cores) on my Windows (render) box, so I wouldn't know what things are like in the rarified air of those cards. ;)
@Sickleyield - Really? Iray can only use one video card? Is that because you have them in SLI (which I recall being a no-no for Iray) or is that even as separate standalone cards?
-- Morgan
I think something got lost in transmission from SY - Iray will use as many video cards as you can feed it - I've run both my 740 and 980 TI on a scene. Admittedtly, the 740 isn't a great deal of use, but it works. I think SY was trying to say the initial thought would be that the cards were additive, so two 4 GB cards woukd handle a scene twice as large as one - and Iray just doesn't work that way. Two 980s at 4 GB each should handle a scene that fits in 4 GB or less roughly twice as fast as one,
Well, I'm seeing Mac users say get a PC - it is very sad how Apple are not offering the support their customers need.
I have not, I'm a CPU render fan for this reason (and I use a PC mostly). but the TB2 to GPU chassis is a viable solution at this time for users who don't have access to a video card upgrade, it's just more expensive and there is the problem if Mac stops making nvidia drivers for specific cards it could become an issue. Many of the "high-end" cards after-market for these devices can be "flashed" for mac to allow compatibility. As it stands the CUDA tools are still being developed by Nvidia and can be downloaded from their site, once Apple takes over then the 'excrement engages the oscillator'
The one good side is if it stops working on the Mac and you get a PC you drop the card in the PC and call it a day.
I would leave Mac in a minute if I didn't like the OS better than others. But, the truth is, they have a very specific target customer and I'm just not that customer any more. I've been forced to use linux VMs for compiling C++ code that won't compile on their LLVM compiler and now this...it's very frustrating and might truly mean the end of having me as a customer. If only DAZ would make Studio work on Linux then I could be very happy. But, I don't see that ever happening. So, for now, I'm thinking having a windows computer dedicated solely to 3D renders. This iMac should last me another 3 years. Who knows what I'll do then...maybe switch back to windows?
So, I found a black friday deal for 1600 bucks. It comes with a 980 instead of a 980 TI, which I had been hoping for, but this comes as a package with windows, a keyboard/mouse (which I probably will only use in emergencies), an SSD and is a few hundred bucks cheaper than the parts I had been eyeballing from the Logical Increments site. Now I just have to convince myself...and my wife...that it's worth it. It probably means I'll have to stop shopping here for a while, lol.
Yup if Daz was Linux, I'd switch too; not happy with Windows 10, so will stick to 8.0 as long as its supported.
why not install Windows on that mac on a separate partition, or USB3 or TB2 drive? You can choose one other the other at boot, or both through Virtualization.
that box would scream with windows on it.
It's an iMac, so there aren't really any user upgrades available for the GPU and the GPU that came with it is the AMD Radeon R9, which was the best option they had at the time I made the purchase. For this model, there were no nVidia options (though, at the time, I didn't know I would be using iRay, so I wouldn't have intentionally picked nVidia). I love my computer for normal tasks. It's very fast and has a 5K monitor that is gorgeous, I can jump down into a terminal session and do most work stuff, but, apple's obsession with skinny over all else just really is irritating.
outside of Iray you still have a beast and if you keep it Mac OS I think you can get far more than 3 years out it. Iray is the bottleneck in your equation. I have an HD5770 so it's not an option for me either, however LuxRender, Cyces, 3Delight, Blender - what I use, Mac is stellar, and If you decide to use Poser at some point that ATI card is supported for Cycles.
My Workstation (built myself through buying parts from Newegg) is still a Win7 machine and I like it much better for my 3D endeavors than my new Win10, so I've been thinking about installing Win7 on that new one.
I agree that learning to build your own Windows machine is quite easy to do. I started by selecting appropriate motherboards that can handle everything I need, downloading the manual for that motherboard, and you've got full instructions for building the computer.
But some folks I know just aren't in the mood to do such things. I was looking at these folks for building a render station for me: Workstation Specialists
Their high end systems only come bundled with ATI cards.
I really think Daz needs to find a non-specific internal engine that takes advantage of GPU cough cycles cough doesn't alienate a portion of their user base.
Wow, really? Back when I got a quote from them I thought for sure that I configured mine with nVidia cards. Hmmmm...
Truth be told, I've always been an nVidia fan. It's an odd time of my life that I only have ATI cards right now.
I built my computer all from parts ordered from Newegg. I like that because I can get the whole shebang in one shipment. Mine has an eight core AMD cpu, each core at over 3GHz without having to overclock, 16GB RAM, Military-grade (higher specs, larger capacitors, etc.,) motherboard and, at that time, a fine little nVidia card plus a nice case and the rest of the stuff that puts the package together. I already had a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, so left those out. But the whole tower was built brand new, including Windows 7 Home Premium and Sony Movie HD Platinum for just around $ one thousand! That's amazing! And it's fun putting them together IMHO
Oh, I'm definitely not ready to go back to windows for normal use. This new machine will just be dedicated to rendering pretty (maybe?) pictures. I was under the impression that Poser's new renderer wasn't GPU accelerated. Am I mistaken? I haven't missed a poser version since Poser Pro (as in the pro version of Poser 4), but I don't plan to buy the new version.
It uses Cycles (part of Blender), called Superfly, and it is GPU accelerated; it works via Nvidia, although Blender are adding some functionality for AMD as it becomes available; how long it will take to get into Poser 11, I have no idea.
It's so funny. I played with blender back in 2001 or something because it was the most sophisticated open source 3D engine that ran on linux. I learned about it from a C++ book on writing 3D games for linux. Back in those days, it was pretty klunky and I never really "got it" well enough to make any use of it, but, I really spent most of my time reading about Mesa and a few of the more programming related things. Lots of folks here seem to really like it...so I figure I'll give it a shot. It will be interesting to see how it's progressed in 10+ years since I last tried it.
a lot has happend to blender in the past 10 years.
I have had good luck with cyberpowerpc and with newegg (got a killer refurbished deal)