Advice on which computer?

[hawk911]

I am trying to set up a small render farm. I bought a notebook on sale to use only as a render node but havent opened it yet. Specs are: 

• 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9750H Six-Core
• 16GB DDR4 | 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB GDDR5)

I am wondering if I need to spend $400 more and get this one instead:

• 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9750H Six-Core
• 16GB DDR4 RAM | 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU (6GB)

Or if I need to bite the bullet and spend a lot more and get an RTX 2080.

Is an i9 preferable to an i7?

The plan is to use whatever new computer I get as a render node. The main computer running 3ds Max has 64GB RAM.  I will be using V-ray 3.X, Phoenix FD4, Mental Ray, and scan line render.  3ds Max 2017 and 2020.

I am mainly trying to speed up my v-ray renders and Phoenix because they take a really really long time.

A few years from now I will likely upgrade to V-ray Next but it will be a few years so an RTX card may not be worth it.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[Richard.Vivanco]

Go to i9 with six or eight cores and more frequency.

If you are planning to render with gpu go to rtx2060 plus, if not, choose a more powerful cpu and more ram 32-64gb

[StephenMF]

Spend some time on this blender site.
Lots of tests, that will help you decide.
https://opendata.blender.org/

[hawk911]

Thank you.  I am sending the unopened laptop back and going to get a desktop.

Maybe with an RTX 2080ti.

One of the things I am unsure about is since I am mainly trying to speed up v-ray3 and phoenix fd 4, if I need to spend more on processor or GPU

[hawk911]

New plan. I am now looking to get a desktop superior to everything I have and use it as main max workstation and sometimes use it as render node connected to other workstation

Looking at these two now:

3.3 GHz Intel Core i9-9820X Ten-Core
32GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (128GB Max)
512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB GDDR6)

3.6 GHz Intel Core i9-9900K Eight-Core
32GB DDR4 266MHz (64GB Max)
512GB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB GDDR6)

Thoughts?

Quadro RTX 4000 over RTX 2080ti?

3.3 Ghz 10 core over 3.6GHz 8 core?

I am using v-ray 3.7, phoenix FD, mental ray and scanline 

[10DSpace]

Hi @hawk911 

I am not expert enough to answer the  Quadro RTX 4000 over RTX 2080ti? or the 3.3 Ghz 10 core over 3.6GHz 8 core? questions but a few lesser comments for what they are worth:

In building my machine a few years ago, I wondered whether I should go with 64GB vs 32 GB RAM since I typically have 2 different versions and/or instances of Max open at the same time along with Photoshop, Substance Painter,  Zbrush, and usually several desktop apps like Microsoft One Note and Word and Google Chrome.    I have not had an issue with 32 GB RAM despite the multiple apps.   If you have similar or less simultaneous app usage, you should be OK with 32GB RAM.   I mention this in case you had any doubts about that. 

On the other hand, I did upgrade to a 1TB SSD and the price difference between 512 GB & 1TB must be now around only 50 bucks or so.  So relative to the overall costs of the system, I would be inclined to go for a 1TB SSD.  The primary apps that you want running on the SSD C drive are getting bigger and bigger so this is some future-proofing perhaps. 

[hawk911]

Thank you very much.

I agree that the drive is too small and 1TB SSD is needed, but that is what it comes with so I am looking at other places/models to buy. 

I only plan on running one program at a time and also upgrading to 64GB.

And I am also thinking of getting a Ryzen 9 3900X CPU with 3200Mhz RAM instead of the i9 due to some recoemmendations of 3D people.

I am unsure.