Building 3D Rendering Computer, Advice Needed

[Scarisbrick]

Hi Forum,
I'm a 3D CGi Animator Student, recently finishing my first year of University, I've decided over summer it would be a good idea to build a rendering machine, so that in the second year I can always keep working, and not delayed by the long rendering process. I use industry software AutoDesk Maya and 3Ds Max, which I usually animate on using a 4th Intel i5 4570 Quadcore @ 3.2 Ghz.

So I've decided to build a Rendering computer however I need advice and help on was specifications I should be looking for, Already My tutors and peers recommend to buying a key part, an Intel Xeon Processor, for its quantity of cores and Hyper Threading Capabilities, however I feel this isn't the only specification to look for?

Are there any other specifications that I should factor in, which will decrease render times in terms of Hardware?

 

[stulid]

Hi,

To make it easier for me to do a spec I need to ask some questions.

• Budget? without this things can get silly and out of hand.
• What items are needed? is it the base unit, OS, keyboard and mouse etc?

If you budget is really decent then Intel have X99 motherboards and Haswell-E CPU's coming out around September time, this offers fast DDR4 RAM, CPU's with upto 8 cores and Hyperthreading (16 threads in total).

Then we come to GFX cards, you may want a proper dedicated Nvidia Quadro or AMD FireGL card which are optimized for these sort of uses rather than primarily being a "gaming" card.

 

[Doomedspeed]

Hi and welcome to the Forum..

CPU wise they are correct, with rendering only in mind. A quad-Hex core Xeon would be ideal though there is another way..

I know with 3DS MAX you can use GPU rendering, which is EXACTLY what It sounds like. It is rendering images/scenes using mainly GPU power. If you have a modest/high end Gaming GPU this can cut rendering time to pieces, as GPU rendering is generally much quicker... I suggest you get on youtube and have a look at GPU rendering in 3DS MAX to see whether you like this idea.

This would mean you could drop down to a Quad-core Xeon, saving a chunk on CPU cost.

RAM is pretty important for rendering too, I'd suggest aleast 16 or 32GB..

What is your budget for this?