The Render Box

[D.A.M IT!]

Hi all, long time lurker first time poster here to the forum. I’m putting together a new PC that will primarily be used as a dedicated 3D rendering rig for use with Vray. As such it’s going to be somewhat more biased towards performance rather than outright looks, but it’s going to have bit of bling as I do like a nice-looking PC… even if it is a workstation. I thought I’d do a build log as I’m very likely going to need some help and advice with overclocking once it’s completed, as this will be my first ever AMD build

The reason I’m building this now is that the PC I have currently was built back in late 2014. It’s got a 6950X and a pair of 980’s and although it’s still quite a capable machine it is starting to show its age, especially when rendering out animations, which can take days. With the recent release of Gen 3 Threadrippers on the new TR40 platform, now seemed like a good time to build a new machine that will have a big boost in performance over my current machine and plenty of upgrade paths in the future.

The current PC (Octopus Black 2.0)


Specs for the new RenderBox are as follows:

• AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X
• Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB 3200MHz (CMW64GX4M4C3200C16)
• Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
• Phanteks Evolv X
• Super Flower Leadex II Gold 1000W
• Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB
• Watercool Heatkiller IV (Copper Nickel
• EK Quantum Kinetic TBE 300 D5 PWM
• EK Coolstream XE 360
• EK Coolstream PE 360
• EK-Tube ZMT Matte Black 19/13 mm
• Noctua NF-F12 Chromax black X6
• Noctua NF-A14 Chromax black
• Barrow fittings (black)
• Barrow coolant temp sensor

I haven't included a GPU to this list as I'm hoping it shouldn't be too much longer before Nvidia makes some kind of announcement on the Ampere RTX series cards. It didn’t make much sense to me to get a 20XX card now when its very likely there’s going to be a new series within the next 6 months. So for the time being I'll just be putting one of my old 980's from my current rig in there till there's some news from Nvidia on release dates/prices etc.

 

[D.A.M IT!]

quickly fitted the rads and motherboard in the case the other day to see if the rad config Im planning on will work. It’s a tight fit but It should work.

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Gotta love these Watercool Heatkiller IV blocks

I'd used a Heatkiller IV copper/nickel block l in my current rig and I was really impressed with the quality/performance and look of it. The Threadrpper version is on a whole other level of heftiness compared to that one though, coming in at a bit over 1Kg of pure copper and nickel.

When I was looking at of all the TR block reviews It also came up top in terms of performance out of all of them, so it was a no brainer to go for this

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Tonight I shall mostly be flushing rads

Doing it the right way with blitzkit part 1

 

[orbitalwalsh]

Trx40 boards can handle 4000hz ram easily. Push the ram overclock
All that water cooling should hit 4.3ghz all cores though VRM would be the weakest link for 24/7 rendering

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Trx40 boards can handle 4000hz ram easily. Push the ram overclock
All that water cooling should hit 4.3ghz all cores though VRM would be the weakest link for 24/7 rendering

From what i gather ram speeds have very little effect with 3D rendering on Ryzen. But its certainly something to look into and test when its up and running

 

[D.A.M IT!]

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Unfortunately the 250mm res tube that came with the Quantum Kinetic proved to be to tight a fit in either vertical or horizontal orientations so I had to change it out for a 150mm res tube I had

 

[D.A.M IT!]

tubing done! now leak testing

 

[D.A.M IT!]

The gpu cable extensions are from my other rig and are only temporary. I don't feel that they really fit in with the theme of this build.

Just got a message from Michael at 'To the Wire' though, my new custom extensions have just been done and should be here in the next few days. He did these in a few days of ordering them and at a really good price. if you need any custom cables made I highly recommend him. https://www.facebook.com/T0TheWire/


This should give all a clue to the lighting colour I'll be going with on this build

 

[orbitalwalsh]

not able to go from the Pump to the GPU to the CPU? would have left it a bit neater with less tubing on show but would have needed dual 45 fitting maybe ...

 

[D.A.M IT!]

not able to go from the Pump to the GPU to the CPU? would have left it a bit neater with less tubing on show but would have needed dual 45 fitting maybe ...

yeah a couple of rotational 90's probably would fit. If I'm honest i kinda f'd up a bit with the planning of the loop. I'd taken inspiration from another build and hadn't taken into account the position of the gpu inlet/outlets which are further to the left on the EK 9xx waterblocks compared to later 10XX/20xx blocks and the inlet is on the right hand side for the CPU block. In the words of Bob Ross though I think its actually turned out to be a happy little accident. I found out that you can't release the latches for the left hand bank of ram modules when the GPU is installed (just one of the little niggles I don't like about this board) and if I had joined the res to the gpu with fittings it would have meant draining the loop if I ever need to change the ram or trouble shoot any ram issues. it also had a benefit aesthetically that will be a little more clearer when you see it from a different angle.... This is probably somewhat subjective though, especially as I know this type of tubing to a lot of people is a bit like marmite

 

[orbitalwalsh]

was there any room under the GPU to running 90s on the under side without hitting the Res? could run CPU and GPU in parallel ? Man that would look super clean

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Hmmm..That could be a good idea actually There's certainly enough room for 90's under the gpu. Think I'll just leave it as is for the moment though, as I'm very eager to get it up and running and test it out a bit.

 

[D.A.M IT!]

ITS ALIVE!!! Here's a little teaser of It up and running...


Once I've had a bit of a play and get the final little pieces sorted i'll post up some more and hopefully better pics

 

[orbitalwalsh]

looks really good. Possible Parallel flow tubing


you'll still get a cross over of the tubing by CPU and gpu due to inlets on opposite ends but you cut down on 3 tubing runs being next to each other.

Not sure if res can be rotated more to align pump outlet to GPU inlet. Then 90 at the bottom of the GPU outlet to pump back into the Rads. Pump has enough power for parallel flow

 

[tommoT.Striker]

Very nice machine.
Are you rendering using just a single 1tb nvme? I can see your old rig had drive bays in there.

 

[D.A.M IT!]

Cheersg dude, im going to be putting a 3tb wd black from my old rig into this one when I replace it for 6tb one soon. This will contain my texture/model library which currently is around 1.5 tb. It will mirror the one Ion my old machine and will also mean I won't have transfer any used assets across other than the 3dsmax file. This leaves a reasonable amount of space for render outputs

Really what I need to do is get a NAS set up which both PC's could access. This is something I'll sort out at a later date though

 

[D.A.M IT!]

@orbitalwalsh yeah with the input for the CPU block being on the right it makes it slightly difficult for a clean loop. The other way to do it would be have the res going to the GPU on the right hand side then come back on the left hand side and use a bunch of fittings to come round the back.

 

[D.A.M IT!]

The final pieces arrived and Its now fully completed.











I spent most of the weekend bench testing and trying to get to grips with Ryzen. I'll post up the results and final thoughts on some of the components used in this build in the next few days