Advice on building a machine using the rtx 3070

[SchaakaKon]

This will be post 473,792 on advice to build a pc. Which about that, I looked most of through them (lots of good advice) but either theyre years old or 'I want to build a render machine with a 20$ budget.'
Ive had my eye on the rtx 3070, im looking for a machine that is a balance of power and budget. Ive been working with pc's most my life but building a new pc is something I know little about, which is kinda embarrassing.
Needless to say, I dont want to take the first Google search I find just because it sounds ok to me. I have several questions:
1. Where do you guys buy your parts? Newegg? Amazon? I honestly have no idea where to look.
2. In one of the posts I read that you can use two gpu's, although they both wont be used to render, you can set the other one for your displays. I googled 'best motherboards for rtx 3070' like a dork and got this:

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and

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I honestly couldnt tell you why one is double the price over the other. I currently have a ti 1080; any advice, tips or tricks for using two gpu's is most welcome. Oh, and also what do I look for in a power supply that will have the correct power connections i'll need for 2 gpu's?
3. Processors. Amd or Intel the better option? Ive always liked amd over intel but with daz not working with their gpu's im a tad hesitant. What is a good bang for your buck processor nowa' days?
4. Ive never messed around with liquid cooling or anything beyond the default single fan for pc's. I read online about liquid cooling and got the impression that unless you are over clocking it is not necessary, which I dont plan on doing. What should I look in to for a cooling setup, if at all?
5. Someone in a more recent thread posted this

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which looks handy but also very daunting. In a broad sense, with two gpu's 3070/1080 what am i looking at psu wise?
6. For building a pc, is there anything aside from those listed above (and ram,ssd, and case too i guess) that I would need to keep in mind or consider?

I know that ram is quite essential and plan on getting a nice chunk as well as a better ssd than i got now.
I do a lot of gaming but the gaming I do doesnt require a ton of power, so everything above is mostly solely for rendering.
Budget wise? I honestly have no idea. Naturally I would love to keep it as low as possible without sacrificing too much power but I know its gona be up there. 1-2k range.
Thanks to everyone and your wisdom, this is going to be a huge purchase and I dont want to mess anything up. Thanks!

 

[rayminator]

gpu's 3070 = a power supply at least a 1200 watts or higher
gpu's 1080 = a power supply at least a 750 watts or higher
Amd mother board would best cause you get more cpu cores for less then intel
get a least 32gb of ram or more
CPU six core or more would be better and with water cooler not air

but try stay away bundle like motherboard+cpu

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

For motherboard, anything that can run two PCI-Express x16 cards at full speed. Amd or Intel CPU doesn't really matter, I would go Amd since Rizen are generally cheaper (don't need to overkill). 32/64 RAM and ~800w power supply should cover most uses. Additionnal fan can help, depending how many hours you render per day and where you live (don't take a too small case tho). For rendering set your 1080ti to display (to balance over the 3070 8Go) and render with both cards, switch display when gaming.

 

[formerflame]

I've been building pc's for a long time.

1. Amazon or Newegg are both okay. Newegg not so much anymore since they were bought out people have a lot more problems with them. Check out

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they list prices for several reputable retailers.

2. Unless you really know what you're doing you should stick to 1gpu but if you buy 2 they both can be used to render as long as the whole scene will fit on the vram of your card. More vram = more complicated scene. If you run out of vram it will render on your cpu which can take 20+ hours per frame. You do not need 1 card to run your display and 1 to render the people that do that usually are running cards in TCC mode which the 3070 doesn't support anyways.

If you're dead set on running two cards for faster renders you'll need at least a 1200 watt psu from a good brand. Make sure it supports at least 4 pci express power connectors. Your motherboard needs to support the cpu you're buying and should have at least 2 pci-e 16x slots.

But IMO a single 3080 would be better than 2 3070's and quite a bit cheaper both for the cards and cheaper psu. Using the daz forum benchmarking thread your 1080 does ~2.3 iterations per second a 3080 is ~12 (so about 5x faster) there are no 3070's benchmarked yet but they'll probably be in the 10-10.5 but with less vram 2 3070's will be ~18 but you'll still only have access to 8gb of vram compared to 10gb on the 3080.

3. AMD are better processors than intel for productivity and with the latest 5000 series for gaming as well. Daz doesn't work with AMD gpu's their cpu's are fine. The 5000 series just barely launched and are going to be hard to find right now. I would probably try to get 8 core/16 thread cpu but you could probably get by the a 6core/12thread best would be a 5800x/5900x but if you can find a 3700x that's a good processor as well just last generation.

4. Now days liquid cooling is a lot easier because they sell All-in-One (AIO) loops that don't really require a lot of no how. If you decide to with an AIO check out gamers nexus video (

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) on how to install it correctly. Personally I like air coolers because I don't have to worry about leaks or the pump dying. I use a noctua nh-d15 which might be overkill but I like silent + high cooling. pcpartpicker will have a big list of cpu coolers just make sure it supports the processor you choose and maybe google it for a review.

5. Build your pc in pcpartpicker at the top it will give you an estimated wattage. Take that and make sure you're above it. I would aim for that number to be at minimum 80% of the wattage the PSU supply's.

6. Ram get 32gb of ram. Get an ssd for your operating system (windows) IMO get a normal harddrive for your render assets (depending on how large your library is) large ssd's aren't worth the cost IMO to load render assets. In my testing my WD Red loaded not much slower than my samsung ssd but it's significantly cheaper for much more space. I'd go with 2+ tb (4+ if you have a large library)

Here's a sample build

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The GPU will be ~$800, the case is personal preference just make sure it fits the form factor of your motherboard in that build ATX. The CPU comes with a decent cooler but if you want a nicer one I like Noctua. If you are dead set on 2 3070's you'll need a larger power supply. For GPU's the best brands are ASUS/MSI/EVGA then Gigabyte is okayish. I'd avoid Zotac/PNY.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

You do not need 1 card to run your display and 1 to render the people that do that usually are running cards in TCC mode which the 3070 doesn't support anyways.

No needed but it still free a good chunk of VRAM, and allow some flexibility like splitting intances on different cards or working with previews on Susbtance painter while rendering, running Toolbag/Blender and so on. Even a crappy card can be kinda useful imo. That said for the price of two 3070, I'd go for one 3090 (or 2x 2080ti if the price crash a bit). 8Go seems really limited with no nvlink support (not sure why they removed it for 3070/80 ).

 

[osanaiko]

IMO get a normal harddrive for your render assets (depending on how large your library is) large ssd's aren't worth the cost IMO to load render assets. In my testing my WD Red loaded not much slower than my samsung ssd but it's significantly cheaper for much more space. I'd go with 2+ tb (4+ if you have a large library)

tl;dr - get a SSD for your daz assets, you'll thank yourself later

One known issue with Daz is that as you install more morph assets (which includes both packages like "200 Plus Head and Face Morphs for Genesis 8 Female(s)", and many characters assets which have specific character morphs), the Daz editor engine loads every single separate morph related file every time a character is added to a scene (or a scene containing characters is loaded) even if the morphs are not used.

This leads to intensive disc access for many small files (20000-70000 files if you have a lot of morphs). There are threads on the Daz forums about this, but the summary is: some people with lots of assets stored on HDD and weaker/older machine report that it takes up to 2.5 minutes to open a saved scene. Switching thier asset library to SSD caused great improvement, down to about 45 seconds, mainly because the random access IOPS of SSD is so much higher.
At least one developer ("NSWare") has made a tool speficially to help you copy the morph files in and out of your Daz folders on demand, because removing unused morph assets makes daz load much much faster. I use this software myself and it works OK, but it is a bit inconvenient when trying to put together new characters/projects.