For experienced Daz renderers, any advice for rendering PC build?

[Smarmint]

Hey all. I am trying to get into rendering in Daz, but my laptop is not cutting it. Any suggestions for a rendering PC? I'd like to keep it under $1000 if possible.
What about this:

Ryzen 5 3600X - $200
B550 Motherboard - Once they come out in June. - $100
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB - $80
MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 - $275

With the case, power supply, CPU cooler, SSD, etc, this runs around $1,000. Does this seem like a good start or should I rethink? Maybe cheaper CPU, better video card? Is 16 GB RAM sufficient?

 

[fenelia]

Depends on what your need is. Full on power hardware render everything in one pass? Not going to do it. Not enough system RAM, not enough GPU RAM.

If you're economical with memory, then anything is good. My machine is only 16GB RAM, so that's sufficient. I don't need a GFX card for my rendering style.

BUT... if you are looking for doing everything in one shot, in-engine, then you're need more power and more hardware across the board.

CPU/GPU doesn't matter that much compared to RAM and GFX RAM (and graphics memory only if you're using Nvidia with CUDA cores). Any non-low end processor should be fine, and AMD Ryzen are great for the price.

What you've spec'd out, I could use with no problem. People do Daz with less, and many do it with more.

 

[polywog]

Step one. Go to your local university. Ask them about surplus PCs that they aren't using anymore.
They replace them regularly, and usually have hundreds that they need to get rid of.

Buy a pallet full. Rent a truck, and take them home. Don't worry about having too many, in step two, we'll reduce the numbers.



Step two. These aren't new, and they aren't the latest model. So open up half of them, and steal the ram to double up in the other half. Set those aside for now, you may need to scavenge parts off them, like power supplies, processors, fans, etc.

Add that ram to the remaining PCs. Swap out any bad power supplies.
We're building headless nodes for a render farm, so pull out the video cards, and other junk we won't be needing.

So far you spent $20 on computers, and $75 renting a Uhaul + or - a few beers depending on mileage, and if you have a friend with a truck or a van. Assuming you don't, you're in under a hundred so far.

Step 3. Go on ebay, and order some ethernet cables so you can network these things together.

don't be cheap, pay the extra 5 cents each for cat 6 1 meter long
and grab a couple routers, while you're there.

and 30 power cords, if you don't already have them laying around.


After you get that setup, OS installed on each PC, network up and running... you should have $850 left over from your $1000 budget.
Now, instead of rendering on your laptop, you can send the scene over to another node to do the rendering.
You don't have to sit there watching your laptop melt, you can tweak the pose, and send the next frame off to be rendered on node 2... and so on... no down time, no waiting for the render to complete, your laptop is free to keep working constantly.

OK, now that you're setup to render hundreds of images a day, that doesn't mean you can work one day a month, and milk the Parteon, those pledges are going to expect you to deliver at least 3 days worth of work each month.

 

[Smarmint]

Step one. Go to your local university. Ask them about surplus PCs that they aren't using anymore.
They replace them regularly, and usually have hundreds that they need to get rid of.

Buy a pallet full. Rent a truck, and take them home. Don't worry about having too many, in step two, we'll reduce the numbers.

Ha. I love it. This is actually a really smart idea.... if I lived alone and had extra garage space to devote to a server farm. In my real life, It has to be subtle so my wife doesn't ask why I need 30 networked PCs all the sudden. A single PC stuck in the office won't attract a lot of questions, but I'll have a hard time explaining why I need a pallet load of old PCs.

 

[polywog]

Ha. I love it. This is actually a really smart idea.... if I lived alone and had extra garage space to devote to a server farm. In my real life, It has to be subtle so my wife doesn't ask why I need 30 networked PCs all the sudden. A single PC stuck in the office won't attract a lot of questions, but I'll have a hard time explaining why I need a pallet load of old PCs.

Build a renter farm (for people who live in apartments)

 

[CarbonBlue]

If you're rendering Daz I would probably look for a used 1080 Ti. That should run you around $400-500. I think right now that gives you the best bang for the buck. However, new video cards from Nvidia should be out over the next few months, so that will change the market.

Get a cheap case for $50.
A 700 W PSU for $75.
Your Ryzen at $200.
Mobo at $100.

The problem is you'll also need a hard drive. So I guess that depends on how cheap you could get the 1080 Ti.

I rendered the first 3.5 of Unleashed with a 1060 6 GB, so it can be done. But that 1080 Ti is sure nice.

 

[Smarmint]

CarbonBlue, Thanks for the advice. This sounds a little more reasonable that the Raspberry Pi or server farm .

So the GTX 1660 won't cut it, huh. You'd say for rendering a 1080 TI is better than a RTX2060 or RTX2070? What is the difference in render time of one of your average scenes with your previous 1060 vs your 1080 Ti?

Also, is 16 GB RAM enough, or is it worth the the extra $80 for 32 GB?

 

[Porcus Dev]

This sounds a little more reasonable that the Raspberry Pi or server farm .

Well, you should take that as a joke

So the GTX 1660 won't cut it, huh. You'd say for rendering a 1080 TI is better than a RTX2060 or RTX2070? What is the difference in render time of one of your average scenes with your previous 1060 vs your 1080 Ti?

Perhaps with the RayTracing improvements the 2070 will be as fast in Daz as a 1080Ti; the big advantage of the 1080Ti is its 11GB of VRAM.
Keep in mind that for Daz to use the GPU to render the scene it must fit into its VRAM, otherwise it will use the CPU which is infinitely slower.

You can use Daz with a 6GB GPU, in fact I started this way, but you're going to find scenes that take up more than that, and you'll need to optimize the scene a lot or use utilities like "Scene Optimizer" to reduce its size and be able to use the GPU to render.
Going from 6GB to 8GB certainly helps, but you can still exceed that size; with an 11GB card it's much harder to find scenes that exceed that amount.

I think that the good thing about buying a 1080Ti is that you will have a great rendering card at a good price (considering what it had been cost), and you can use it without fear of not having enough VRAM, and wait for the new 30xx series, which promises to be beastly.
If you buy a 3080Ti later on you will still be able to use the 1080Ti as a secondary card (as long as your motherboard has at least 2 PCI-E connectors; and your power supply supports it... it's also important to think about this for the future).

Also, is 16 GB RAM enough, or is it worth the the extra $80 for 32 GB?

Enough to get you started, but I'm sure you'll want more in the future, so it's important that the mainboard has 4 memory slots and is ready to add 16GB more in the future.
This is especially important if you want to be able to render a scene and have another instance of Daz open making the next


As for SSD, with one for the OS and the programs is enough, you can have Daz assets on a mechanical HDD without problems, you will not notice any improvement by putting them on an SSD



PS: Sorry to barge in on the conversation, it's just my opinion

 

[Smarmint]

PS: Sorry to barge in on the conversation, it's just my opinion

No barging here . Thanks for the good advice. I wasn't thinking about the VRAM issue as much as processing power, but I see what you mean that if the VRAM is not sufficient, than it doesn't matter what card you have.

I'll start with 16 Gb system RAM and spend the extra on the video card. I can always add RAM later if i need to.

Thanks everyone for the good advice. I am used to building bang for your buck PCs for gaming, but I didn't know all the considerations for rendering.

 

[CarbonBlue]

Yeah I'd say a 2070 Super would be great and probably pretty close in performance to a 1080 Ti, but the thing is the 2070 Super is more expensive than the 1080 Ti.

My rendering times from 1060 6 GB to the 1080 Ti went from a good hour or so down to 20 minutes on average.

And I agree that 16 GB of ram is good enough to start with. Personally I now run 64 GB, so I'd start off with a single 16 GB module which gives you the possibility of going to 64 later if you want.