What kind of setup do I need to start rendering?

[Deleted member 241387]

My current setup:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-Core Processor, 3800 Mhz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB (Want to upgrade but as you all know is hard to do rn)
RAM: 16 GB DDR4
MOBO: B450-A PRO MAX (MS-7B86)
Got about 3TB of storage on my pc (2TB SSD, 1TB HDD)

Never done any kind of rendering before and want to try it out, but also don't want to damage my PC.

Any help, tips, advice is appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Winterfire]

Hardware is OK to render, but what you should monitor is the temperature... If you live in a dusty hot place and your computer is lying on the ground with no dust filter and it has only a fan which barely spins then yea, you may want to avoid rendering or doing anything remotely demanding.

 

[Deleted member 241387]

Hardware is OK to render, but what you should monitor is the temperature... If you live in a dusty hot place and your computer is lying on the ground with no dust filter and it has only a fan which barely spins then yea, you may want to avoid rendering or doing anything remotely demanding.

Thank you so much!

 

[Cenc]

Contrary to popular belief, rendering isn't massively taxing on hardware. If you plan to render using the Iray engine, then it's mostly based on the GPU (CPU, RAM and SSD speed do have a part to play but you can save some cost with these components)

Your Nvidia card will render just fine, It's not going to be the fastest, and with only 3GB of VRAM you will run into memory issues with larger or more complex scenes - but given your just starting out, you will be keeping it simple anyway.

Best thing to do, download DAZ, load the free stuff, and just try it out! Good Luck.

 

[Welwigo]

If you want my advice, go buy two used OEM desktop PCs. Like an old Dell Optiplex or something with a third or fourth gen Core i5 and running DDR3 RAM. Strip them of everything that's not necessary like network cards, USB extensions, SD card readers, and whatever else in order to save power. Upgrade them to 8GB of RAM at a minimum, 16GB as a recommendation. Should be cheap, nobody uses DDR3 anymore and computer repair shops should have tons leftover. Put them on a shelf or desk or something that has high airflow and plug them into a power strip for surge protection. This way you can use your existing monitor, keyboard, and mouse to control the other two computers just by unplugging the cables and plugging them into another computer.

From that point on just give them a file to render and leave them to it. You now have a render cluster. This way you can use your actual worthwhile computer to play games and such with, without having to worry about your render taking up most of your CPU for few more hours when your friends want to play Phasmaphobia right now or something.

 

[khumak]

The VRAM on your GPU is going to be your main issue. I have a GTX 1050Ti which is slower than yours but with slightly more memory and I had to spend a LOT of time with scene optimizer tweaking my scenes to fit inside 4GB.

 

[Droid Productions]

Yeah, as the others said, the VRAM is going to be a pain. I did all of Book 1 of Love of Magic on a 1080TI, and I had to cheat like a bastard to make it work Watch when you run out of VRAM on a render (it'll change from GPU to CPU rendering) and consider doing the render in multiple passes if you can.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Your system is a good starter for rendering. Most importantly is to learn to use it properly; optimization, settings etc. If you are going to try Daz, learn the settings for CPU/GPU rendering, Iray nodes, scene optimizer, spot render etc.
These will get you much further than hardware in the beginning.

 

[Domiek]

If you're not planning on upgrading your graphics card anytime soon, I'd actually recommend Blender. You'd still be severely limited by the 3gb of vram but renders would be done in seconds using the near realtime Eevee engine. With Iray you're looking at render times of 30+ mins depending on the scene. This may not be a big deal to you if you're only looking at making a couple renders for fun

It's a lot harder to learn Blender over Daz but using the Diffeomorphic add-on is a big help.

 

[Deleted member 241387]

Wow, thanks everyone for the advice. Haven't been here in a bit but this is awesome. Again, thank you!