I know people probably hate these Which computer should I but threads, but I’ve done a butt load of research, and need some advice of which way I should go.
I’m in the process of working on my final project for my media degree, which is going to be an animation about 3 minutes long.
My previous assignment for this class was a 60 second clip, which can be seen below.
I managed to get it rendered on my core2 duo with a 2gb GTX750Ti, and my I7 laptop, but it took almost a week of rendering to get it done.
This current assignment is longer, and I’m improving a lot of aspects from the previous one, and my current rendering solution isn’t cutting it for this one.
So that brings me to building a PC for blendering. I’m currently deciding whether to drop $1500aud on one fairly kick ass desktop, with an i7, 16gb ram, gtx 670 graphics,
or if its better to spend the money upgrading the couple of older desktops we have at home, and build a small scale render farm with 2 or 3 much lower machines (i3 or i5’s, 4 or 8 gb ram, gtx 750 gpus)
Well, it is not really kickass desktop to be honest.
You can use a system with similar configuration (15 gb ram, 8 x vCPU, GPU: GRID K520 comparable to GTX670) on Amazon for ~0.07$ per hour (if you are going to use Spot instances) or ~0.65$/h (for Reserved instances). You can also combine them with GPUBox and use - let’s say - 10 GPUs simultaneously and have your animation done in no-time. That would be the most efficient rendering solution for your current budget.
I’d go with a cloud based rendering option since you’re only talking about a single, 3 minute project. That would probably be more cost effective than buying hardware for a relatively small one-off project and cloud options are perfect for this scenario.
The build from PC Case Gear (without Windows) has:
i5 4460 CPU
8GB RAM
1TB HDD
ASRock H97M-Pro4 Motherboard
600W PSU 2x Galax GTX 970 4GB
Total cost comes to $1484 AUD, +$115 for Windows and + $26 if you need it shipped to you
Would be great for GPU rendering, essentially 2x 780Ti’s, I’ve just picked up one Galax GTX 970, will be getting another one asap when I upgrade my motherboard.
Edit: If you have several PC’s, you could consider adding 3x GTX 970’s to them, they have quite low power usage (145W) and 3 would add a lot of speed
I did contemplate going the render farm route, but decided it would be worth my while to have the desktop. Plus, from what I found on the amazon, there is a fair bit of configuration of the vm’s before you can use it. I just don’t feel comfortable committing the time and effort to get that off the ground.
Yea Zeelpal, i’m aussie, and planning on rendering on GPU where i can, seems to be the way to go, especially for my last assignment, with the crappy old computer.
I like your idea with the dual 970s, I didn’t think of reducing the CPU, which isn’t going to be used that much while GPU rendering, and by the look of benchmarks, that will make a killer render machine.
now I’m debating the dual 970’s with the i5, which would make one hell of a GPU render PC, or going with a single 970, with the i7, which makes the PC a bit more flexible for other uses. leaning towards the single GPU at the moment.
