Hi,
Since my laptop won’t handle Blender anymore, I’m getting frustrated by looking for a new desktop to buy.
When you go to a shop they won’t say, but they have no idea.
I get that many here build one themselves, but I’ve got no idea how to go about that.
Which desktop could I buy to run cycles smoothly and usw Awesomebump and such?
All help will be very welcome.
This is an open ended question without telling what your budget is.
Don’t buy a desktop
build one
or buy used one…
maybe something like Lenovo D20 for €1k (1 year warranty)(2x xeonX5670 Hexa Core, 48GB Ram, HDD 1TB, Quadro 2000, win7pro…)
Which laptop is the best for around 800$/ 700E ?
Honestly it’s not hard to build a PC. There are probably a million tutorials online about it.
As a bonus you won’t be saddled with a bunch of preloaded crap from the manufacturer either.
If there is any chance that you would consider building one let us know on here and we can answer any questions about it and even talk you through putting it together.
EDIT: Another thought would be to look on craigslist for a used setup. I ran across a hell of a deal 3 or 4 years ago that I couldn’t pass up.
EDIT 2: Here’s a quick example I just pulled off CL:
This is a great gaming computer for a starter. I got it new as a partial prebuilt I put in processor,graphics card, and power supply. It has
Msi gtx 970 graphics
Intel I5 3.4 that can be over locked
8GBs of ram
750W modular power supply
Like I said it’s good for a starting computer or even a base for a project computer $700 OBO
That would totally run Blender. Newegg had RAM on sale yesterday, 8GB for $29. Add that and then if you need more you could eventually upgrade the CPU.
At this budget, definitely build your own. You will get a better machine for much less. Higher end that margin gets less significant and buying a refurbished workstation is often less expensive than the sum of components.
Something to keep in mind, however is that you’ll be responsible for tracking down and dealing with warranties. So if your video card goes out on you, you’ll have to deal with them directly. Buying from a reputable manufacturer like Dell or HP, you call one number for any issues.
I’ve used Dell support and it was a good experience. Though because my warranty is covered under Dell Business Solutions it might not be a good measure. I’ve heard that their consumer support isn’t as good.
Thanks, thanks, thanks all for your swift replies.
Well I’m desperate enough to buy anything they throw at me, so money is not really the main issue anymore. Blender is a great hobby, so it can cost some.
Of course the calf shouldn’t become bigger than the cow, as they say, so no use to burn money on unnessesary stuff.
Thought of a HP z something workstation, or a gaming computer to upgrade into something useful. Warranty is also a good arguement for buying a factory build.
The problem is knowing what to start with.
Most tutorials on building a workstation for Blender are quite old. Although the fundementals might still apply, the specifications have changed a lot.
It seems like a great satisfaction to have build my own workstation, but I wonder if All the puzzling and tinkering is worth the while if I don’t have a clear notion of what I should get exactly. (But Wolfmanyoda’s workstation desk looks sooooo cool!)
Guess I’m gonna have myself yet another hobby,…dang! Computer building. Guess I’m one of the few who, at turning 50, is bumping up his geek-factor. Is this a reversed midlife-crisis?
Getting all excited here:
Yeah, I think building one might be the best bet, do your homework, or maybe even find someone that has done it before to help you. I think you will get more for your money, just gatta really do some research and ask around (to people who ACTUALLY know, not just think they do :p)
best of luck
This may seem like an odd suggestion, but head over to MMORPG.COM (gaming site) and go to the forums, under miscellaneous and then hardware and read through some of the posts there. Then if you want to brave the waters try posting there and your sure to get all the technical suggestions and help you could imagine. There is a person on there called Quizzical that knows everything there is to know about computers and is typically very helpful.
disclaimer: I have nothing to do with mmorpg.com, just have found the hardware forum there very helpful in the past
Be very careful of HP if you want a machine where you can update the graphics card. I have here a 700 dollar ‘Performance’ HP with a Nvidia card which can’t be updated. By the way some machines in that so called Performance section ran 1100 dollars and I have to suspect they are the same. Regardless HP forums are full of livid owners. The reason is HP will not update the BIOS. Indeed you might visit HP and find the BIOS is over a year older then the machine you are anticipating buying. Damn shame because HP machines are reliable.
You need at least a nvidia 980ti.
If you’re only using Blender with Cycles and not planning to use anything else, any gaming PC should be sufficient. If you are planning to start using Maya or Houdini it can get a bit confusing since OpenCL comes into play. If you’re going to use a render engine that does not use GPU, then you’ll want to get something with solid CPU performance.
CPUs are kind of difficult to decide on. I personally like having many threads so that I can still use my computer even with larger jobs, just set the core usage to less than all and use the remainder for watching cat videos. But as far as brute force goes, there are certainly 4 or 6 core processors that out perform my dual xeon 12 core system. But dialing back thread utilization would more significantly impact performance. So it really depends on if you can afford to let your PC fart through a bake or render while you catch up on Pawn Stars reruns.
Great! I can use a little humor right now.
using cycles got me running into my laptops limitations.
Want to make low poly game assets, architectural rendering and later on small animations like aeroplanes whizzing about.
since I got no idea how to make a computer…I tend to go for the biggest and badassiest thing that can be build, but some guys a Linustechtips talked some sense into me as to not go overboard on a hobby computer. (don’t you hate that?..innitially?)
But I guess they are right.
so:
SLI for 2 Nvidia 980ti’s?
Liquidcooled CPU instead of a heatsink?
Silent case or a piece art in a glass box with lots of led lights?
Windows 7Pro or Windows 10?
(I guess a week ago I wouldn’t know what these questions meant, but I’m sure many of you think I still don’t.:))
SLI does no good for GPGPU. Cycles will send render buckets to every GPU you have installed. SLI is a game technology, so you do not need to necessarily worry about if the motherboard you’re using will support it unless you want to use it for pretty substantial gaming.
two 980ti cards will place you squarely in one of the fastest GPU render benchmarks, and may very well be overkill. If you can afford it, go for it. But I’d install one and see if that’s sufficient.
If the system is well designed, liquid cooling is not neccesary unless you’re going for silent (or overclocking). As for lights and windows, whatever. If making your computer look like it should accompany bad techno at a 90s rave is your thing, go for it. Maybe add a spoiler too?
Bear in mind though, if you have two fans that cost the same but one has silly LEDs, chances are the one without will be better built. So if you have a $60 budget for cooling, some of that $60 is going into LEDs, which won’t provide any real benefit in terms of airflow, silent operation or build quality. Same with windows. You could spend $200 on a well engineered case, or you could spend $200 on a case with a window. But again, some of the money could have gone into air ducts or build quality would have gone into that snazzy window.
You could just say, oh, well I’ll just add more money onto my budget to get these snazzy things. At which point I’d why not add more of a budget to get even nicer components?
Silent is nice, though my system is plenty quiet and manages to run cooler than most I’ve seen online. Though, some of this might be a result of slower individual cores or being a Xeon architecture.
On startup it tests all the fans, so it can get plenty loud, though I have never heard it running at full RPM otherwise.
Just don’t fall into the whole “negative pressure” thing. People who advocate this failed physics class. The point of a fan is to provide thermal energy somewhere to go, not to “suck heat off” components. It’s important to have good airflow between an intake and an exhaust. If you’re worried about dust, get a can of duster!
Some, if not many gamers think they know a lot more than they do about technology. They tend to believe everything from CES and will often advise some pretty goofy shit. You also never know who you’re talking to online, and there is a good chance it’s a zit-faced kid who thinks slapping together some New Egg components makes him “good with computers” (after all, that’s what Grandma always says).
I’d be extremely careful at places like Tom’s Hardware or Linus Tech Tips. Trusting Linus the Tech Tool videos should be a call for questioning in itself.
I have never had a problem with Windows 10, and I have never used Windows 7. As far as I can tell the big thing people complain about with Windows lately is that they changed the start menu, which seems kind of silly.
Hi Rudolf,
I just turned 50 myself, and build my own computers, so it’s not very difficult. It can be very confusing at first, but if you are not interested in the latest gaming box or overclocking your system, you only need to worry about the big stuff.
When I build mine I like to try and give my system a little bit of future proofing. I want it to last at least 5 or 6 years before I need to upgrade again. Here are a few things I like to keep in mind when I’m building a new system.
Get a CPU with as many cores as you can afford. For my build I went with an Intel I7 5820K with 6 cores and have been very happy with it.
I like the X99 motherboards, not only do they support multiple GPUs but they support gobs and gobs of memory. For my build I got a MSI X99 Raider, which supports 3 GPUs and up to 128 Gbytes of DDR4 memory! The motherboard also support quad channel memory access which really ups the bandwidth for much faster rendering, etc. Make sure that the motherboard you get has enough PCI ports for the number of GPUs you want. The one I got supports three GPUs at X8 PCI channels with the CPU I have (I7 5820K). This is enough to get good performance for GPU rendering.
Get an SSD or two. Solid State Disk drives don’t have the amount of storage that a regular disk has, but they are sooo much faster. I have two in my system, one for the operating system, and another for my home account. I also have several other spinning disks that I use for keeping my projects and animations, etc. Booting a system with an SSD just takes seconds and shutdown is just as fast.
Get as much memory as you can, I have 32 Gbytes, 16 is about the minimum these days. When you run out of memory the system has to go to swap which is using the disk to store currently unused programs and data. This will slow your machine down to a crawl, although it’s not so bad if you are using an SSD. It may sound like a lot, but when you decide to do that massive smoke animation or render that poster in insane resolution, you will be really happy you have it. You don’t have to populate all of your memory slots on the motherboard right away, you can do it over time. Just remember to get as big memory sticks as you can, so when you do decide to upgrade you don’t have to replace the current smaller sticks with larger ones.
Make sure to get a big enough power supply to handle your system and GPUs. I have a 750 Watt PS that works great for my system and two GPUs. Make sure that the power supply you get has the connectors for all the GPUs you want to put in the system.
If you have the room, get a large case. A large case will allow you to fit your GPUs and a big cooler, etc. and still keep everything cool and running good.
Hope this helps, good luck with your build. 
Jason
For GPU rendering, you do not need a special motherboard. Only one with enough PCI slots available. Again SLI is a gaming technology.
Don’t get an ATI card! Only get Nvidia. ATI might be cheap but you will pay in the long run, plus i’m pretty sure blender/cycles can’t use an ATI card for rendering.
Intel + Nvidia = quality that lasts.