I’ll agree here but ati cards can render in cycles but it still missing several features.
That’s why get a 6gb card as the 980Ti or the titan with 12GB.
Actually it’s better to have two graphics cards for rendering. But buy another one depending on your budget.
memory - watch your OpSys. Some Win7 variants (Home Premium, eg) have 16gb caps.
“Actually it’s better to have two graphics cards for rendering” possibly for speed, but it won’t help big scenes as they can’t share GPU memory.
Yes. That is true. But 4GB is manageable if you’re clever with layers and scenes.
I have 8GB amd card but I’m never even close to 4GB.
There should be a ‘Thank you’ button here somewhere. Thanks.
1)Yeah the 2 cards may be overkill unless you’re a heavy gamer.
2)Performance wise either one will work, personally I prefer liquid just for the silent factor.
3)Again personal preference. If you want lights and windows go for it, it won’t hurt anything. We’re all artists here and if you want a personalized machine I wish you the best. You can absolutely go crazy over budget so keep an eye on your choices. You mentioned my desk build from another thread, mine was actually very cheap. I had most of that in leftover materials from previous projects. The cool thing is that desk will last me for a very long time, it’s almost infinitely upgradable so for my next build the entire budget will go to components only.
4)Windows 10. I’ve had no issues with it. You can turn off most of the privacy settings that has people up in arms.
It’s not overkill for rendering, as most renderers can use as many cards as you can throw at them. 
Having multiple cards can help with vram and overall system performance. Like in my current setup, I use the 460 to run my monitors and desktop, and I use the 980 for rendering. Because the monitors take vram for the display only on the 460, I can use the full 4Gbs of vram on the 980. If I render on both cards then the renderer will limit the memory to the lowest vram card. So even though the 980 has 4Gbs, the 460 only has 2Gbs, and then you have to subtract the memory used for the displays and that is what I have left to render with (<2Gbs). This can also cause the system to studder as the display card is being heavily used by the renderer.
Jason
Everything you said is totally true, I should have clarified that a single 980 will do what he mentioned:
“low poly game assets, architectural rendering and later on small animations like aeroplanes whizzing about”
Although if he has enough budget for 2 that’s just fine 
It’s all good!! 
For low poly though it might make sense to have three or four 960s rather than two 980ti given his low memory overhead.
You can render an aweful lot with even 2gb of ram.
OP - what are your current memory usages at render time? My guess is he’s prob well under a gb.
This is kind of the age old question: what is better, many slower cores or a few faster ones. In general it’s better to have multiple buckets rendering simultaneously at a slower pace, though eventually having a couple fast buckets wins out. I’m unsure how to advise. Check the banchmarks. Obviously if you’re rendering routinely 4gb scenes, you’ll want the 980ti
I feel like I’m shopping for a detergent in the supermarket. Wool, dark, white, with or without fabric softener, bio degradable…:spin:
Most you name are not on Partpicker. Most you get is an i7 quad core.
and if you pick a 980Ti, the CPU turns into a quadcore again. Will it not fit?
Maybe on the Newegg site, if they ship to Europe. Some parts are pick up only.
But thanks again so far. (I am sure I don’t need all the most fancy flashy hardware if I don’t know how to assign specific tasks to specific parts of the pc. But I don’t want to do all this in the next years all over again.
Think the most important thing is to actually see in almost realtime how you are tweaking things in Cycles, and not so much the baking or rendering times. (animations might be a thing though?)
I’m thinking of building a machine for:
The parts I have selected are:
My Budget: $1100 USD It fits, and all from local shops. But, since I am a linuxer, I don’t have the $200 cost of Windows.
It’s not a uber uber machine, and unsuitable for rendering cycles animations or modeling high-poly-skyscrapers, but it should do what I want it to just fine.
Depending on your requirements you can either go cheaper (drop the ssd, use a gtx950, use less ram etc.) or more expensive (upgrade the motherboard to support SLI and get multiple graphics cards)
The other thing to consider is what parts you already have. If you’re not going to be using your laptop after this, use it’s hard-drive and save that cost. If you have an old PC, see if you can it has a powerful enough power supply for your new machine.
you could try a site called www.overclockers.co.uk they have some really good forums. if you go to the General hardward one and post something like “spec me a machine for modelling for £xxx” you’ll probably get a good few replies to choose from, and it’s a good place just to ask advice and questions. OC do prebuilt machines too if you don’t want to build your own.
Building a basic gaming pc is really easy, and at first it looks like these sort of concepts can be easily translated to rendering.
In practice, getting the most for your money given a specific workload quickly becomes very, very confusing very quickly.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VH3yJx
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($374.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($89.90 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X99-UD3P (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($153.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($639.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($639.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1898.85
Would this work?
You need a PSU and a case. Also windows if you use windows. DDR4 Ram to. 16 gb should be enough. It’s easy to add more later. As long it’s the same kind of memory.
Also very important. Cooling fans inside the case. You need circulation inside that beast.
I don’t think I’d buy any factory-built consumer/gamer system. They’re all pretty much garbage.
I know…I will dissapoint you when I say that I still haven’t come around to building a computer. I can tell you though that I’ve been quite busy improving my Blendering.
Sorry about that.
I’m considering taking a shortcut to upgrade my hardware:
Would this be any good? (price is in €)
you know i have a problem to i have a desktop and it,s 3,gh processor 4g ram 2g video card and it was working fine to me , but suddenly the video card stop,d working i tryd every thing to fix it but it,s not working , i thought in the begin it was the video card but it work,s when i install it to a other device ,my 2 big brother,s are IT,s and thy know about how to bulid a device but thy couldn’t know why did he stop working so i decide to buy a new one
HP is the better choice. You can look up some onlines sales computer shop for the spec, then go to the offline store and get one.
