Related Posts
15 Comments

Thanks a lot for your article. This is the kind of information I needed right now. I’m starting to look into building my workstation (or get someone to do it for me), as the only “pro” choice in the Apple world is the uber-expensive Mac Pro, and apparently many people are switching to PC lately.

aleksey

Hey Pedro,

Glad it helped. There are plenty of videos online about how to build your own pc. Its about the same difficulty level as a complex lego set. just make sure to not cheap out on the case, because a good case with screwless design makes everything much easier.

Or just find a small local PC shop, Im sure they’ll enjoy building it for you as most of their orders are lower end stuff.

Cheers,
Aleksey

Thanks for the article! I think I might get fast i7 for single core application like sketchup. but I do many cpu cores for rendering. but you mentioned render farms. what render farms do you use? Thanks!

aleksey

hey, sorry for late reply, didn’t get email notification…

I use renderfeed, newton render farm and right now looking into trying renderfarm.nl.

[…] Thea is a hybrid GPU and CPU renderer with plugins for a bunch of applications. I use cinema4D so that’s the awesomeness im going to cover here. The GPU part (the super fast part) is CUDA based, so you will need an Nvidia card. so if you have a new mac pro, this isn’t going to be super useful to you. Read my hardware building article here //ace5studios.com/hardware […]

Thomas

Hi, I just read your article and can confirm all your statements. I personally have a i7 4790k with 32 GiB Ram and a Nvidia GTX 960 with 6 GiB Ram. Works fine for me in C4D and Thea. 🙂

aleksey

awesome man! thanks for confirming everything 😀

how did you get 6gb on a gtx 960? that seems awesome.

hello! Thanks for the great tips!
I’m just building my new Pc, I’m migrating froma Mac Pro 12 core 3.03 Ghz and I’m wondering if Cinema4D will not take advantage from a Dual XEON E5-2680 V3 2.5Ghz 12 Core or an Intel Core i7-5960X 3,0 GHz?
I will use Octane render with 2 gtx 980ti and I use also After effects cc2014 to take advantages from multithreading and Realflow/Houdini for fluids.
Below there is my configuration:
cpu: Intel Core i7-5960X 3,0 GHz (Haswell-E) Socket 2011v3
or
dual XEON E5-2680 V3 2.5Ghz 12 Core
motherboard: X99-E WS 3.1 DDR4 extended-ATX Socket 2011-3
PSU: AX1200i Digital 1200W Modulare 80 Plus Platinum
GPU’s: 2 x Gigabyte GTX980 Ti – G1 Gaming – Liquid Cooled
RAM: 64GB Kit Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 CL14 (8x8GB)
SSD: Samsung 950 Pro da 512GB Pci-Express
HD: 4TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA – Sata 6GB/S 64mb
WATER COOLING: XSPC Kit Water Cooling RayStorm D5 EX420
FAM: 2 x NOCTUA VENTOLA 140×150 – NF-A15-PWM

You’re advice is more than welcomed!
thanks!

aleksey

it depends on the work you do. As i said, if you are only using octane, then just get the i7. whats the point of the dual cpu? if you really need cpu power, just send it to a farm with the money you save 🙂

don’t get seagate HDD. they terrible. Hitachi apparantly make the most reliable ones. ( google back blaze, drive reliability).

my advice is to use thea 🙂

Hello. “Arnold render” I think for the GPU is not very important. What are your thoughts?

aleksey

Hi, as far as i know arnold render does not use the gpu at this moment. so it will have no affect on render speed.

hello Aleksey

now that it’s 2017,, i was wondering if any of the specs above are now out of date?
as i got to your very informative page from the link you put on the post i did on the x-particle forum a while ago,, when i was stuggling with some features with my mac pro tower/bin
//www.x-particles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1297&p=7290#p7290

anyway i’m finally going to be making the jump to a PC workstation,, so please me know if so specs are to be updated from the above
i’m mainly be using C4D & adobe stuff,,, & most definitely planning to start using more x-particle fluids & TFD & finally Octane renderer,,, & also want to delve more in VR.

thanks
Nic

aleksey

Hey Nic,

Well the concepts carry on, but obviously there is the gtx titan now, and the gtx 1080. And the strongest single core cpu is the 7700k instead of the 6700k. But you should always look up the cinebench scores of cpus. and gpu benchmarks for the video card you chose. Im not 100% sure, but i think octane is still not fully optimized for the 10 series gtx cards, so they perform only slightly better than the 9 series.

cheers,
Aleksey

Hey Aleksey
thanks for the quick response & sorry for the delay in responding,, very helpful advice

i was wondering what you though of the new Ryzen 1700X or 1800X,, as in your article you say that “AMD left the professional arena a while ago” but these new Rysen CPU have come highly recommended.

also what’s your thoughts on the new GTX 1080ti? they seems pretty good to me
aaah so many options out there,, hard to chose
thanks
Nic

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked *