Hardware for Blender

What’s the most suitable but affordable hardware for Blender? I am planning on purchasing new pc either prebuilt or build it myself but I am open for suggestions. Now budget is preferably under $1000 but I can go over a bit towards the $1200 range.

Now my preferred specs are the following if I were to build it myself:

Fast processor, so i7 3770k 3.5ghz - 3.9ghz is what I have in mind. I heard AMD’s are cheaper but I don’t know how they compare to Intel so please help me on that if you’re an AMD user.

Hard drive: I am okay with at least 2tb space and speed of 5400 rpm but preferably 7200 rpm. The other is probably gonna be SSD or SSD hybrid which I’m going to need at least the 150gb range.

RAM: I prefer at least 16 gb of ram but I never used the 1600mhz sticks before and currently am fine with the 1300mhz if they are cheaper.

GPU: I personally like the speed offered with Blender Cycles when using GPU. My Y580 laptop’s Nvidia GTX 660m 2gb is pretty good. I would prefer Nvidia but do I really need the high ends like GTX? Would the GT series work just fine as long as Cuda is supported for Cycles? Please enlighten me. I’ll probably get the GTX 680 if it’s on sale but otherwise I’m open for cheap but powerful alternatives that supports gpu rendering in cycles. I’m not really a big fan of ATI or quadros at the moment as it is not supported by Blender Cycles.

I would definitely need a couple usb 3.0 support too.

I need help with deciding which motherboard, fans, power, case, and cooling unit to get.

I model, sculpt, and animate in Blender and sometimes use the video editor and compositor. I also will be using the Adobe CS6 suite for both design and video + Flash.

So, any suggestions and recommendations?

First of all, there are dozens of “help me build my PC”-threads in the “Technical Support” forum and I predict this is where your thread will be moved to, as well.

AMD chips have better price/performance in stuff like multicore rendering, but the single-core performance is about 30% worse than Intel. Considering that a lot of stuff in Blender (and other applications) is still single-threaded, I’d go with Intel. Also, The 3570k has better price/performance than the 3770k.

Get an SSD, it doesn’t really matter much which one.

Don’t bother with expensive RAM, it makes no noticable difference whatsoever.

For GPGPU rendering, you should get the higher-end models. What they do on the lower-end models is to cut down on shader cores first, but it doesn’t impact gaming performance as much because that depends also on the rasterizer hardware etc. For GPGPU, all that matters is the amount shader cores. (which does not mean that shader cores are comparable between different architectures, however)

Get a PSU from a decent brand like Corsair, don’t get a cheap no-name PSU that won’t deliver even the wattage it is rated for.

In my opinion you should get rid of this 2tb disk. It’s just slow your computer down. In my old computer i was using 120 GB SSD vertex 2 ocz + 3TB 7200RPM. The most important things is that, if you suck at blender the new pro hardware won’t change anything, you will still suck. CPU is pro. Never buy AMD CPU. i3 intel is faster than six core amd and i know what i’m talking about. If you have enough budget get better GPU which supports CUDA of course. Preferable 2-4GB RAM. GL

If you want the best card for gpu rendering in cycles, go for the gtx580… its faster then the gtx680. you should be able to find one pretty cheap now that they are discontinued.

Are you referring to GTX 580 SLI or just a single card? I checked and the gtx 680 beats the 580 as a single card.

yea I was thinking of SSD too but also add tb-sized storage. I would also need a very good cooling system because with those hard drives, cpu, and gpu, it’s gonna get really hot inside the tower.

Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Technical Support”

For gaming purpose single GTX 680 > GTX 580. But for Cycles and all CUDA stuff GTX 580 >>> GTX 680. The new achitecture has certainly more cuda cores but a much lower rendement than Fermi for GPGPU purpose.

There is a link Benchmark for cycles