I am making a budget PC build for blender but mobo choice is quite difficult.
Which of the 3 chipsets would be ideal for a starting out blender artist?
H97 and B97 look the same to me - no overclocking and no sli
Z97 - you can overclock and sli. But is OC necessary since blender is a GPU orientated program and multi GPU setups work in parallel rather than sli.
Am i missing out on any notable features between the chipsets?
Would be great if someone could help out.
I wouldn’t skimp on CPU+RAM. There are many things that a good GPU won’t help you with:
- Huge scenes. Once you start adding triangles and particles and hi-res textures, the limits of your VRAM will become apparent, and you’ll have to switch to CPU rendering.
- Internal renderer won’t even touch the GPU.
- Physics are calculated on the CPU.
- Some features of Cycles aren’t available to the GPU. Notably, SSS.
- The pre-processing of the scene prior to rendering is also done on the CPU.
And remember that, when using multiple GPUs to render you are limited by the card with less VRAM, while CPU rendering can use swap to break the limit of your physical RAM.
Yeah i know the GPU can’t render everything and I understand VRAM limitations. My current build is going for 16gb ram and an i5-4590 (really hoping to find a cheap xeon or i7 because of hyperthreading).
But the question about the chipset still stands and it’s the are i am having most trouble figuring out, probably others as well.
If your not planning on O/C’ing your CPU, than there is no need to spend more for a Z97 over H97. Find a board that has the best ratio of price vs features that you may need
Agreed with the H97. Sli isn’t even needed for Blender unless you plan on gaming on the side. That said, I went with the i5-4590. It’s a fine cpu, though it definitely struggles when it comes to physics. I was actually slightly disappointed with the performance, and this is coming from a laptop with an Arrandale dual core (albeit, hyperthreaded). Even in Blender Internal, I’m left somewhat wanting.
If at all possible, I would definitely try to stretch for the i7. It seems to me there is a lot of potential left unused without.
For myself, I sprung for 8 GB to get the build going for as little as possible, will throw in another couple sticks later though as I’m regularly breaching the halfway mark. My GTX 960 did not disappoint in the slightest either.
In agreement with @Zodiark1593 if you want the fastest Physics/Single threaded performance, a Z97 board with a 4790k would be the best way to go per $$ and a Z97 board is not too expensive. However you would have to put a little down for a good CPU cooler, to get a decent 4.6GHz or so overclock.
I did find for Cycles CPU rendering that hyper threading did make a decent difference in performance, but at some point a less OC’d 2011-E socket starts to become better CPU wise.
Depending on what you want to do, that money may be better spent on a better/more GPU’s instead.
I agree.
My rule is, first you invest in the best CPU and amount of RAM you can buy. Then you save money to buy a good GPU with much vRAM.