It’s time for me to build a new beast. I can spend about 5-6K. I’ll be heading to all the sites to do my homework on this but I’d really appreciate any useful advice from the Blender community.
This PC build would be specifically for Blender and I’m looking for the best GPU/CPU combo for rendering, simulation, sculpting. I’m thinking 128GB ram as well.
Thanks for any and all advice!
Dual 4090s and an i9-13900K perhaps?
AWWWWWWWWW
And some words to fill up the count.
For GPU Cycles rendering, pretty much nothing tops the current 4090 and its 24GB VRAM. If that’s too much, then work your way down from there. For the most part, AMD still really isn’t an option.
As for CPU, don’t get too focused on multi-core, while a fair number are nice, a lot of the time you can still be limited by single core performance.
Unless you are working on really big scenes, have a mass of apps all running at the same time or install a lot of bloatware, then 128GB of RAM is likely overkill.
Main reason for 128GB of RAM would be to CPU render very large scenes, in which case the 4090 is far less useful, since it’s not being used for rendering.
Well, that depends on what you consider a really big scene. If you work with cad data the scenes quickly go into the 10 or 100 thousands of objects even for moderately sized scenes. I am currtently working with 64gb and need to upgrade. 128 would definately not be overkill for a machine you invest 5 to 6K imo.
Furthermore OP wants to craete simulations and you cant go wrong with lots of ram in that regard.
Same for the cpu. If you have a lof of data to preproces you want a beefy cpu.
Assuming that the processing is highly multi-threaded, otherwise it makes little difference how many cores you have. I’ve got a 5900x, so 12 cores and its surprising how much of the time its really only 1-2 cores doing all the work.
Even in cases where you may think that full core usage would be used, say video encoding. Yes the base codec will use every core you can throw at it, but then at times you add a filter and all of a sudden, only 1 core is being used.
I guess by really big scenes, I mean data wise, 100,000 objects is a pretty big scene, especially when it’s not made of instances or correctly optimised. If that is the sort of work one is stuck with, then sure, even 128GB may not be enough.
Thank you friends! So far, so good. I think I’ll be sticking with the 128GB ram, and I’ve read elsewhere that simulation and sculpting are better with a CPU that has better single-core performance. I’ll probably go with a single GPU but this 4090 sounds interesting. What would be the full name of that GPU? Is it like a GeForce GTX 4090, something like that? I’ll be looking it up anyway. I’ll also look at the 13900K. Is it good for single-core performance?
Great tips, thank you.
What you think of this? The only compatibility issue is that the mobo might need a bios update. I’m right at 6K with this one. I already have a case.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TWkyGL
Opinions please! Thanks very much
You’re giving away 5K already and you only get a low end motherboard to pair with the 13900KS… Not good choices in general. I wouldn’t use an ultrawide curved monitor for 3d in general either.
These would be my choices if I was you https://pcpartpicker.com/list/h2hJhk
Yes, except that they now call it RTX instead of GTX.
With the 4090s I would do a bit of research. I got a 3090 a while ago and apparently some models prone to overheating. I am not sure if this is still the case with the 4090s as they are supposed to be a bit better regarding power consumption.
Also be careful with cards that have the “founders edition” tag. NVidia calls the first cards they relase “founders editions”. So they might not be as well tested and they sometimes have worse specs than cards released later.
I generally think that bridnamnams pcpartpicker is pertty good. Personally I would try to squeeze in a second 4090 and get cheaper monitors, cheaper RAM and cheaper storage but I think a second 4090 would only be useful if you render a lot of heavier stuff.
The original 3090’s had VRAM on both sides of the PCB and that’s what tended to overheat a fair bit. The 3090 Ti has all 24GB VRAM on the same side as the GPU die, etc so got full/more cooling and hence is usually fine.
The 4090’s can use a mass amount of power, but all VRAM is again only on one side and they have HUGE coolers, made when it was suspected they would pull 600W by default. In actual case, all 4090’s at stock top out at 450W, which the coolers can easily handle.
There’s nothing wrong with the 30 and 40 series Founder cards that Nvidia make and sell themselves. For the most part they perform within margin of error compared to many AIB cards. Main issue is that in many cases they are not even for sale in the country you are in, so its just not an option.
Birdnamnam part list looks OK, its missing a case of course and you can likely get away with cheaper/slower RAM, since the chances of all 4 sticks beign able to hit 6600 speeds are pretty slim, if it did 6000 at CL32 I’d be very impressed.
A 1600W PSU is of course overkill, unless you then add a second 4090, then you’d need it. Having said that, but very sure of your exact use for two 4090’s in the same system. On top of need a massive PSU, you also need a huge case and good overall cooling.
Add to that, just because you have 2 GPU’s with 24GB VRAM each, doesn’t mean you now have 48GB VRAM, it doesn’t work like that for consumer cards, you can’t add the VRAM together. So you are still limited too 24GB and outside of animations or very long still renders, any second GPU would be sitting there doing mostly nothing all the time.
Multi-GPU systems are better used as a render farm, where you can push rendering work off your main PC and hence keep working on something, while what you already done is rendering away.
@ thetony20 Ah, interesting things about the one and two sided cooling of the GPUs and the founders lable. I didn not konw that.
Regarding the PSU: They can be quite a pain in the ass to switch out. So if you think about upgrading to a second 4090 later on it makes sense to get a sufficiently powerful PSU right now.
I disagree. Multi GPU systems are prefectly fine for work stations. Besides of course being able to use your workstation as a render machine at night it also saves tons of time for previews which you often have to do tons of when setting up things such as lighting and shaders.
What is your opinion of DDR4 vs DDR5? DDR5 is still quite a bit more expensive. 9 or so months back when I put together my machine the price of DDR5 was too high. Has this changed?
5-6K of what? EUR? CZK? Very small rocks?
I’m referring to USD.
Very small rocks are only useful I’m I need something to float when testing if someone is a witch. (Yes, I’ve seen Monty Python and The Holy Grail, I think I’ve just about memorized it.)
I guess that really depends on how long the previews take. For a general look/check I’m usually rendering at like 200 samples with denoise, so any second GPU may make a 10-20s render 3-4 seconds faster, at most. You may lose some of that time in the CPU loading up the second GPU and the system putting it all together.
But I agree, if one happens to be doing animations and overnight renders, then being able to use the main PC as a ‘render’ node as well is a good thing, if one does that often enough.
At this stage, I’d be more inclined to go with DDR5, especially as a main PC. The prices have somewhat come down and speeds gone up. I wouldn’t over spend tho, around 6000 at CL30-32 is more then fast enough. Plus if you use all 4 slots compared to 2, then getting anything faster to boot is likely going to be a problem.
If it was just as a pure render node, then I don’t think the RAM really matters. Even for CPU rendering its capacity more then anything, and for GPU it matters even less.
I don’t think RAM speed matters as much as the marketing says it does- I have a powerhouse of a PC, but the RAM is still DDR4. I’ve never noticed any lag or slowdowns
Thank you all for the good advice. More questions please:
Regarding birdnamnam’s parts list:
Honest question, why not use a curved monitor for 3D? I’ve got a couple of nice Dell monitors I’ve been using for a long time and they’re fine, I’m just intrigued by the idea of not having that big 2" divider in the middle of my view. So if not an ultrawide, I would probably just stick with what I’ve got, as long as I can find a way to plug DVI into Display Port. I’d really like to know if and why the curved monitor would be bad for 3D.
So maybe I keep my monitors and use the money for another 4090 GPU? This takes me above 6K:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DqXBMb
Or I can stick with one GPU and go a bit cheaper?
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Q9pnbK
I can’t tell you all how valuable this discussion is for me. Many, many thanks.
There’s no objective, technical reason. Some people like curved monitors, some don’t. If you do, go for it! What you want is ultimately more important than what anyone else says 
I’m going to go against popular opinion again here and say that you really don’t need two GPUs. One 4090 is more than enough for highly intensive 3D. The only reason for two GPUs is if 1. You use Cycles exclusively and 2. You want this computer to be a rendering farm. There’s very little reason why you would want that
Yeah, its a bit more a gaming thing and some specific functions, etc.
Having said that, DDR5 does have a couple other advantages, like somewhat easier to get higher memory sticks, so doing say 64 GB with just two stick of DDR5 is likely to have more options then DDR4.
Also, DDR5 has some basic ECC built in, so that’s nice.
But in general, pushing polys around isn’t a RAM intensive thing, at least not where speed matters.
Personally, mostly just not a fan, but having said that, I’ve never used a large/wide screen that’s curved or otherwise. So go with what you like. Frankly for content work, pixel density, colour accuracy and a reasonable refresh rate matter more.
Much like what Joseph said and I’ve already pointed out. You need to be very clear on your use case as to if two 4090’s are worth it.
If you don’t GPU render using Cycles (or some other GPU renderer) then its pointless. A second GPU will make no difference to viewport performance, modelling, sculpting, texturing, etc, etc. For all of that the second GPU sits there and does nothing.
Even if you do use Cycles, if what you render doesn’t fit in 24GB VRAM, then any 4090 is ‘useless’, as you got no choice but to render via CPU.
However, if you do use Cycles and can render in 24GB VRAM and do a lot of rendering, either stills or especially animation, then a second GPU could be well worth it.
Another area is video editing, some apps/filters/effects can and will make use of the GPU to speed things up and depending on the software they can use more then 1. So a heavy video editor may in fact have a 2 GPU system.
So yeah, just need to be very clear on what you do or plan/expect to do in the next 6 months and make sure the gear will actually be of any use for it.
Don’t try to ‘future proof’, if you’re getting a second GPU now, because you think it may be useful in a couple years time, that’s pointless. By then a 5090 or 5090 Ti will be out, it may well be twice as fast as a single 4090 and cost less (both to buy and run) then two 4090’s now.
GPU rendering will use the system RAM if it fills up the VRAM. It’ll be slower of course, but probably still faster than pure CPU rendering (unless maybe if you have a very high end CPU that is).