Hardware that can withstand 3D Animation Design

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Hi all

On and off, I've been learning Blender and I had recently tried to render some animation which resulted in my CPU cooling system shutting down my laptop. The finished product is in my blog website - those 3 letters took a whole afternoon to render on this old laptop but any bigger strings of words was shutting down the machine without the rendering being completed.

I am considering either to build my own desktop and install some version of linux on it together with the open-source animation/video editing software (keeping my laptop to surf and chill online) or to take the easy way out and purchase a current desktop, wipe off windows 8 and do the above.

Building it would be a project for next summer 2015 but buying one could take place in the January sales.

My question is, what kind of hardware specification would cope with rendering 3d animation? All the info out there relates to gaming specs and I'm struggling to find much relating to this. Should I be researching hardware specs for perhaps video editing instead?

Any links or info would be very much appreciated.

 

[High Fidelity]

It depends to what extent you want to do it, really.

Either way, it isn't particularly cheap. You're going to want an i7 processor(NO lower than an i5 -- This one is good) and at least 16GB of RAM.

The GPU you will probably want a 2GB one but I'm not sure what ones are good for animation, I only use mine for calculations and gaming.

EDIT: Make sure anything you buy has 2-3 years warranty as well. Rendering can put hardware under heavy loads for extended periods of time, so if it does give way then you'll likely get it replaced.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Cheers Tywin,

I was wondering about an i5 processor but thanks for the advice about getting i7.

Costs wise it's a catch 22 - if I build it I will have to buy the parts over a period of time but due to the cost, it may take a long time to be able to afford each parts, then it's if some of the items become incompatible due to the length of time it takes for me to buy things.

 

[High Fidelity]

Well the i5 I linked is actually really good.

Your best bet would probably just be to save. The way technology works in the market is that you'll buy something in January and it'll probably be a fair bit cheaper in 6-12 months. Particularly the case with GPU's and sometimes CPU's, as new things become available(Often) then the prices lower of the lower models typically.

I'd recommend saving a set amount and then asking on a tech site for someone show you a build for that budget

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Well the i5 I linked is actually really good.

Your best bet would probably just be to save. The way technology works in the market is that you'll buy something in January and it'll probably be a fair bit cheaper in 6-12 months. Particularly the case with GPU's and sometimes CPU's, as new things become available(Often) then the prices lower of the lower models typically.

I'd recommend saving a set amount and then asking on a tech site for someone show you a build for that budget

Actually a good idea!!
Cheers!

 

[elytron]

System76 sells computers with Ubuntu already installed. Their Leopard Extreme desktop is probably their best system. Plus you can increase the price, by upgrading it through their website. Would be easier than building one from scratch.

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, there is considerable overlap between what's suitable for gaming and what's suitable for video editing*, with some differences - particularly in the fact that the GPU will only do you any good if the editing/rendering software makes use of it (some do, others don't, and it's usually a choice between OpenCL and CUDA when they do). The thing that often sets the apart is that video editing, as a profession, wouldn't try to overclock a machine just for speed. Gaming rigs generally would be built to try to do that, for either practical reasons or simply for bragging rights. Video editing and graphics work values stability over speed when you get to the point of trying to push the envelope.

*not all video editing - simple I/O nonlinear stuff can be done on even ancient computers like mine (my main editing setup is a Coppermine - that is, Pentium III-era - Celeron), it's just a matter of patience.

Most of what you'll need for editing (actually, more in the effects rendering and format encoding parts) are a strong CPU and RAM.

Compatibility-wise, you're not really going to hit a roadblock. Motherboard CPU sockets and RAM types evolve at a much slower pace than the CPUs themselves do, and any peripherals generally use standardized interfaces like PCI-Express and SATA. It's more a choice over whether you want the bleeding edge (stuff like DDR4 SDRAM) or are okay with slightly older but more widespread and common parts. The newer it is, the pricier it is - you can get away with a comfortable hardware configuration for editing and rendering by using less expensive and more common parts (which will probably still greatly outpace the laptop you said you were using), or go for raw power with newer, more expensive and less available parts that are at the beginning of their hardware's growth cycle and will come down in price a few months down the road.

The key in choosing a CPU for a job like this isn't always in selecting what consumer name Intel (or AMD, but I prefer Intel) chooses to market the processor as, or the Hz. What you really want to look at are things like the microarchitecture**, CPU cache sizes, interface speeds, number of cores/possible threads, and the Hz, as a complete picture. And you'd likely be able to find suitable i5s that meet those needs, if you wanted to save money (even the i3s, Pentiums, and Celerons could do if you were really strapped for funds and/or plan on transitioning the unit to a media center).

**identified by their development codenames. For example, you'd be looking at either i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge CPUs (older) or probably i3, i5, or i7 Haswell CPUs (newer). Basically, the newer you get, the more capable the lower-end CPUs become, as this is tied into both the supported SIMD and the size of the manufacturing process (the smaller the process, the more power can potentially be packed onto the CPU - the mixture of cache sizes/speed, SIMD, and die shrink is why two processors of nominally the same Hz speed can be so apart in performance). The bleeding edge would be Broadwell CPUs, but they won't be in general release until mid-2015.

The same thing applies to RAM - the actual size of the RAM does matter, but so does the latency, bus speed, and dual- or triple-channel nature of using paired sticks.


tl;dr if I was building it myself for general editing purposes, I would try to make sure I go for power (within budget; the i7-Extreme CPUs are even too expensive for that), but if I needed to save money, I wouldn't worry about it and go ahead and buy an affordable setup. Either it will be comfortable or you may just need to exercise some patience, but even a new economy desktop should be able to do what's needed of it. It just might take a bit longer.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

System76 sells computers with Ubuntu already installed. Their Leopard Extreme desktop is probably their best system. Plus you can increase the price, by upgrading it through their website. Would be easier than building one from scratch.

This is brill! Thanks Elytron.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Well, there is considerable overlap between what's suitable for gaming and what's suitable for video editing*, with some differences - particularly in the fact that the GPU will only do you any good if the editing/rendering software makes use of it (some do, others don't, and it's usually a choice between OpenCL and CUDA when they do). The thing that often sets the apart is that video editing, as a profession, wouldn't try to overclock a machine just for speed. Gaming rigs generally would be built to try to do that, for either practical reasons or simply for bragging rights. Video editing and graphics work values stability over speed when you get to the point of trying to push the envelope.

*not all video editing - simple I/O nonlinear stuff can be done on even ancient computers like mine (my main editing setup is a Coppermine - that is, Pentium III-era - Celeron), it's just a matter of patience.

Most of what you'll need for editing (actually, more in the effects rendering and format encoding parts) are a strong CPU and RAM.

Compatibility-wise, you're not really going to hit a roadblock. Motherboard CPU sockets and RAM types evolve at a much slower pace than the CPUs themselves do, and any peripherals generally use standardized interfaces like PCI-Express and SATA. It's more a choice over whether you want the bleeding edge (stuff like DDR4 SDRAM) or are okay with slightly older but more widespread and common parts. The newer it is, the pricier it is - you can get away with a comfortable hardware configuration for editing and rendering by using less expensive and more common parts (which will probably still greatly outpace the laptop you said you were using), or go for raw power with newer, more expensive and less available parts that are at the beginning of their hardware's growth cycle and will come down in price a few months down the road.

The key in choosing a CPU for a job like this isn't always in selecting what consumer name Intel (or AMD, but I prefer Intel) chooses to market the processor as, or the Hz. What you really want to look at are things like the microarchitecture**, CPU cache sizes, interface speeds, number of cores/possible threads, and the Hz, as a complete picture. And you'd likely be able to find suitable i5s that meet those needs, if you wanted to save money (even the i3s, Pentiums, and Celerons could do if you were really strapped for funds and/or plan on transitioning the unit to a media center).

**identified by their development codenames. For example, you'd be looking at either i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge CPUs (older) or probably i3, i5, or i7 Haswell CPUs (newer). Basically, the newer you get, the more capable the lower-end CPUs become, as this is tied into both the supported SIMD and the size of the manufacturing process (the smaller the process, the more power can potentially be packed onto the CPU - the mixture of cache sizes/speed, SIMD, and die shrink is why two processors of nominally the same Hz speed can be so apart in performance). The bleeding edge would be Broadwell CPUs, but they won't be in general release until mid-2015.

The same thing applies to RAM - the actual size of the RAM does matter, but so does the latency, bus speed, and dual- or triple-channel nature of using paired sticks.


tl;dr if I was building it myself for general editing purposes, I would try to make sure I go for power (within budget; the i7-Extreme CPUs are even too expensive for that), but if I needed to save money, I wouldn't worry about it and go ahead and buy an affordable setup. Either it will be comfortable or you may just need to exercise some patience, but even a new economy desktop should be able to do what's needed of it. It just might take a bit longer.

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Your post along with what everyone else has written has helped me significantly.

You've answered a lot of my queries - many many thanks Qyot27!

 

[Sketcher]

Don't go with a laptop, period. You want an Intel processor, and you want multiple cores. Cores are better than clock speed for rendering, since rendering is multithreaded. Do not overclock it, you want stability during your render, and you do not want artifacts on your rendered images or videos.

I like Linux, but I am not seeing an advantage of Linux over Windows in this case. If you have 8 or 16 available cores on a Windows box and enough RAM, you can render in the background and leave a couple of cores open for continuing to work. That's less software configuration for you to do.

As far as the graphics card goes, that is going to depend on your 3D app of choice. Rendering on the graphics card is relatively new, it has more bearing on your modeling and animating. There's gaming cards, and there's professional cards. Get what is recommended for your app of choice.

You should ask here too: CGTalk - Technical and Hardware

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

..

I like Linux, but I am not seeing an advantage of Linux over Windows in this case. If you have 8 or 16 available cores on a Windows box and enough RAM, you can render in the background and leave a couple of cores open for continuing to work. That's less software configuration for you to do. ...

Cheers Sketcher! My thinking behind linux was the fact that most of my tinkerings with animation has been using Open source software namely Synfig Studio and Blender. So I was going to go the whole hog and finally kiss Microsoft goodbye in terms of my hobbies but keep my current laptop for work relating things which needs a Windows based operating system. I can see what you're saying though.

It was Blender that made my current laptop crash so I'm going down the desktop route. But essentially there's an Open source suite which includes the two above software plus a video editing software. I was intending to have that on the desktop.

 

[Sketcher]

Cheers Sketcher! My thinking behind linux was the fact that most of my tinkerings with animation has been using Open source software namely Synfig Studio and Blender. So I was going to go the whole hog and finally kiss Microsoft goodbye in terms of my hobbies but keep my current laptop for work relating things which needs a Windows based operating system. I can see what you're saying though.

It was Blender that made my current laptop crash so I'm going down the desktop route. But essentially there's an Open source suite which includes the two above software plus a video editing software. I was intending to have that on the desktop.

OK, well if you are going with all-open source, no reason to not do Linux. Most 3D and DCC software is made for Windows first and foremost, which is why I said what I said earlier.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

OK, well if you are going with all-open source, no reason to not do Linux. Most 3D and DCC software is made for Windows first and foremost, which is why I said what I said earlier.

Thank you for this - definitely worth bearing in mind.