Help me spec my new rig
chris-2599934
Posts: 1,835
I've decided to get a new PC designed for Daz rendering, but could really use some help working out what to get. I have a budget of around GBP 2000, the way we get ripped off for tech components over here that's probably roughly equivalent to USD 2000. My plan is to get the machine built by my local independent PC shop, but I need to know what to ask for...
One thing I know is that I want a 1080ti GPU. I know there are new 2080 cards out there, but I think the 1080 will put me in the right place on the price/performance curve. I'm also going to ask for an empty slot and sufficient power to add a second card in the future - which might well be a 2080.
I want at least a 256GB SSD and 1TB hard drive, maybe double that in both cases. 32GB RAM? Is that enough?
And now the big one - processor - I have no idea. What do people recommend?
Sorry to be so vague, but I'd welcome any input.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Hi chris,
I currently have the same project.
To have a lot of RAM is a good idea. In my caes I have a lot of DAZ scene way too big for the nVidia cards. So I have to go with a quick multi-CPU. Up to now, my scenes consumed around 20GB RAM while rendering. So I hope, 32GB would be enough.
To speed up my CPU-only renders I chose the AMD Threadripper 1920X. Those are 12 cores, 24 threads. I know: the 16 cores is just published. But good double the price.
Anyhow: with the other specifications pretty similar to yours, my dealer today estimated the total costs at 2300€ (without GTX 1080TI).
So a PC suitable for DAZ3D and iRay simply is a pretty expensive project ...
I had mine built about three years ago, and have just added a few extra components this year.
Take a look at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk Their website allows you to build a machine and try different components, which is useful even if you decide not to buy from them. Only problem right now is that they don't seem to have any 10xx series nvidia cards in stock above a 1070.
If you mostly render in iray, I would recommend a six-core i7, 32GB RAM and as many 10xx series graphics cards as you can fit in and afford within the budget). So something like 2x1080ti, 2x1070ti etc.
You're routinely building scenes that exceed 11Gb? That's quite a big scene.
But even so if you're looking to build a PC for rendering you do want as nuch RAM as you swing, 32 Gb is enough but 16 Gb is probably not if your scenes are as big as you say.
As to CPU 2k GBP is too low for a HEDT CPU so you're looking at a standard desktop CPU. In that range I'd strongly recommend either the R5 2600 or the R7 2700. Those are good performance for the cost chips, I'd avoid the intel CPU's since the prices are higher for neglible performance gains. I'd match them with a B450 motherboard, In the US you can get a decent on for $100 no idea for the UK but it should be comparable. For the boot drive the 256 Gb SSD should be considered the minimum, prices of SSD's are low right now so you might look at a 512 Gb if you have the budget. For a HDD get the largest one you can afford the prices are pretty low now.
For your GPU I'd get the 1080ti and I'd get it ASAP. The stocks are pretty much exhausted. If you don't buy very soon you won't be able to buy a new one at all.
I can confirm. 16 Gb RAM is not enough for a 1080ti. Yes, it definitely works, but by the time I run out of system RAM, my GPU is only using 8-9 Gb. 32 is probably the right amount.
I'm pretty upset that 1080tis are going back up in price. I guess I'd better buy while I have the chance.
So noone is going for a Quadro video card? I keep reading they are twice as fast as the Geforce. The P2000 is about $400 and the P4000 is $700, which obviously starts breaking the budget.
I read a few places that the AMD chips have some sort of disabling feature for 3D rendering as opposed to gaming. Don't remember the specifics, and I don't have any bias.
It seems the GPU matters more than the CPU, so a 6-core i7 would be qdequate, but as the poster mentioned, for CPU only renders, maybe more is needed. Is CPU rendering used for real time rendering while working?
AMD CPU's work fine, I use one and it works great. Radeon GPU's can't be used with Iray.
the Quadro P2000 is a pretty weak GPU for Daz. 5GB is very little VRAM. If your GPU runs out of VRAM it stops doing the render at all and kicks it over to the CPU which is slower than molasses at rendering. For $400 you should be able to get a 1070 or 1070ti both of which have 8Gb of VRAM which is a much more reasonable quantity for Daz.
I never did get that new rig in 2018, but I think I'm going to take the plunge in 2020 - before Brexit comes along and sends the prices (further) through the roof. Here's my current thinking...
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF Z390-PLUS GAMING: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2400MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
11GB ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
ASUS 24x DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212X (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
ASUS PCE-N15 WIRELESS 802.11 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Comments?
That's a prebuilt.
9700k is not a very good professional CPU. It works great in games and would be fine in DS but it is an 8c/8t part so any serious multithreaded application will suffer on it. With only a hyper212 for cooling you won't be overclocking. So why get the 9700k and Z series motherboard (k means unlocked for overclocking and the z series motherboards are the ones that also support overclocking).
A 650w PSU is fine for the system as built but if you ever add another GPU or more drives it might become an issue.
2400Mhz RAM is very slow. A 32 Gb kit of Corsair Vengeance RAM sells at almost the same price $140US at every speed up 3200.
You are getting name brands and every part is specififed, except the case, so as far as prebuilts goes it's likely fine quality wise but you are really going to overpay for parts you either don't need or could easily get better for the same price.
If you simply cannot build yourself and cannot find a better option in prebuilts it should be good. I'd contact the seller and at least get the RAM upgraded. They're literally selling you nearly the bottom of the stack when they could buy better for the same price.
Although my PC is quite a few years old now, what you have posted above is like a 2020 version of what I originally bought. I originally had a 750W PSU and a 980Ti GPU. My one regret with the system is that I had to replace the PSU when I upgraded the graphics card because I wanted to keep the old one in there to speed up iray renders. My advice would be to get a PSU that is capable of supporting two 2080Ti cards so that in a couple of years if you decide to upgrade the graphics card, you can still keep the old one for the extra cuda cores.
Apart from that, it looks like a nice, future-proof build.
Thanks Ken. It is indeed a pre built spec from pcspecialist.co.uk, I picked all the parts myself from their drop-down lists, but without really knowing what I'm doing. My plan is to get a specification from an online PC builder, refine it here, and then get a computer shop local to me to actually build something to that spec.
So, vis-a-vis CPUs, motherboards and overclocking, I don't really have much of a clue. To ignorant souls like me, overclocking sounds like a dangerous thing to be doing. If it's the GPU doing the hard work of rendering, do I need to be workng the CPU that hard? Can I say at this point "I'm not going to need to overclock," and then make cheaper choices of CPU/board/cooler; or might I need to say "I may want/need to overclock" and choose a CPU/board/cooler that allows me to do that in the future. I don't have the knowledge to make that call.
I understand your point with the PSU (!) How powerful a PSU should I get to cope with two 2080's and the rest? Scope to add a second GPU in the future is definitely something I want to build in.
RAM-wise, I've gleaned from other threads on here that I should really be looking for (at least) 32 GB of it. Brand and speed are just the first things I picked out of those lists. So you're saying I should be looking for 3200 MHz instead?
My budget is, very approximately, 2000 GBP. The way hardware prices are over here, that's equivalent to about 2000 USD. If you could suggest a build at around that price point, I'd be very grateful.
Assuming prices do convert I'd build this:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.13 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI X570-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard ($156.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($87.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($112.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB Black Video Card ($1098.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA G5 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($137.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $1938.07
I assume you have a case or you can just pick a cheap one. someone else will build in it so it just has to have front I/O you like and enough fans. Also if you own a Win 10 license you don't need another it is easy to transfer from one machine to another.
That should be a better performer outside of games than the prebuilt with plenty of room for expansion.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do that, Ken, I'll see what my PC building guy makes of it...
Many parts, the graphics card and PSU, can be substituted for the cheapest equivalent part. Just make sure the PSU has all the connectors you'll need (although any 1000W PSU should have more than enough).
If you want the most "render bang for your buck"...
Just get a new GPU and use your old system. Then you can get your 2080ti. Nothing-else honestly matters, with any significance, for rendering. If you have a PSU with at-least 500 watts, that is enough for rendering with one card, easily. The most power that these cards draw, normally, is about 260-270 watts. Rendering does not use as much power as gaming. You are only using a fraction of the chips in the GPU. Games use nearly 100% of the GPU's internal chips. However, that will be enough for gaming too, as long as you don't overclock the CPU and video card.
I'd go with a 6-12TB HDD over any equivalent SSD, which will be about only a 1TB fast SSD, 2TB modest SSD, or tops a 4TB slow SSD. If you are trying to save power, an SSD is IDEAL. Daz items have sooo many small individual files, you won't get any real "speed gains" from an SSD over a HDD. For rendering, it will honestly not matter much. Loading a scene may be a tiny bit faster, but 90% of the loading time is just Daz internally processing what it has already loaded, seconds to minutes ago. If you want the 12TB drive to find things faster, break it up into 2-4TB partitions.
RAM, no sense having more than twice what your largest single GPU has for VRAM, unless you intend to render on CPU cycles. 32GB is plenty and speed is moot. You shave-off micro-seconds from minutes, with faster RAM. You are honestly bound to whatever your system is made for, unless you intend to overclock and shorten the life-cycle and error-rate potential of your expensive hardware for total life-time equivalent speed gain of maybe a few hours.
If you plan to have two cards in the future. Then I would go for a PSU with at-least 800 watts. That is 250*2 =(500) with 300 left for easily feeding your CPU and HDD and fans. Though, my four Titan cards, (2x Titan-V and 2x Titan-Xp), with my 36 core CPU and water cooling, are barely pulling 550-650 watts total, at the wall. (It is less internally.) Now, when gaming... if I used all the cards, that would be well over 1200 watts. However, games don't use all my cards at once, even if they could. Not a problem, because I have a 1600 watt PSU, which is horrible overkill. (I intended to have 8 cards rendering in this system, at some point in the future. But it's troublesome trying to get Daz to stay running with just these four cards. So, meh...)
Well, here's my sixpence worth:
1. If you are getting new, get more CPU power which at present means a new AMD top model, 39xx if you can afford it. Maybe other folks get by with less but I find that especially with bigger scenes more CPU grunt means I'm not waiting for things just scooting around inside the scene. Also, the CPU feeds the GPUs when rendering in IRay so if you don't have enough CPU or RAM it doesn't matter how many GPUs you have it won't go faster.
2. From what I have seen a 1080 Ti is nearly as good as a 2080 Ti and a lot cheaper - that's why I have two 1080Ti's rather than one 2080 Ti: price/performance. Until Nividia comes out with a new series you might just save a lot of bucks by getting a used 1080 Ti. In my case I had to put better Arctic coolers on them (they were the cheaper ones) but that is still cheaper than the fancy looking gamer ones.
No idea what you've seen but based on benchmarks a 2080ti can be as fast as 2 1080ti's depending on the scene. I know, because I have both and have tested, that a 2070 renders well lit indoor scenes as fast as my 1080ti.