Hi Guys!
I can't help myself sharing my excitement with you for my new PC system build for mainly TG, but perhaps also others like Houdini...who knows.
I really needed a new system, since my 8 year old quad core 2600k with 16GB RAM is really holding me back in creating my ideas.
Especially creating them faster and without memory restraints.
It will allow me to run larger and faster simulations of erosion, or populating instances.
My current project takes over 1 hour to populate just 5 populations over a 32x16km area with 2x 5m and 3x10m spacing.
Yes that's big and a bit densely, I know, but it kills workflow and iteration speed.
So with this new build I can iterate faster in all aspects.
Twice!
Some time ago I started a thread about renderthread scalability and it clearly showed that TG does not scale well beyond 12 threads.
Usually while rendering/simulating/populating I want to keep working on ideas. So 12 cores/24 threads for that and the other cores/threads for the other TG instance or whatever other CG software.
No waiting, no Youtubing, just keep on churning and burning. In some cases I could still render with 16/32 or 20/40 and have a workable 2nd TG instance. There's so much more I can do once I have this machine.
I'm really excited by this idea as there's so much I have in mind which I cannot create now or don't have the patience for since my PC isn't powerful enough. This will fix it all!
So in the end I took the decision to go for a bit of overkill with my machine, but I think it will be definitely worth it and I hope it will serve me equally well as my 2600k did for 8 years!
It will also mean I will probably be a lot more active here and elsewhere, because I really needed this to re-invigorate my TG/CG hobby.
Ultimately I would like to work part-time at my science job and do more freelance work on the side. Or the opposite
Learning other tools while not being limited by your old machine will probably also help make it less painful/annoying, I hope. Let's see!
System build:
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X
G.Skill Trident Z F4-3200C15Q2-128GTZ
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 - SSD, 1x
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB - SSD, 2x
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 (CPU air cooler)
Corsair HXi Series HX850i (PSU)
Asus PRIME TRX40-PRO
Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C Black
ASUS Turbo GeForce RTX 2060 Super EVO
be quiet! Silent Wings 3
Noctua NF-A15 PWM
I gave this quite a bit of thought and research, so hopefully I did not make obvious mistakes.
For a moment I was seriously investigating AIO liquid coolers, but the noise profiles vs cooling performance were not really convincing to me.
Better cooling, but generally quite loud.
Also the idea of potential leakage and moving parts like the pump eventually causing issues or even more noise did make me decide to go for the slightly less effective, but more reliable air cooling.
The GPU is not top notch, but isn't of much priority at this stage.
Say I'd like to learn Houdini, then most of it is still CPU based, like the renderer.
Simulations can be ran on the GPU and this one will still be no slough and I have insane CPU thread numbers anyway.
If I will get really serious with it eventually then I'd need to re-invest anyway, but at this stage I cannot justify that.
I first need to develop the base skills which may eventually lead me to desiring more powerful GPU's. At this stage it's all mostly TG oriented, thus a GTX 2060 seemed like a good compromise.
Anyway...wayyyy too much text here!!
Can't wait! See you guys!
Cheers,
Martin
