PC for my Uni work (VFX and 3D, mainly Blender) (advice)

[JonFri]

Hey my names Jon and I'm
a 20 year old student just starting on my HNC for games, animation and VFX and am using my loan to buy a very good PC for this work and my future career. Can someone please check my spec on the PC that I've configured from the preset RTX Studio Pc's on PC Specialist. The list of specs is below. Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated as this is going to cost ALOT and I want to make the right decision. Most of my study and work will be around softwares such as Blender and other 3D programs and Higher processeing intensity softwares that need a fast render capability to make my workflow the best I can possibly make it with a £8500.

RTX Studio PC specification from PC specialist:
Case
COOLERMASTER COSMOS C700M TOWER GAMING CASE
Promotional Discount
Get 3 Months of Adobe CC with qualifying NVIDIA Studio systems!
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 Eight-Core Processor i9-11900K (3.5GHz) 16MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z590-E GAMING WIFI (LGA1200, USB 3.2, PCIe 4.0) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
PNY QUADRO RTX A6000 48GB GDDR6, 10752 CUDA CORES 4 x DP
Graphics Card Support Bracket
PCS ARGB GRAPHICS CARD SUPPORT BRACKET
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1.6TB ENMOTUS FUZEDRIVE M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3470MB/R, 3000MB/W, 128GB SLC for endurance)
1st Storage Drive
4TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
USB 3.0 EXTERNAL SD/MICRO SD CARD READER
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE LCD Display RGB CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
LED Lighting
2x 50cm ARGB LED Strip
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
2.5G ETHERNET PCI-EXPRESS CARD (10/100/1000M/2.5G) (1 x RJ45)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Firewire
2 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI-E Card (2 x 6 pin)
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [MUP-00005]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
Norton 360 For Gamers: 1 User, 3 Devices - 1 Year Subscription
Browser
Google Chrome™
Monitor
ASUS XG32VC 31.5" ROG Strix
Streaming Accessories
Elgato Stream Deck XL
Webcam
Logitech® HD Webcam C930e - 1080p recording, supports H.264
Cable Management
3 x PCS 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour)
Home Installation
Technician Assisted Installation & Set-Up + Wi-Fi + Family Surf Control
Delivery
48 HOUR INSURED 2 PERSON DELIVERY TO UK (MON-FRI, INC. HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 7 working days
Promotional Item
Get 3 Months of Adobe CC with qualifying NVIDIA Studio systems!

Any feed back would be much appreciated. I won't be making a final decision until next April so I want to do some more research and hopefully find out more with the help of anyone on here. Thanks.
Jon.

 

[sck451]

If you're not buying till next year, there's no point making a spec now. There will be new graphics cards (though I'm not sure about the professional ones, to be fair) and new CPUs by then, and that will change everything.

 

[Hello Paul]

Hi @JonFri . Coming from a motion graphics/VFX background (been doing that for >20 years), I have a couple of thoughts that my or may not be of interest:
You will need FAR more storage than you could possibly anticipate. Video files, 3D rendered image sequences, etc. are HUGE. Take for example a recent job I was working on - I've just randomly picked one of the hundreds of shots: it's 3GB. For ONE SHOT. And it's 17secs long. (It's 8K RED footage). Storage, and especially backup, is a never-ending quandary for me. Luckily, after most of my jobs are completed, I very rarely need to revisit them, so if all my files disappeared instantly, I could restore everything from the past month from a Backblaze online backup, and I'd probably be OK...ish. My PC has ~13TB internal storage (2x 2TB M2 drives, a 1TB system drive, an 8TB mechanical drive) plus I have over 30TB of external drives for longer term storage. Yes, I know it's a matter of "when" not "if" hard drives fail, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I've been lucky so far...let's hope I'm not tempting fate! But in a nutshell: spec as much storage as you can cram in there.

Your CPU: I'm not sure of the benchmark results, but it's worth bearing in mind that most 3D/motion gfx software such as C4D and After Effects take full advantage of lots of cores (this wasn't the case with After Effects until fairly recently). I have an AMD Ryzen 5950X 16-core, which was a good balance of performance, affordability and availability last year. There are plenty of benchmarks out there to compare results - maybe you've already looked at those. You've probably already seen these articles: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/content_creation/index.php

I haven't kept up to date with the latest developments in graphics cards; my 1-year-old PC has an Nvidia RTX3090 with 24GB VRAM, and it copes extremely well with whatever I throw at it, including the aforementioned 8K footage. I'm not sure what you'd need 48GB VRAM for; obviously more VRAM is usually better, but I wonder if you'd be better off buying a cheaper, almost-as-capable card, then in a couple of years, spend the money you saved on whatever shiny new faster card is launched, rather than investing a small fortune in something that is awesome today, but by 2025 might be a bit old hat. Having said all that, I don't do a whole lot of 3D, and if you're planning to use a lot of high res. texture maps and create huge scenes, then that 48GB might be useful.

Firewire: Not sure if that comes as standard with that case, but I haven't found any need for FireWire for over a decade. And I'm really not sure why anyone adds LED lighting to their system other than to make it look unprofessional.

 

[JonFri]

Okay, yeah I was just trying to get a idea of what I want but that's true,

Hi @JonFri . Coming from a motion graphics/VFX background (been doing that for >20 years), I have a couple of thoughts that my or may not be of interest:
You will need FAR more storage than you could possibly anticipate. Video files, 3D rendered image sequences, etc. are HUGE. Take for example a recent job I was working on - I've just randomly picked one of the hundreds of shots: it's 3GB. For ONE SHOT. And it's 17secs long. (It's 8K RED footage). Storage, and especially backup, is a never-ending quandary for me. Luckily, after most of my jobs are completed, I very rarely need to revisit them, so if all my files disappeared instantly, I could restore everything from the past month from a Backblaze online backup, and I'd probably be OK...ish. My PC has ~13TB internal storage (2x 2TB M2 drives, a 1TB system drive, an 8TB mechanical drive) plus I have over 30TB of external drives for longer term storage. Yes, I know it's a matter of "when" not "if" hard drives fail, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I've been lucky so far...let's hope I'm not tempting fate! But in a nutshell: spec as much storage as you can cram in there.

Your CPU: I'm not sure of the benchmark results, but it's worth bearing in mind that most 3D/motion gfx software such as C4D and After Effects take full advantage of lots of cores (this wasn't the case with After Effects until fairly recently). I have an AMD Ryzen 5950X 16-core, which was a good balance of performance, affordability and availability last year. There are plenty of benchmarks out there to compare results - maybe you've already looked at those. You've probably already seen these articles: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/content_creation/index.php

I haven't kept up to date with the latest developments in graphics cards; my 1-year-old PC has an Nvidia RTX3090 with 24GB VRAM, and it copes extremely well with whatever I throw at it, including the aforementioned 8K footage. I'm not sure what you'd need 48GB VRAM for; obviously more VRAM is usually better, but I wonder if you'd be better off buying a cheaper, almost-as-capable card, then in a couple of years, spend the money you saved on whatever shiny new faster card is launched, rather than investing a small fortune in something that is awesome today, but by 2025 might be a bit old hat. Having said all that, I don't do a whole lot of 3D, and if you're planning to use a lot of high res. texture maps and create huge scenes, then that 48GB might be useful.

Firewire: Not sure if that comes as standard with that case, but I haven't found any need for FireWire for over a decade. And I'm really not sure why anyone adds LED lighting to their system other than to make it look unprofessional.

Hi, thanks so much for that advice, you made some really good points that I'll take into consideration, I understand I won't be making a final decision for a while but want to get a understanding of what would be available within the budget that I will have, I know that at the time there may well be newer technologies released and so I'll decide on that at the time as I want to try to get the best possible equipment for my future career, it might be a bit naive of me but I just want a good start and having this pc I know will help alot. I changed my quote based on your advice, I've pasted it below, do you think this would best be suited for me (presently). I think I can save alot of unnecessary spending by getting the RTX 3090 24gb rather than the expensive pny quadro a6000 48gb, do you think the 3090 with 24gb will be fully capable of handling the high processing loads that I will be using when rendering (I know that depends on what I do, I don't know much technically wise but it all fascinates me and I want to learn, plus I wanna make the right decision.)

My quote for workstation, V2:

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Promotional Discount
Get 3 Months of Adobe CC with qualifying NVIDIA Studio systems!
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 Eight-Core Processor i9-11900K (3.5GHz) 16MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z590-E GAMING WIFI (LGA1200, USB 3.2, PCIe 4.0) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
24GB ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE RTX 3090 - HDMI, DP
Graphics Card Support Bracket
PCS ARGB GRAPHICS CARD SUPPORT BRACKET
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1.6TB ENMOTUS FUZEDRIVE M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3470MB/R, 3000MB/W, 128GB SLC for endurance)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
8TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
1st Storage Drive
8TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
1st Storage Drive
8TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
USB 3.0 EXTERNAL SD/MICRO SD CARD READER
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE LCD Display RGB CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Extra Case Fans
2 x 120mm Thermaltake TOUGHFAN 12 Case Fans
Sound Card
ASUS STRIX Raid DLX 7.1 PCIe sound card
Network Card
2.5G ETHERNET PCI-EXPRESS CARD (10/100/1000M/2.5G) (1 x RJ45)
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 [MUP-00003]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
Norton 360 For Gamers: 1 User, 3 Devices - 1 Year Subscription
Browser
Google Chrome™
Streaming Accessories
Elgato Stream Deck XL
Cable Management
3 x PCS 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour)
Home Installation
Technician Assisted Installation & Set-Up + Wi-Fi + Family Surf Control
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)