Hardware Requirements for a PC to run only DAZ3d

roshand13

Hello Guys i am looking to replace my old dell workstation. Could you guys sujjest pc that would make quick work at rendering in DAZ.

Thank you

Roshan David

Richard Haseltine

For Daz Studio the ideal part is a good (lots of memory) nVidia RTX graphics card, plus enough system memory to handle both the scene in Daz Srtudio and the data to be sent to Iray. CPU is less important using Iray, as long as your scenes don't exceed the available memory, and dForce but is used if the graphics card runs out of memory or for 3Delight. Content wil potentially eat up a lot of disc space - I think it's fair to say that most people find a high-capacity mechanical HD best. Without more detail on your budget and the sort of scenes you render it's hard to be more precise.

FirstBastion

If you have atleast 16 gigs of RAM  and a Nvidia RTX 3060 card you can have decent completed renders in about 2 minutes.  More RAM (say 32 gigs) and a faster card (3070-3090)  the render times would be shorter.

 

PerttiA

FirstBastion said:

If you have atleast 16 gigs of RAM  and a Nvidia RTX 3060 card you can have decent completed renders in about 2 minutes.  More RAM (say 32 gigs) and a faster card (3070-3090)  the render times would be shorter.

The concensus is that there should be three times more RAM than VRAM, 16GB's of RAM is not much. 

riot.rebel2020

PerttiA said:

FirstBastion said:

If you have atleast 16 gigs of RAM  and a Nvidia RTX 3060 card you can have decent completed renders in about 2 minutes.  More RAM (say 32 gigs) and a faster card (3070-3090)  the render times would be shorter.

The concensus is that there should be three times more RAM than VRAM, 16GB's of RAM is not much. 

What's the difference between Nvidia RTX 3060 and Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti?

PerttiA

The RTX 3060 Ti has just 8GB's of VRAM as the RTX 3060 has 12GB's

alan bard newcomer

at least two pci express slots with enough room for double wide cards. 
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I built my machine before (just) iray arrived so I got dual xeons and 64g of ram. (and at that point a 980 ti 6g.. should have gotten the 12 
Daz doesn't use the cpus (unless it's a 3dl render) and the only time the ram has been stressed was when I forgot to reset the speed setting for using ultra 
but I can have both my titanX and the 980 in the machine at the same time and if the spacing had been right a third video card ... could do it but have to use riser cables etc. 
but when I get the money for a 3080 or better the card will drop right in. 
---
even if you don't feel positive about building your own...  check to see if a friend does. 
when I did mine (this is not a mac bash but that was my comparison at the time) 
the mac pro tower was $2000 for a e1630v2 16g ddr3 and 4g of vram memory was 4 x 4 in 4 slots so you had to dump ram to upgrade
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my machine asus server board $500 est cost of one 2630v3 $800* 64 g ddr4 4x16 in 4 of available 16 slots $450 and $500 for the 980ti
*I ended up getting two of the 2630v3 for $650 on ebay (i figured that one ... I'd never had an intel processor die and two if I lost one I'd still be equal to just having one (6 years and both are still chugging along)
If you're anywhere with used computer places I got my thermaltake server case used for $25 
----
with dell and some others you used to get issues with upgrading systems or restores because they tend to put a proprietary file on the hard disk

 

kovmailfk

Hi!

Which matters most during rendering? The number of cuda cores or the size of VRAM?

For example:

3584 cuda cores with 12 GB VRAM  vs. 4864 cuda cores with 8GB VRAM?

Thank you!

Leana

Amount of VRAM is pretty important as if your scene doesn't fit in the card VRAM then the card can't be used at all.

If the scene fits and you can use the GPU to render, more CUDA cores (when comparing cards of the same generation) means it will render faster.

If you tend to create memory heavy scenes which use lots of elements / textures for example, go for more VRAM.

PerttiA

With the newest versions of DS, using assets released within the last 2 years, 8GB's of VRAM is very limiting. The speed difference is negligible, so why pay more for less?

Do not go to the gaming community for advice on this, as DS is nothing like a game.

Tirronan

OK, a disclaimer first: your mileage will vary. I started using DAZ 3D with a computer using a GTX 1060 and 32 gigs of RAM. Lockups, CTDs, and my video card would cease to function. Using single figures and simple backgrounds at lower resolutions solved that mostly. That didn't help that I wanted to do more complex renders. So, the simple thing was to increase RAM, which enabled more complex pictures. Well, that worked sort of. At 64 RAM, I was still getting CTDs, and my system would still forget it had a graphics card. I then purchased an RTX 3090. My checkbook was screaming, but it solved issues. And it caused issues. My old 1200-watt PS couldn't handle the RTX 3090 and blew, taking out the motherboard and CPU. OK, new motherboard, new AMD CPU, and I jumped the RAM top 96 gigs. Still, on complex setups, I'd get GPU lockups and CTDs, Admittedly, on very difficult renders. I went and got 128 gigs of RAM, and everything worked all the time. 4K renders, particle effects, and reflections, all at the same time, no problem at all. The render might take 90 minutes, but by God, they work. No crashes, no GPU lockups, not ever.

Now, what does that mean to you? Well, if you are doing simple sets at low resolutions, a rig like this isn't going to do much but give you 90-second renders. Secondly, this is a single dataset experience. Will it happen to you? I can't say. I will say that if you go and get an RTX 4090, make sure you get a brand-new 1500 power supply. These high-end cards can and will eat old, or weak power supplies for lunch and may do some serious damage doing so.

stripe6499_9253833ae8

I generally work with multiple models in a scene. Over the last few weeks, I've been experimenting a little. I run with a 12gb RTX3060, 64GB Ram and an i7 intel CPU. As long as my scenery isn't too complex or high poly, I can generally run renders with 4xG8 midels in about 10-20 mins. The less models I have, the faster it goes. The more detailed the scenery, the slower it goes. At 5xG8s in a scene, I'm usually falling over into CPU rendering. So, as the wise folks have already said, it depends on what you intend to do. The more models you want to use, or the more complex the scenery, then the chunkier the vid card memory you'll need.  If you can afford it, then an RTX40 series is ideal. 16gb RTX4060s will give a lot of flexibility. If you're rich, then get a 24gb RTX 4090. If your budget is more limited, then a 12gb RTX 3060 isn't a bad choice.   

PerttiA

Of course one can bring a super computer to it's knees if one doesn't know how much resources which element and which materials take, but a 12GB RTX 3060 does go a long way.

This scene had at one point two more G8 characters and a Dog 8 in it, nothing is hidden, the whole town is there and it still rendered on GPU (RTX 3060 12GB)
Rest of the setup; Asus X99, i7-5820K, 64GB's, 6 internal SSD's and 7 external USB's, powered by 750W PSU - Never had any stability issues with this, not in DS and not in any other program.

Pickle Renderer

stripe6499_9253833ae8 said:

I generally work with multiple models in a scene. Over the last few weeks, I've been experimenting a little. I run with a 12gb RTX3060, 64GB Ram and an i7 intel CPU. As long as my scenery isn't too complex or high poly, I can generally run renders with 4xG8 midels in about 10-20 mins. The less models I have, the faster it goes. The more detailed the scenery, the slower it goes. At 5xG8s in a scene, I'm usually falling over into CPU rendering. So, as the wise folks have already said, it depends on what you intend to do. The more models you want to use, or the more complex the scenery, then the chunkier the vid card memory you'll need.  If you can afford it, then an RTX40 series is ideal. 16gb RTX4060s will give a lot of flexibility. If you're rich, then get a 24gb RTX 4090. If your budget is more limited, then a 12gb RTX 3060 isn't a bad choice.   

Note that with something like scene optimiser, you can do double digit number of characters if you're prepared to forego all the 4k/8k maps, etc.  And if you have that many characters you're surely not doing a close-up portrait, so it's all good.

stripe6499_9253833ae8

Pickle Renderer said:

stripe6499_9253833ae8 said:

I generally work with multiple models in a scene. Over the last few weeks, I've been experimenting a little. I run with a 12gb RTX3060, 64GB Ram and an i7 intel CPU. As long as my scenery isn't too complex or high poly, I can generally run renders with 4xG8 midels in about 10-20 mins. The less models I have, the faster it goes. The more detailed the scenery, the slower it goes. At 5xG8s in a scene, I'm usually falling over into CPU rendering. So, as the wise folks have already said, it depends on what you intend to do. The more models you want to use, or the more complex the scenery, then the chunkier the vid card memory you'll need.  If you can afford it, then an RTX40 series is ideal. 16gb RTX4060s will give a lot of flexibility. If you're rich, then get a 24gb RTX 4090. If your budget is more limited, then a 12gb RTX 3060 isn't a bad choice.   

Note that with something like scene optimiser, you can do double digit number of characters if you're prepared to forego all the 4k/8k maps, etc.  And if you have that many characters you're surely not doing a close-up portrait, so it's all good.

 

Absolutely. My thoughts were just to give a benchmark with no tricks or techniques applied. For my private projects I just get lazy and let renders run, but I know there are lots of things I can do to speed them up.

billyben_0077a25354

I had run DAX on basically a gaming rig for a few years then decided to get serious during the early stages of  the pandemic and built a rig to run a RTX 3090 but was never able to get one (kept missing when EVGA had them in stock).  Ran mt GTX 1070 for a while and finally settled on a RTX 306012GB that worked well for most of my scenes but when Genesis 9 came out I decided to get REALLY serious.

Original Build:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ 4.3 Gh (mildly overclocked)
Gigabyte X570 Aorus PRO WIFI motherboard
EVGA 3060 12GB using Nvidia Studio Drivers
32 GB (2x16 GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR-4 3600 memory
Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD
2 Western Digital Blue WD20EZRZ 2TB HDDs in a mirrored array
EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 PSU
CoolerMaster H500P Mesh Wihte case
AOC 27G2G4 G-Sync Monitor @ 1080p
Windows 10 Professional 64

After the upgrade:

System Specs: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ 4.3 GH (mildly overclocked).
Gigabyte X570 Aorus PRO WIFI Motherboard
Gigabyte RTX 4090 AERO @ stock speed using Nvidia Studio Drivers
64 GB (2x32GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR-4 3600 memory
Samsung 870 EVO 4TB SSD
2 Western Digital Blue WD20EZRZ 2TB HDDs in a mirrored array
EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 PSU
CoolerMaster H500P Mesh Wihte case
AOC 27G2G4 G-Sync Monitor @ 1080p
Windows 10 Professional 64

My 4090 AERO cost almost as much as the rest of my puter put together but was worth it.  It is almost night & day in the difference a really good video card makes.  If you can swing it, get the fastest largest Nvidia card with the most cuda cores you can afford and run the studio drivers.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

well there is always cloud rendering services too

I don't use them but quite a few people do