Everything related to the integration for SketchUp.
By Ed Folk
#401023
Hello All,

I have been using MacOS with Skethcup and Maxwell for a few years. However, I am thinking of jumping over to a PC for rendering purposes. I am wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a decent machine that cna handle both the rendering and SKU simultaneously but not break the bank in terms of cost. Thanks
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By CDRDA
#401025
I have just recently built a new system to replace my previous 10 year old dual xeon one. I went for a watercooled (AIO) Ryzen 5950, 64GB RAM and a decent, but good value Asus MB based on the B550 chipset... SSD, I purchased an OEM Samsung 980 2TB drive, non-branded which was 100Euros cheaper than the retail version (no nice looking heat sink, but then the MB has it's own). I stuck it all in a Lian-Li O11D case, with CPU watercooling. Spent just over 2000 Euros. I already have an RTX 2080Ti fortunately, so didn't have to worry about the crazy prices for GPUs atm. The Ryzen CPU is great for overclocking too, to squeeze out extra performance from Maxwell.

Maxwell rendering speed is at least 3 times quicker than my old system, sometimes 4 times, depending on the scene. I still use the MR cloud for most final rendering. but that is only because I don't run renders for more than a couple of hours anymore. SketchUp is still SketchUP and runs about the same as it did before with really heavy scenes, but at least everything boots and opens faster. Other software like UE4 is much better performance wise, especially with RTX features on.

My original intention was to get a Threadripper system and I will probably do so in a couple of years now... by then DDR5, PCI-e 5 etc should all be mainstream. Unfortunately I couldn't wait due to things starting to go wrong with my previous system. If you can afford TR, then that will be better performance wise, but then probably better to wait for the next gen AMD chips if you can. Also it is obviously more expensive unless you buy previous gen TR...

Good luck!
By Ed Folk
#401043
Thanks for the advice. A little more technical than I usually dive into, but your explanation was pretty clear. I will take your advice to heart and thankjs again for the suggestions.
By Ed Folk
#401045
Hello Marc,

Thanks for the suggestion. I totally forgot about checking the benchwell.

Just out of curiosity, do you use a GPU? I am not really a technical person. If so, do you use the Nvidia 2080? Just trying to get a sense of what people are using before I dive into this new purchase. I don't want to break the bank on this but also bon't want to waste my money.

In my case, I just make models in SKU and let Maxwell do the rest. However, recently I have been involved in some pretty large projects that require more processing power etc. For example I ma doing a 2700sm building and need to be able to render faster - even run more than one render at a time. My MacBook pro is nice but not up to the task as you can imagine.

Anyway, thanks again for pointing me in the direction of the benchwell. I will study it a little more closely before making my decision.
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By Mark Bell
#401055
Hi Ed,

I missed this post so just getting back to you. All our machines are pretty old at present (greater than 7 years) so they're not really configured for GPU and it's getting time to upgrade. Producing renders isn't our core business. The workstation at my desk is noted below as a guide, but as I said, getting quite long in the tooth so I wouldn't suggest using that as a guide to go buy one:
Lenovo ThinkStation P700 / Intel Xeon CPU E5-2640 v3 @ 2.60GHz, 2601 Mhz 8 cores x 2 off / 96GB RAM / NVidia Quadro K4200
Renders are done with CPU and the new denoiser in 5.2 which has made a big difference in reducing the length of render times. Interior renders take longer than exterior ones and the size of the render (X x Y) also has an impact on render time so play around with something that is presentable but not too big and the time will reduce. Hope this helps.

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