Recommended hardware to build an ideal PC for V-Ray
This article will explore the key hardware components needed to build an ideal PC for V-Ray rendering.
What is a V-Ray render engine?
V-Ray is a powerful 3D rendering plugin that enables users to produce highly realistic visuals from their 3D models. It is widely utilized by artists and designers across various industries, such as architecture, product design, film, and visual effects.
Renowned for its flexibility and user-friendly controls, V-Ray employs advanced global illumination algorithms, including path tracing, photon mapping, and irradiance maps. Additionally, it is compatible with a wide range of popular 3D modeling software, such as 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, and Unreal.
V-Ray offers two primary rendering options: CPU-based rendering and GPU-based rendering. Since version 3.60, V-Ray has introduced hybrid rendering capabilities, enabling simultaneous rendering with both CPU and GPU engines. This feature maximizes the use of all available computing resources within a system, making rendering more efficient and powerful.
Minimum system requirements
If you tend to build PC for V-ray, first you need to know about its minimum system requirements. V-Ray is compatible with a wide range of 3D modeling software, and the specific minimum requirements for each can be found in Chaos documentation. However, the general minimum requirements are as follows:
- Processor: Intel 64, AMD64, or a compatible processor with AVX2 support
- RAM: 8 GB
- Operating System: Windows 10
- GPU Acceleration: NVIDIA GPUs
Selecting suitable hardware requires careful research. To assist with this, Chaos has developed the V-Ray Benchmark, which allows users to evaluate V-Ray’s performance across various hardware configurations without needing to test the hardware themselves. The benchmark results are divided into two main categories: CPU and GPU. It’s important to note that CPU and GPU results cannot be directly compared, as the scoring system is different for each engine.
Recommended hardware to build an ideal PC for V-Ray
V-Ray is designed and optimized to fully utilize the capabilities of all hardware components, including the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, network, and so on.
The specific type of rendering you choose with V-Ray—whether CPU-based, GPU-based, or hybrid rendering—will determine the hardware components that should be prioritized. In this discussion, we will focus on the most critical components to consider when building a PC tailored for V-Ray rendering.
1. CPU
Central Processing Unit (CPU) is an important part of the PC for V-Ray rendering. With V-ray CPU rendering, the CPU is undeniably the most critical hardware component, as a faster CPU directly results in faster rendering times. Even with GPU rendering, the CPU plays a vital role because V-Ray uses it for certain computations. Additionally, the GPU relies on the CPU to transfer pixel data before it can begin complex processing tasks.
In scenarios involving multi-GPU rendering, the CPU’s performance must not be significantly lower than that of the GPUs. If the CPU is too slow, some GPUs may remain idle while waiting for data from the CPU, creating a bottleneck. This inefficiency can cause multi-GPU rendering to make only marginal improvements over a single GPU. For this reason, faster CPUs significantly enhance V-Ray rendering performance.
V-Ray is compatible with both AMD and Intel processors. Chaos recommends opting for a more powerful single CPU over a dual-socket or multi-socket system. According to Puget Systems, a consulting firm specializing in workstation builds, AMD’s Threadripper PRO line currently stands out as the top choice for CPU rendering in workstations.
2. GPU
GPU rendering is gaining popularity as the graphic card become more affordable and its performance continues to improve. To build a PC for V-Ray GPU rendering, it should be known that the faster the graphics card, the quicker the rendering process.
Even when rendering is performed on the V-Ray CPU mode, GPUs can still play a role by accelerating tasks such as denoising and lens effects.
Currently, V-Ray GPU rendering is supported exclusively on NVIDIA graphics cards. This is because AMD ceased investing in OpenCL for rendering, making its graphics cards incompatible with V-Ray rendering. However, AMD GPUs can still be used for denoising and lens effects.
To utilize GPU rendering with V-Ray, NVIDIA GPUs must support CUDA and belong to the Maxwell generation or later (i.e., GeForce 900 series or newer). V-Ray also supports stacking multiple GPUs within a single machine to boost performance. Based on the V-Ray Benchmark, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 is currently the leading choice for GPU rendering performance.
3. Memory
V-Ray or any render engine needs sufficient memory to store the required data when rendering a scene, particularly a large one with millions of polygons and high-resolution textures. Additionally, more memory is demanded to create higher-resolution rendered images. V-Ray CPU utilizes RAM for memory needs, while V-Ray GPU relies on both RAM and VRAM. That’s why memory capacity needs to be taken into consideration when building a PC for V-Ray.
⚙️ RAM
CPU Memory (RAM) is the memory that works with the processor and is used by the V-Ray CPU rendering engine. RAM is easily scalable since it is relatively affordable, and adding more memory modules to the system can increase the total memory available for the CPU.
While the system’s virtual memory (Page File) can help prevent crashes caused by running out of memory, it significantly slows down rendering performance. Therefore, Page File is not recommended in rendering.
The exact RAM requirements depend on the complexity of your projects. For users rendering with V-Ray GPU, it is recommended to have twice the amount of RAM as VRAM for optimal performance.
⚙️ VRAM
The GPU’s memory (VRAM) is a critical factor in V-Ray GPU rendering. Large projects or highly detailed scenes require multi-GPU setups and more VRAM. However, VRAM cannot be pooled or combined; for example, two GPUs with 16GB of VRAM each do not result in 32GB of usable VRAM. Besides, V-Ray GPU replicates the scene on every GPU, limiting memory to the smallest available VRAM among all GPUs. For instance, if one GPU has 4GB of VRAM and another has 8GB, V-Ray will use only 4GB on each GPU. Thus, the optimal choice for multi-GPU rendering is to use GPUs with the same amount of VRAM.
NVLink can be used to scale VRAM across two GPUs, enabling them to share memory. However, iRender users have reported that NVLink does not significantly enhance rendering times. For further details, you can refer to this article.
4. Hard Drives
The primary role of a hard drive is to store software programs, 3D model files, textures, rendered images, and other essential data. When selecting a hard drive to build PC for V-Ray, it’s important to consider not only its storage capacity but also its read and write speeds. A hard drive with ample storage and high-speed performance ensures a smooth workflow, allowing you to store and access large files quickly and efficiently.
The two most common types of hard drives are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid State Drives (SSDs). SSDs are highly recommended due to their significantly faster speeds and greater energy efficiency compared to traditional HDDs.
5. Operating System
V-Ray is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms. However, a significant drawback of using Mac is the lack of official support for GPU rendering. Currently, V-Ray GPU rendering is only supported on MacOS when operating in CUDA x86 mode. For those relying on GPU rendering, Windows or Linux are more suitable choices.
For freelance artists and medium-sized companies, the cost of building high-performance PC for V-Ray rendering can be prohibitive. In such cases, cloud services and render farms offer excellent alternatives, enabling high production capacity without the need to invest in extensive infrastructure.
Boost the V-Ray rendering performance with iRender’s servers
iRender provides high configurations of machines with upmarket specifications like AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 3955WX @ 3.9 – 4.2GHz or AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, RAM 256GB, Storage NVMe SSD 2TB. Most importantly, we always update to the latest GPU technology.
Why can iRender be a great render farm for you?
In addition to high-configuration servers, iRender provides many other utilities to provide the best user experience.
- Dedicated server for individuals: You have full control and access to the server you rent. The working environment (installed apps, files) will be stored for the next use.
- Easy and free file transfer between your computer and iRender’s server: The transferring task can be done via iRender GPU application for Windows and the iRender Drive application for MacOS.
- 24/7 assistance: iRender’s attentive agents are always ready to support all your queries.
- All software compatibility: iRender’s PCs are built to meet the configuration needs of all 3D software and rendering tools at a variety of cost levels for users to choose from.
Let’s see how fast V-Ray renders on our servers!
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If you have any questions, please get in touch with me through email d[email protected] or our 24/7 support team for a quick response.
Thank you for reading & Happy Rendering!
Source: Chaos, Puget Systems, Bizon, Prosoft, TechTarget, goodbye kansas
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