New pc build advice

Rhino Windows Hardware
1

Hi everyone,

I’m putting together a new PC and would really appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

The system will mainly be used for day-to-day work in Rhino, with frequent rendering in V-Ray. I also regularly use Cubase for music production, so low latency, overall stability, and quiet operation (when possible) are important to me. Since I use an external audio interface, onboard motherboard audio isn’t a priority.

Up until now, I’ve mostly relied on CPU rendering (with an i7-8700K), as GPU rendering wasn’t very stable for me — I often experienced crashes with my old GTX 1080 (8GB), or I’d simply run out of VRAM. With this new setup, I’m hoping to finally make reliable use of both CPU and GPU rendering.

Thanks in advance!

Motherboard – Gigabyte X870E AORUS ELITE WIFI7, ATX

CPU – AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (16 cores / 32 threads, AM5, with Radeon Graphics)

CPU Cooler – be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 (AMD AM4 compatible)

RAM – G.Skill Ripjaws S5 DDR5, 64 GB (2×32 GB), 6000 MHz, unbuffered

GPU – Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 Ti OC Edition, 16 GB GDDR7

SSD – WD 1TB BLACK SN850X M.2 NVMe x4 Gen4

Power Supply – Corsair RM1000x, 1000 W, 24-pin ATX

Case – Fractal Design Meshify 3 Black TG Light Tint

2

Nice setup whats the price on something like this?

3

In Croatia its around 2700 euro

4

I use a 5950X for Rhino and Cubase 14. 128 GB memory, RTX 3070. Im not using V-Ray though (not very much rendering at all, so I have no advice on that bit).

All those cores works like a dream for Cubase with many (many) orchestral midi tracks & plugins. Steinberg UR44C Audio interface.

Also using a 4TB external SSD Drive (Samsung T7) for sound libraries. Almost full…

I’m very happy with my machine and your setup should be way better.

//Rolf

5

Hello Dubolik,

Like Rolf I also use an external SSD. I am sure that I used the T7 in the past, but not at the moment. Irrespective, via an USB connection I just opened a 177 MB Rhino file from this external SSD drive and while it might have opened a bit slower than from an internal SSD, it was just a bit. I also have Thunderbolt connections and likewise functioning with an external SSD.

Rolf’s mention of an external SSD prompted me to indicate, that for a way, to have more storage space, an external SSD works for me. I imagine that your new machine will have an up to date USB connection protocol. Having a Thunderbolt connection might be a consideration too.

Thank you,

Andy

6

That motherboard has FOUR internal M.2 slots, not much reason to have an external SSD.

A 1TB SSD is a bit small, that’s like 3 modern AAA video game installs.

7

Assuming the use of one computer in one place and that a “cloud” storage solution is a good fit and that you are not a photographer. I do feel, that as you, a larger internal SSD is beneficial perhaps particularly for the boot drive i.e. for one, seems programs use the boot drive as the default to install on and then “look their” for updates for said program. And yes, seems definitely good to have other slots available for expansion of storage space. Great point. Even so, I am pat that having the external SSD “arrow” in your quiver is a positive in conjunction with connections that can carry the data expeditiously.

8

My motherboard is ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI. 128GB RAM for an AMD Ryzen 7900X (12 core, 24 thread). For GPUs I have RTX A6000 and RTX 6000 Ada gen. Storage 5 NVMe devices in total 18TB, three devices are on the motherboard in M.2 slots, two are attached via USB in cases that have M.2 slots.

The main OS is Linux (Kubuntu 25.04 with 6.14 kernel), which has access to RTX 6000 Ada gen, the RTX A6000 I pass through to a Windows 11 virtual machine (QEMU/KVM). When the Windows 11 is running it gets 48GB and 12 logical cores.

I’m able to run this all nice and smoothly. I’ve posted short screencaptures on my youtube channel, also linked in the long running linux topic.

9

Is it that bad?

10

How long would something like this last for you?

Absolute beast setup!

11

The hardware I’ve had already for a good two years. I transformed it to Linux-first earlier this year.

I hope to use this machine for at least 8 more years if not longer.

12

I mean my “C” drive is a recently upgraded 4TB drive that’s presently running over 1TB, project storage is is on 3 2TB drives in software RAID, and I have a NAS for backups with enough spinning rust space to last the rest of my life unless I start making videos.

13

In my case I have 3.5+ TB of Sound Libraries (used with Cubase) on an external SSD (T7) which I can move around (from a stationary to a laptop computer), which I can move around and use together with different MIDI keyboard setups.

This means one license per library on multiple workstations. Some of the sound libraries are $500+ each, so it makes sense to have some Terabyte-chunks of data quickly movable for different setups. Sound Libraries need to have very high speed read access.

//Rolf