PC Build for Rhino 8

Rhino Windows Hardware
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My 12 year old HP Z1 G1 AIO workstation is graphics restricted so time for an overdue upgrade. Its histoery with Rhino was:
RHINO 5 - worked great.
RHINO 6 - generally fine, but some features dropped out.
RHINO 7 - never installed, GPU limited.
RHINO 8 - time for a system upgrade.

I am in Australia with a budget of $3-4,000 and am looking for both bang for the buck and longevity: possible system:

  • CPU - i9-13900KF
  • GPU – nVidia RTX 3060
  • Motherboard – Gigabyte H610M
  • Power supply – Gigabyte 650W
  • RAM – DDR4 – 32 or 64 Gb
  • Storage – Crucial 1 Tb NVMe
  • Monitors – Pair of Samsung 4K 32" LCDS4K

Cost $3,500. Any comments or recommendations? Please keep it simple; I am a user, not a geek.

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That looks like a solid system. You’ll be happy with that rtx card.

I always reply to machine specs with this bit of wisdom from the auto racing world.

“Speed costs money, how fast you wanna go?”

For what you want to spend this looks like a very decent build…

If you do a lot of rendering buy a card with more cuda cores, if you do big models, buy more Ram.

That i9 will do just fine.

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You can save some money by getting an 13th gen i7 instead of i9 , also I would recommend to have a larger power supply just in case you want to upgrade your GPU down the line .

Get a 64gb ram , you will need in the most unexpected times.

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Thank you gentlemen.

I do not game so that is not a consideration, and so far have not done a lot of rendering because my old machine was constipated.

Another suggestion that I have had is that DDR4 is outdated and I should install DDR5 RAM and that a RTX 4060 video card would be better albeit $100 more expensive.

I like the race car analogy. What I want is, within the Rhino context, is the fastest, most robust system achievable within my budget. Whatever happens, the PC will be over-specified for everything else that I do.

The system that I am proposing is based on a machine a friend built with available components early in covid lockdown; it works well and we just uprated the CPU and GPU. Neither of us are geeks.

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One point that is worth considering is the platform.

I have a 13700K, and it is a fantastic CPU. Both Intel and AMD are making very good CPUs at the moment.

However, the Intel LGA1700 platform is dead, with the next platform not due until Arrow Lake.

If you are going for a DDR5 board, then I would also consider an AMD AM5 platform, as the upgrade paths are a much better prospect. On LGA1700, you can only upgrade to the 14900K, which is absolutely not worth the money (and isn’t even really a generation).

Regardless, for both top end CPUs (Intel i9-13900K[F] & AMD 7950X), you may find that the RTX 3060 will be the bottleneck in the build. While the current 40-Series isn’t very good value, they are worth considering for a new build.

If you only do static renders, it probably won’t matter, but it may become more obvious for modern real-time rendering (still not sure though).

The dilemma here is clear, that you get 12 GB VRAM with the RTX 3060, and both the RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti have poor VRAM quantity (8 GB). Unfortunately, the value prospect of the 4060Ti 16 GB is absolutely awful.

Gigabyte has a not-great history in the last few years around reliability of their PSUs (but you are going back over a year or two). Their motherboards seem okay.

It’s not a definitive guide, but the PSU Tier List has generally been a good resource:

I’d think a Tier B is probably a useful set for this build. Again, if you have a PCIe 5.0-capable motherboard with AMD upgradability options, you can always go for greater capacity. With Intel, If you want to upgrade from your RTX 3060, a 13900K will happily take close to 300 W at the power rails (I know you aren’t gaming, but you may wish to use a hybrid CPU/GPU renderer, I don’t know); so it is worth considering how capable your PSU is, especially with respect to its efficiency.

I assume you have looked at the Australian:

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/

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Sorry for my tardy response but I have been offline. My old PC crashed - “motherboard failure, not economic to repair” - well, it was 12 years old!

RAM
Agree, will go with 64 gB.

CPU
I have looked at the folllowing options:

CPU Single Thread Passmark Price
Performance CPU Mark $ Aus US$
Intel i9-14900K 4,790 61,443 915 602
Intel i9-14900KF 4,768 60,754 889 585
Intel i9-13900K 4,646 59,520 913 601
Intel i9-13900KF 4,644 58,809 550 362
Intel i7-14700KF 4,512 53,480 625 411
Intel i7-14700K 4,464 53,430 655 431
Intel i7-13700KF 4,370 46,459 535 352
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 4,301 63,160 899 591
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4,289 52,084 649 427
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4,231 36,146 549 361

The local computer shop has a “run out” price on i9-13900KF CPU’s at present and that price looks like the sweet spot. All prices are in Australian dollars (uncluding taxes) and converted to US$ at current exchange rate.

GPU

I actively looked at the following cards, only, and the RTX 3060 seemed the sweet spot in terms of performance and price. I did not know enough to consider other cards.

GPU Android Price
Benchmark $ Aus US$
Geforce RTX 3060 17,090 500 329
Geforce RTX 4060 19,573 600 395
Quadro RTX A2000 13,777 800 526

Panic

Then my old PC crashed, was not economical to repair, and Christmas holiday shut down looming. For better or worse, I placed my order for the above system and it was delivered next day. Should get it running in the next day or so.

Thank You

I would like to thank everyone for the advice proferred.

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I can sympathise with the original poster. My old Win7 box (still runs fine) I built in 2010 was simply eclipsed by the Windows requirement for UEFI BIOS and the TPM module for Win 10 and Win 11. Otherwise a graphics card upgrade could have kept going fine. Had both 32 and 64 bit flavours of 7 running on different drives with 1Gb Nvidia Geforce GTX460. Machine could take 32Gb Ram ddr3 and had quad core Phenom processor.

I stuck with Rhino 5 on this, worked fine. Skipped 6 and upgraded to 7 which could not be installed though I could have put a 980ti card in. Now have 8 which I needed this last week as it happens for the project to construction plane including blocks command!. Very messy so called 2D DXF file which had over 930 unused layers and customer needed a clean file to put in Qcad!. It was also a very 3D file on multiple planes with quite a few verticals.

However I bit the bullet and went with a high end (and non RGB) build using the AMD 7950x AM5 route with 64Gb Ram. I wouold recommend a more powerful PSU than you have outlined above probably 1000w. I have a BeQuiet 1200w ATX PSU ATX3 fully modular one. DDR5 Ram has come down in price and even the NvME drives were not too bad. Anyway built last August/September. Went with RTX4090 Gigabyte Windforce V2 - note the PSU high power connector position on this card. Asus Pro Art m/board, 27 inch Dell 1440 monitor and Fractal meshify C case. Very black!

The Intel’s are good just run hotter (great if notched down a tad) and they have better Ram support ie 128 and 192 Gb max. Rhino using Blender as default render with Cycles meant that the AMD option should be as quick with less heat and power. I have been using the Studio RTX drivers which have given interesting results in terms of heat and time but the last driver from end of Jan seems pretty good.

There is also some interesting stuff on the CGI Director forum on melting 4090 connectors for anyone interested.
Good luck with your new machine Graemec

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Hello! Does it really cost 3500$? For me it looks like to fall in the 2000$ - 2500$ range or even lower.

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this is good advice

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