PC Build Specs For RHINO 6

I would like to take a crack at building a really powerful workstation just for my own business and pure pleasure. I have done some research and I feel an INTEL i9 is the best CPU. I have picked out hard drives, power supplies etc. but the hardest piece has been the GPU and the monitor. I have been looking at NVIDIA Titan RTX, QUADRO 4000 and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Graphics. I would like to work with a 4K monitor perhaps in the 32" range and I might be convinced to try an Ultrawide Monitor but am not sure if they are a good idea. On top of that, I am concerned about RHINO 6 software and how it works with these components. I would appreciate any advice from those much wiser than me. Thanks in advance!

Hi Aaron,
I just got a silent (It was our top priority next to price) i7 8700 system with 32GB ram and a RTX 2070 and it works flawlessly.
An i9 9900 is only about 6% faster on single core speed (and I don’t do cpu rendering any more) and the 2080 TI is only up to 50% faster in benchmarks (but not always so much in real applications though)
(Keep in mind that this is like having 30 fps vs 45 fps, so it isn’t a massive deal in real life. Faster yes, for sure, but not really THAT much. My experience is that 2x and above is what really makes a difference and then mainly when playing first person shooters, so saving the dough now and upgrading to next gen graphics when available is why I went from 970 to 1070 to 2070)

So I would research how 2x 2070’s compare to one RTX Titan both in performance and noise before shelling out a lot for a single card.

Regarding monitors I use a 38" utrawide DELL and it is second to none! Next to it I have an extra 24" for different stuff, like grasshopper, python editor, mail, music etc. We work with design and landscape architecture so evaluating drawings in full size is awesome and the 38" can fit a full landscape A3 with all toolbars open or show the full width of an A1, so testing readability prior to printing is great. We considered 50" monitors but figured that our neck’s would be sore and panning the mouse would take for ever :wink:

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Dear Holo,

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my email, it was extremely helpful. I am eternally grateful to a community that is magnanimous with its sharing of information, it speaks well of our group. I want to followup with a little more information to see whether it would change any of your suggestions or not. I have just begun to use Grasshopper with my work. I find that it gets bogged down when I am manipulating a lot of polygons. Is that strictly a CPU single core speed issue? Next is that the machine I am building is a CAD workstation not to be dually used for gaming or rendering. I am a furniture designer and have done a bit of rendering and might do a little but it is not something that I do very often or am very good at. Lastly, are the monitors you are using 4K? Does it make sense to use 4K monitors for middle aged eyeballs like mine? Color fidelity is not a priority but clarity would certainly be. I have read that there are different settings for the GPU’s depending on whether you are gaming or modeling. Does that have to do with some computational trade-off? Lastly, since I have found a live one in you, I have been using Windows 7, is there any benefit to upgrading to Windows 10 as far as RHINO is concerned? Again, thanks for your patience in advance. Aaron

Supershort answer as I am in a hurry:
Monitor:

Gaming rig vs Workstation is basically:
Workstation: Built for 24/7 100% load and extreme precision (important for medical research etc) so underclocked for low temperature and slower drivers for accuracy.
Gamingrig: Built for speed, so cheaper and faster.
(But still rock solid as if gaming rigs crashed during games you wold have an army of trolling teenagers on your neck, wrecking your reputation :wink: )

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