The purpose of this page is to offer general guidelines to anyone who’s looking for additional information on buying or building a computer with the specific need of rendering 3D graphics. Comments are welcome as well as feedback an insight from others who have relevant information to offer.

Benefits/Detractors Comparison
Buying a system off-the-shelf gives you warranty on the entire system. This can be a necessity in an office or large studio environment. If the system breaks the only technical involvement you may want is to call an 800 number and ship it back to the manufacturer. Building a custom system doesn’t give you this option. You are your own tech support.

Buying will usually have a higher price tag than building with the same specs. This is like going out to eat versus eating at home. There’s a cost to having someone cook for you.

Buying will typically have noname brand components or components that are not considered great quality. This is where manufacturers make their money. Building allows you to know exactly what you are putting in your system. Again like eating out; you don’t know if the cook used not so fresh ingredients, but you know if you used all organic ingredients.

Overall cost is a factor to consider. You can potentially save hundreds of dollars by building, but you should expect to spend a couple of hours in assembly, formatting hard drive(s), and installing the OS.

Where to Start
This can be a confusing place. Budget is always a good thing to think about during this entire process. My initial 3D system budget was $600, then it went to $800, then finally I spent $1,000. My budget increased because as I was researching components I learned that for what I wanted to do the $600 system wasn’t going to satisfy my expectations and needs.

Next I like to start with the CPU because it drives many of your later decisions. Always keep in mind that all of the components of your system work together. Changing one can impact the entire system, either minimally or drastically.

Let’s talk brands: AMD or Intel? That I will leave to you. I personally have an AMD system, but this was a cost decision only. I’m neither an AMD or Intel fanboy. I will say that (currently) Intel is leading in speed and innovation, and in many ways cost. Going with AMD can lower your overall budget, depending on what you do.

One Lump or Two?
Now that you’ve decided on a CPU, will you have one, two, or more? Adding additional CPUs will greatly improve render times, and greatly increase your budget. Let’s say your decide on dual CPU system using  Intel Xeon ($500). Not only will you have to add an additional $500 for another CPU, but you will add another couple of hundred dollars for a dual-CPU motherboard, in addition to having to get fully buffered RAM, and have to get a case that supports an Extended ATX (E-ATX) motherboard. See how the CPU decision trickles down?

Motherboards
There are so many decisions that can be made on motherboards, which is why I tend to let budget determine this. I will give a list of things to consider specifically for 3D rendering:

• Number of RAM slots
• Number of SATA ports
• Frontside Bus Speed
• Socket type (if building)
• Future expandability (if building)

These are not the only things to consider in a motherboard, these are just a few key things to look for when specing a rig for 3D rendering.

Operating System: 32-Bit vs. 64-Bit
If you are doing 3D rendering, there’s a good chance you want to go with a 64-bit OS. The main reason is a 64-bit OS can address more RAM. With a 32-bit OS you’ll be limited to about 3GB (even if you have 4GB or more installed). Depending on the complexity of your 3D scenes you may want a lot of RAM.

Memory
I would start out with 4GB and go up from there. Again, budget may determine how much you get. Also, triple-channel memory has now been introduced so you might be working in increments of 3 sticks.

Speed is also a factor to look at when purchasing RAM. The CPU and motherboard will take care of many of these decisions for you. Generally speaking, having faster RAM does not necessarily help your computer render faster. Speaking in terms of DDR vs. DDR2, or DDR2 vs. DDR3 RAM though, that will probably make a difference, but probably not as much as you may think.

Expanding with the Future
Upgrading your system in the future can impact all of your decisions. Many times a system will get upgraded with an entirely new system. If this is your upgrade plan then you may want to buy instead of build. If you build and do plan on upgrading your system you will be limited to how long you can keep your motherboard, for example, before newer processors won’t work with it and then you’ll need a new CPU and motherboard.

These are just some things to consider and I’ll add to this as I can.