Is this PC good for Animation + VFX?

escudero

Hello there,
I need a tip from you guys. This PC will be used mainly for VFX (UE4/Houdini) and Animation (Maya).

Spec:
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-6600K 3.50GHz 6MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1151 (Skylake)
FAN: Asetek 550LC 120mm Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ Copper Cold Plate - Extreme Cooling Performance
HDD: 120GB HyperX Savage SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 560MB/s Read and 360MB/s Write
HDD2: 500GB SATA-III 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD 
MEMORY: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/2400MHz Dual Channel Memory   (Kingston HyperX Fury)
ASRock H110M-ITX/AC Wi-Fi, GbLAN, w/ USB 3+ 4X SATA 6GB/s 1 Gen3 PCIe x16
600 Watts - Standard 80 Plus Certified Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 (Maxwell)

Price: $1080

Nico0307

Yes. I've heard the Asetek 550 LC 120mm Liquid CPU Cooling.. blabla fan really excels in animation!
Ok, no seriously. A good CPU will improve your render time. In that regard, I7 processors are better than I5, since they have virtual cores to handle, or 'prepare' more threads, thus being faster in repetitive tasks, such as rendering.
A good graphics card will improve your viewport fps, or if you should be into that, then also rendering. A high video memory is kind of advantageous to have bigger scenes at acceptable fps - A 4gigs 960 should do very fine
Ram affects how many textures or anything that needs to be 'stored' you can have in your scene, but I am not sure how directly that translates. 16 gigs should be plenty, unless you build cities maybe?
Overall your setup is more than sufficient, maybe if you have the money, you can go for an I7. 

Burpee

@Nico0307 is right, but you should definitely take an I7, and If you can go for 32g ram just go for it, at the end it'll save your time in a lot's of situation and you graphic card is fine !

hf !

oglu

i wouldnt go under 32gb of ram...
to work fast and efficient you have multiple tools open at the same time...
two mayas, a 3dpainter, a picture viewer, zbrush and photoshop...
and photoshop allone will eat 16gb of ram in no time...

musashidan

oglu said:

i wouldnt go under 32gb of ram...
the work fast and efficient you have multiple tools open at the same time...
two mayas, a 3dpainter, a picture viewer, zbrush and photoshop...
and photoshop allone will eat 16gb of ram in no time...

+1 definitely double up on ram. It's so cheap these days there's no excuse not to.

musashidan

oglu said:

i wouldnt go under 32gb of ram...
the work fast and efficient you have multiple tools open at the same time...
two mayas, a 3dpainter, a picture viewer, zbrush and photoshop...
and photoshop allone will eat 16gb of ram in no time...

+1 definitely double up on ram. It's so cheap these days there's no excuse not to.

PolyHertz

If you plan on using ZBrush 64bit, or Substance Designer, you'll want 32gb+ of ram. Some studios artists are using 64gb atp.
The VFX in UE4 can be rather GPU intensive, so I'd go with a GTX970 instead (which is much faster then the GTX960).

escudero

I see, thank you for the feedback. I`ve the money to upgrade from 16GB RAM to 32RAM or i5 to i7, what`s the best option?

PolyHertz

If you can only get one, I'd go with the i7. It's much easier to upgrade the RAM later on then the CPU.

acealmighty13

I've been told of this website pcartpicker.com.  I've never heard of it, but for all I know Polycount members know of it and use it often.  May be helpful.