Hello guys,

my friend is learning in Houdini and he is selling his old rig (i7-4790K, GTX 770, 24 GB RAM) and planning on building a new one. He will be focusing on sims, not 3D modeling or stuff like that, at least that is what he told me. Should we focus on large core/thread counts (we are thinking about AMD Threadripper/Ryzen), or faster clock speed (Intel i7 or maybe even Ryzen) or actually on the GPU? Budget will be around €2200. Maybe you can show me your rigs

If you want to stay within Houdini and Render with Mantra CPU solution would be best in my opinion because you can use the CPU for rendering and simulations. Also as far as I know Houdini only uses one GPU with open CL so you would need one beastly GPU but then you would get no rendering bonus unless you render 3rd party.

Thanks for the reply! We were thinking about Threadripper and GTX 1080. I think that would be pretty good. He just has to sell the old rig.

Don't discount a dual Xeon build with used CPUs. I don't trust most parts used but a Xeon ripped from a server build should be very reliable. There is a pair of used Xeon CPUs, each are twelve core @ 3.46Ghz, for $300 for the pair. I believe it's two threads per core, as well … Twenty four cores is nothing to scoff at. Building out a dual Xeon setup may cost more in other areas though, I know some Xeons demand FB RAM and specific motherboards.

If you want to go Threadripper it will also be great. I have a Ryzen 1700 build overclocked to 4 Ghz and it is very suitable for my needs.

Unless you get Redshift your GPU will be for OpenCL and viewport.

It's worth keeping an eye out for old Mac Pros, even if you intend to run Windows on them. A dual CPU (ie 8 or 12 core) Early 2009 4,1 machine can be had for around £4-500. They can be flashed up to 5,1 and upgraded to dual 6-core 3.46GHz Xeon CPUs for around £200, and you can stuff tons of memory in them. I've two of them here, and they cook and render stuff pretty damn swiftly.

After years of using a different 3D package, I've built up a nice little render farm: lots of average-speed machines. Now I'm starting to play with Houdini I find I need a single machine with as much grunt as possible as I can only afford one license for now… eech

Definitely keeping my eye on those AMD Threadrippery thingies though. If someone would just make a motherboard that'd take 6 of them that'd be spectacular.

As an aside, I've noticed you can get old rackmount servers with dual Xeons pretty cheaply from eBay (like, £200 for a dual 6-core 3GHz box)… I wonder whether there's any mileage in using one them for rendering. Lack of GPU support may be an issue though