Hey guys the lurker here.
Im planing to invest some bucks in a machine specially for houdini. Could anyone give me some hints for what I must look for, based on your experience with the app and not the min/max sys req. Some details 4 example GPUs brands and such.

Thx

Sure - I have just built a workstation for Houdini fluid sims

x2 duel xeons 2.4 Ghz 6 cores
Supermicro mother board
48 gigs of ram
Quadro 4000 graphics card
2 x zero raptor drives in raid zero

Houdini runs perfectly

Rob

I would recommend at least 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia card with at least 1GB of VRAM (2+ for OpenCL sims preferred) and a higher-end quad core CPU.

My Setup…

Intel i7 980x 6 core (12 threads)
16 gb Corsair Ram
ASUS Rampage Extreme II Motherboard
Nvidia GeForce 470 (1GB memory)
2x Western Digital 1TB drives.
1x Western Digital 1TB External HDD

Houdini runs perfectly well for me.

Yep i was also thinking about an i7 6 core
16 GB ram Nvidia Quadro 4000

Thank you all for your feedback this helped me decide.
Cheers

One thing I have heard (haven't experienced this myself) is that an SSD (solid state drive) can greatly speed up your fluid sims due to constantly reading/writing huge amounts of data. This could conceivably make more of a difference than faster CPU's since hard drives can be such a choking point, but I am not sure at this point.

I plan to make a new PC over Christmas and am going to put my Operating system on the SSD as well as use it for all of my Houdini caching/etc. as well as for large models/textures for quick access during renders. I plan to go for the Core i7 2600K CPU (rather than the expensive 6 core 980X) because in many tests it outperforms the 6 core Core i7's at a MUCH lower price and it overclocks easily which allows it to not lose out too much when it comes to multithreaded things like rendering and fluid sims. The 980X (or maybe 990X now) is still your best bet for fluid sims, though- but you can save a lot of money and not lose too much performance by going to an overclocked 2600K.

It would be interesting for someone to run some tests on non-SSD vs. SSD fluid sims and large renders. (Maybe I will once I build my machine…)

-Craig

The 980X (or maybe 990X now) is still your best bet for fluid sims, though

Intel released the i7 3960X and 3930K a few weeks ago, which is the successor to the i7 990/980/970, based on the same architecture as the i7 2000 series. They're both 6-core CPUs with quad memory channels, at 3.3GHz-3.9GHz turbo/15MB cache ($990), and 3.2GHz-3.8Ghz/12MB cache ($583), respectively.

The extra two cores and memory channels will cost you roughly double for the 3930+X79 8-DIMM motherboard, compared to a i7 2600 system. It's priced similarly to the older i7 900 series. The 3900 series also doesn't come packaged with a CPU heatsink, so you need to spend an additional $40 for that.

The crazy part of those CPUs is that they're actually trimmed down - the upcoming Xeons based on that die will have the full 8 cores and 20MB of cache enabled.

craiglhoffman
One thing I have heard (haven't experienced this myself) is that an SSD (solid state drive) can greatly speed up your fluid sims due to constantly reading/writing huge amounts of data. This could conceivably make more of a difference than faster CPU's since hard drives can be such a choking point, but I am not sure at this point.
-Craig

From what I have heard the Solid State Drives make a huge difference, the only bad is you cant recover or fix anything on them once its damaged and you must replace it. If theyr gone theyr gone. So in other words you can work but they are not suitable for storage. I was thinking of a SDD hdd for system and apps and some sata for storage.
I dont know if it would really speed up houdinis fluid sims but playing 20 full HD videos real-time simultaneously seams like a pretty fair transfer rate. Im sure some of the chaps around here have some experience with that.

I am going for the “budget” setup in January with a i7-2600K and 16GB ram + a GTX 560TI 2GB.

Seems to be the best bang for the buck combination at the moment. Especially since the 2600K easily overclocks.

We have several 2600K boxes running (some since about a year), they are doing great for what little money they had cost.

Right now Non-ECC-8GB-Dimms are hitting the market in large numbers, so you can run these with 32gb ram (which I would recommend, since the modules are cheap).

Martin could you link some cheap 8GB sticks? In Sweden the once i can find are still almost 4x the price of 4GB.

Erik,

I guess it depends on what you need. I'm looking at 250 Euro (including german VAT) for a 32gb-Kit (4x 8GB) DDR3-1333 and 1600 1.5V (by Corsair, for example), roughly double for DDR3-1866 and overclocker-voltages (which I don't use).

I will send you a link via PM.

My Setup…
Intel E5645x2
Intel S5520SC
3x8GB DDR3
GTX570 or Quadro 4000
…

RAM question: Where does an extra 2x8gb comes in (simulation, interface interactivity)? I'm using a 2600k@4.5ghz. I may also need to upgrade to windows pro so insights would really help. Thank you!

icerust
RAM question: Where does an extra 2x8gb comes in (simulation, interface interactivity)? I'm using a 2600k@4.5ghz. I may also need to upgrade to windows pro so insights would really help. Thank you!

With more RAM you can simulate and render higher resolution grids for volume simulations and higher amounts of particles for example.

While we are so happily posting into old threads..

We upgraded to 3930K recently, and I'm looking at a 1.4/1.5 times speed increase over the 2600K, depending on the task.

These things are cheap and happily beasting away..

3930K is 1.65 times more expensive where I am at and it also leads to more expensive motherboard.

So if its pure performance/price the 2600K is still better.But if you got the extra cash the 3930K is of course better.

This must always be offset against the number of licenses (which we are painfully thin on).

Erik_JE
With more RAM you can simulate and render higher resolution grids for volume simulations and higher amounts of particles for example.

Great. Like I said before, I'm using 2600k at 4.5ghz with 2x8gb sticks. My concern is the cpu would bottleneck the added 2x8gb. So, does it make any sense to run 4x8gb with 2600k@4.5ghz for rendering out simulations? Thanks.

And, I googled the topic and this thread came up that's why I decided to hijack it :?