I know my current macbook pro has the minimum requirements to run houdini but I am thinking of building a desktop (PC or iMAC).

In order to have the best chance of no issues/slow downs, what would you recommend as the specs for my future computer. Also do you guys recommend MAC OSX or PC?

Thanks!

Ugh…I foresee that this thread is going to turn ugly very quickly.


As a Mac user, but honestly this applies across the board – get yourself the fastest machine you can afford with the most RAM. That is basically it!

Can you afford a Mac Pro with a 16 core Xeon or higher? Go for it! An iMac with 10-cores? Sure! A MBP with an 8-cores? Houdini will be ok in that system too.

In all cases I would recommend a minimum of 32Gb of RAM, but more is better especially for simulations. 64Gb or even 128Gb should cover most case scenarios.

Wanna go Windows? The same rules apply. More cores and more RAM = good Houdini performance. What it doesn't necessarily mean is that Houdini runs faster or has some magic mojo in Windows that it doesn't in OSX because in my many tests I have yet to run into any discernible performance differences between the two environments given that the system is identical in both.

If you're particularly daring, and you do want a performance edge even on the same exact hardware – then perhaps Linux is for you since I hear that Houdini does indeed exhibit some faster performance in Linux. However just as in OSX and Windows, the same hardware rules apply – more cores and more RAM = happy Houdini!