Hey,

We currently use Houdini, but are being a bit hampered by simulation times, so I was wondering what machine set-up would get us the best bang for our buck.

Would it be best to get a machine with a very fast processor and lots of RAM, or is it more about the Graphics Card setup?

Would Houdini benefit from 2 Graphics cards, eg: 2 GTX 1080s ? or one Titan or…

These are the current specs we're looking at purchasing:

Specs:
HP Z440
E5-1650 v4
64GB RAM
512GB M.2 PCIE SSD
2 x GTX1080
850W PSU

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Cheers

I vote for more processors and a fast Ghz CPU speed. Some Houdini processes are still single threaded. You may notice as you get used to more cores. All of a sudden your workflow is broken. You get bored waiting and check the CPU monitor to see that Houdini is only using a single core. At these times it is nice to have a fast CPU, 4Ghz or better.

Multiple GPUs are mainly needed for third party GPU rendering with engines such as Reshift or Octane, Houdini's Mantra does not need more than one video card.

Take a look at this website for building custom VFX machines, no I have not used them but the product looks great.

https://www.mediaworkstations.net/product/i-x2/ [mediaworkstations.net]

Very interesting! Thank you so much for the reply, Enivob.

Mantra does not use the Videocard at all (unfortunately)
also the viewport only uses 1 GPU,
I'd advise 1 GPU thats reasonably powerful like a GTX1070/1080
the premium for the Titan doesn't really pay off.

I'd try to go for 6-8 cores if you can afford it (seems Ryzen is going to make that cheaper real soon)
high GHZ is indeed best, lots of RAM is good, and a fast SSD helps a lot
(potentially a dedicated one for cache scrubbign if you do that kinda thing)

freaq
Mantra does not use the Videocard at all (unfortunately)
also the viewport only uses 1 GPU,
I'd advise 1 GPU thats reasonably powerful like a GTX1070/1080
the premium for the Titan doesn't really pay off.

I'd try to go for 6-8 cores if you can afford it (seems Ryzen is going to make that cheaper real soon)
high GHZ is indeed best, lots of RAM is good, and a fast SSD helps a lot
(potentially a dedicated one for cache scrubbign if you do that kinda thing)

Cool, thanks

Lots of RAM. I started with 32gig on my home machine and couldn't run any reasonably detailed sims until I upgraded to 64, so I'd say that's the minimum on a windows box.

Thank you moogtastic, I have been struggling with sim detail on a 32GB machine and wondered if that was my problem. I guess a machine upgrade is in my future.

I have

i5 7th Gen ,
1050ti graphic card
8gb ram
And an 240gb add
Is there anything I need to upgrade to get some smoother rendering and simulation

I'm thinking about some ram upgrade of 8gb
Any more suggestions …

Only 8GB ram? that's way too low. And your first step for improvement imho is more ram.

I only have 16 GB and can barely just ‘learn’ how to use Houdini(having some kind of results to view for feedback).

For a new box myself I would prefer to go 128GB but 64GB min (if I want to start doing anything that I would be happy with).