New year, new computer!

After the release of AMD Ryzen Threadripper computer processors the following years, that look really promising on both price and power, I jumped on the wagon and upgraded my system.

My criteria: I wanted it to be as up to date as possible (many programs ended their Windows 7 support). Have the best graphic card that worked great with Arnold renderer GPU version (CUDA cores). Storage that reading and wright really really fast. And a case that can run as silent as possible.

Specs:

AMD Ryzen ThreadRipper 3970X - 3.7 GHz - 32-cores - 64 threads (CPU)
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler
be quiet! Silent Base 601 - Black - Cabinet (no glass, no RGB “fanciness”, just a black box)
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64bit
GIGABYTE TRX40 AORUS PRO WIFI - AMD TRX4
Kingston A2000 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD
HyperX Fury DDR4 2666MHz 64GB
ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Noctua NF-A15 PWM - 140 mm - 19 dBA (cool the CPU)
Noctua NF-A14 PWM - 140 mm - 19 dBA (Cabinet fan)
Cooler Master V Series V1000 1000watt

So if you know any of these parts a question would be; why do I cool the system with fans and not a water cooler? I hate noise and after a lot of research I found that there’s a lot of good low noise fans that work as good as a water cooler. And with fans I would not hear the gurgling noise form the water pump.

If there’s anything that could be better is the be quiet! cased. It came with some noisy fans. And with some tinkering in bios, an picking up two Noctua fan, I could cool my system from 95 °C to 85°C at full load over time, with out bugging me and the rest of the office at all. But I think I would like it around 70 °C on full load and need to pick up some more fans and get rid of the be quiet! ones.

The system is blazing fast and stable, a must for me, I don’t want the computer to hold me back in any way when working on a project. And I can’t do any over clocking, since I want it stable for work and not only showing off :P

Cinebench r20 score: 17257 pts!. Many test online has a Cinebench around 16988 pts.

I’m now hoping I’m done with online render farms. The computer is about ten times faster then my 2018 MacBook pro, making it easier to get the rendered images I want.

Some images from the computer build.

Comment

I have researched for a new laptop computer for a while, maybe two months. As usual I don't make any hasty decisions for my tools. For years I've been using a MacBook Pro 2011 laptop, it's still in use, but it's time to let it go.

I use Cinema 4D, and the future of 3D renders seems to go ta a GPU accelerated, or a combination with GPU+CPU. My need for a future proof computer is important and that's why the new Macs are useless, to old specs and not future proof. My next computer needs to have some sort of CUDA cores, that's a NVidia technology, and are not on the Macs. On the new Macs they've also gotten rid of that MagSafe, that has been a really smart safety function (been used so many times, not on purpose), and the touch bar seems useless to me.

So I found a work horse, that has everything I need for the future and more. A Dell XPS 15, 4k screen, 32 GB ram and other high specs. But sadly without a MagSafe function, but I can live without that.

I'm used to a MacBook pro and it's build quality and I were shocked how crappy the touch pad were. The Dell XPS 15 picked up fingers that weren't even touching the pad, and often it didn't recognize that I were using the pad at all and I had to drag and drag to get it started. The XPS also has a touch screen that work really well, and since that were so great it demonstrated clearly my frustration with how useless the touch pad were. This irritated more and more.

The material of the computer of it's felt really cheap plasticy. I knew it were plastic, but it's worse then expected from all the review I've read. Not exactly Mac quality.

And the worst problem. Cinema 4D, my main program for work, on Windows 10 in 4K resolution, it's so blurry. Yes, everything is so soft and impossible to look at it's hurting my eyes. It turned out that the way windows is "zooming" doesn't work with C4D and the program isn't ready for 4K yet. A Windows 10 problem, I've seen it on MacOS and it looks good on retina-screen. There's also so many functions native in Windows 10 that isn't ready for 4k resolution either, so the whole OS has a design flaw. I would recommend not to buy a Windows 10 with an 4k screens yet.

Happily I could return the computer without any problem.

Now I just need to find a new laptop.

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Journal

So many threads! New year, new computer!

Specs:

Some images from the computer build.

Why I returned a Dell XPS 15 - 2017 model