If you want to use cycles rendering, you will have to go with an Nvidia card unfortunately, since AMD support is essentially nonexistent in blender.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Good to know thanks
I just switched to team Red. The Blender situation is dire. I don't mind long render times in Cycles, but even the Eevee shader compilation is extremely slow. Apparently it's an issue (although not necessarily a bug) with mesa and the fix is currently in the 23.3 development branch.
Everyone seems to be asking if you'll be using Cycles, but I doubt you'll ever need raytraced rendering if you're just using it to make and rig models designed for the browser. You'll probably be using Eevee to preview models at most.
CPU/GPU
I'd recommend any decent APU (a CPU with an onboard GPU). That should give you good enough performance for both Blender and Eevee, while also leaving you open to add a dedicated GPU later should you wish to branch out into raytraced rendering.
I want to clarify that the integrated GPU will not be for rendering. It's just so you don't need to buy a dedicated card to run your monitor if you don't end up needing one.
As for a more concrete recommendation, perhaps consider a Ryzen 3400G or newer (preferably newer if possible). Any decent Intel chip from the last 8 or so years will probably be fine too (but avoid 9th gen).
RAM
I'd say 8GB absolute minimum, 16GB or more is highly recommended.
Storage
A spinning hard drive is fine, but an SSD is a must for your OS drive. The speed benefits are well worth the slightly added cost.
Dude TYSM! Appreciate the in-depth response. Lots of good info here.
I double check last night and yes I am indeed currently using eevee. I currently am using an older intel NUC and it struggles, but I love her anyway
Excited to set something new up though
What's the budget? Where do you live?
Good questions! I live in the US, and my budget is I’m broke af. Guess I don’t have a set budget at the moment.
What do you have? And how much can you spend? Without that I can't help you without telling you to just buy 4090.
Lol I’m sorry I’m useless. I guess I’m in the research phase right now.
I started freelancing three.js apps this year and have hit the point where I need a blender rig. But I’m broke. I need like a “used Honda civic” set up to get me around until I can afford something better.
Then tell me your current specs and what is your workflow (What do you use blender for?). There are free solutions to problems but I don't know what your problems are.
If you're using cycles, then I'm sorry to say, but you're kind of looking for a "used Honda Civic" to take to a NASCAR race.
If at all possible, get at least an rtx 3000 series card. Hardware ray tracing is a complete game changer, just remember to enable it in blender when you get the card. Other than that, you basically just need a cpu that won't bottleneck your graphics card, and probably 16gb of RAM.
If you're just using eevee, then any gaming rig from the last *10 years is probably fine.
Edit: as someone else already said, use Nvidia cards if you're using cycles.
*I guess blender only supports cards under 10 years old. Not sure if that's a moving number or not.
Lol gotcha. Good to know about hardware ray tracing, and cpu tips.
I need to learn more about cycles/eevee. I am focusing on web / gltf format so probably don’t need the higher end.
Thanks!
I recently purchased one of these bad boys used to use as a server, but it has more than enough horsepower to run Blender. If you're going to use Cycles, I recommend going on ebay and getting a used RTX card. the 20xx and the 30xx series are going for about $200 used right now. Assuming you bring your own keyboard/mouse/monitor, you should have a really nice Blender build for about $650, all said and done.
Ahh thank you for sharing, looks like a good set up for me!
Btw how much power does your server eat up with the dual cpus running? I love the idea of getting one of these, so cheap and so much horsepower, but wondering if it’s going to be painfully expensive to fill up the tank.
To be honest, it isn't really something I think about. Energy consumption just is what it is in this household. Part of the expense of working with the tools I need.
It is definitely a powerful machine, but I do not know what the power draw is, I'm sorry.
Gotcha gotcha, yeah I feel you. I asked chat gpt to estimate it and it said $50 a month! So I thought I’d check with humans
That seems pretty high to me. You can try using this calculator to see how much you might be spending. It has an 825W power supply. So I supposed the worst case scenario of completely maxing out its usage 24 hours a day would be about $70 a month. But that is just absurd usage. You'll be using much less than that 99% of the time.