Maxwell

Processor

CPU vs. GPU Rendering

Maxwell 4 takes advantage of the GPU for rendering, however there are some aspects of the rendering process that can only be handled by the CPU. Therefore we recommend a processor with 4 to 6 cores.

Please view Maxwell's CPU + GPU Utilization chart for further information about CPU vs. GPU in this unique application.

Memory

In general, 3-6GB of RAM per CPU core is recommended. For example, if you select a single 12-core processor, 32GB will suffice for basic tasks or 64GB for more demanding workloads.

Storage

We recommend a solid-state drive (SSD) for the operating system and software.

In addition, we recommend a 4TB or larger hard drive for storage of the pre-rendered assets or the rendered export files if storing these files locally. Hard drives work well for rendering since it is generally not read or write intensive.

Graphics

According to Next Limit, the GPU option speeds up the rendering process greatly... up to 10x faster than CPU rendering! This is possible due to the thousands of CUDA cores within NVIDIA graphics cards.

Maxwell can run equally well on both GeForce GTX and Quadro cards. We recommend an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards, which currently offers the best performance to price ratio, but any recent high end NVIDIA card will offer great rendering performance with Maxwell.

While Maxwell does not support multiple GPUs as of September 2017, this feature will be released by the end of the year. Therefore we also have dual GPU recommendations below.

Chassis

The Z840 is recommended if you require dual processors or dual high performance graphics cards. The Z840 can support up to 6 hard drives or 10 SSDs.

The Z640 is recommended if you require a single high-end processor or single high-performance graphics card. You can always add a second processor and double the memory at a later date using the optional Z640 processor riser. The Z640 can support up to 4 hard drives or 6 SSDs.

The Z440 is recommended if you require a single processor with a low core count or mid-range graphics card. The Z440 can support up to 4 hard drives or 6 SSDs.

Specialty Hardware

For massive computes, we carry NVIDIA Tesla K80 and P100 accelerators installed in worlds leading Cubix Xpander Rackmount series expansion chassis. The top selling, Xpander Rackmount 2, Gen 3 expands one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot in the HP Z Worskation into two dual-slot PCIe 3.0 x16 slots for passively cooled cards. Add 2 4 8 or 16 Tesla compute processors to for extreme compute power to take on any advanced product. Shave hours, days, or weeks off your estimated completion time to maximize your productivity.

For rigorous rendering and advanced deep learning solutions, we carry the Cubix Xpander Desktop Elite series expansion chassis ideal for NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti 11GB or Titan Xp 12GB GPUs. The most popular in the series, Xpander Desktop Elite, Gen 3 - 1500w, expands one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot in the HP Z Worskation into four dual-slot PCIe 3.0 x16 slots for actively cooled cards. The 1200w model also available for a mixture of GPUs and specialty hardware cards, and the 8 and 16 GPU model for a grid computing solution.