RenderMan

Processor

Rendering

RenderMan is a CPU-based, multi-threaded rendering application, therefore the more processor cores the better.

Graphics

GPUs are an important aspect of the future direction of rendering that Pixar is currently researching, some of which has already demonstrated in public. RenderMan 21 introduces GPU accelerated denoising, with further GPU support planned in upcoming releases. Therefore given current software design decisions, your budget is better spent on more CPU cores rather than multiple graphics cards. We recommend the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 for this application.

Storage

We recommend having two solid-state drives which provides the best performance:

1. Primary Drive: SSD for the operating system and applications
2. Secondary Drive: SSD for active projects; a dedicated SSD will offer optimal performance

2.5-inch SATA SSD performs at ~500MB/s
M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD performs at ~2500MB/s

For long term storage or backup, infrequently accessed files, we recommend a 4TB to 18TB hard drive. Hard drives also work well for storing export files as the export/rendering process is generally not write intensive.

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.