Arnold

Arnold

Arnold is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer built for the demands of feature-length animation and visual effects. Originally co-developed with Sony Pictures Imageworks and now their main renderer, Arnold is used at over 300 studios worldwide including ILM, Framestore, MPC, The Mill and Digic Pictures.

Hardware Recommendations

Processor

Rendering

Arnold is a GPU-based rendering application, therefore we recommend a higher performance graphics card.

Graphics

NVIDIA Quadro A5000 or A6000. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 3080Ti, or RTX 3090.

Storage

We recommend a NVMe SSD for the operating system, applications and project files. 1TB is the most common capacity for Arnold workstations. 1TB is fine if your projects are moderately sized. 2TB is recommended if your projects are large and you will you will use the workstation for a variety of professional applications.

If your projects are complex, are running multiple applications as the same time, and you want to maximize performance, we recommend two SSDs:

  1. Primary NVMe SSD: operating system and applications
  2. Secondary NVMe SSD: dedicated to active projects

For storage or backup, we recommend a SATA SSD or Hard Drive.

M.2 NVMe Gen4 SSD performs at ~5,000MB/s
2.5-inch SATA SSD performs at ~500MB/s
3.5-inch SATA Hard Drive performs at ~250MB/s

Memory

In general, 4GB 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.

Configuration Recommendations

HP Z8 G4 Workstation

 

  • Dual 28 cores, 2.2 GHz base frequency | Intel Xeon Gold 6238R
  • 192GB (12x 16GB) of 2933MT/s DDR4 ECC Memory
  • 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 Solid-State Drive

$11,725

Configure & Buy

HP Z8 G4 Workstation

 

  • Dual 20 cores, 2.1 GHz base frequency | Intel Xeon Gold 5218R
  • 192GB (12x 16GB) of 2933MT/s DDR4 ECC Memory
  • 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 Solid-State Drive

$8,225

Configure & Buy

HP Z840 Workstation

 

  • Dual 18-Core 2.3GHz Intel Xeon Haswell E5-2699 v3 [36-cores / 72-threads]
  • 128GB (8x 16GB) of 2133MT/s DDR4 ECC Memory
  • 500GB NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 Solid-State Drive
  • NVIDIA Quadro M2000 4GB

$4,800

Configure & Buy

HP Z840 Workstation

 

  • Dual 10-Core 2.2GHz Intel Xeon Broadwell E5-2630 v4 [20-cores / 40-threads]
  • 64GB (8x 8GB) of 2400MT/s DDR4 ECC Memory
  • 500GB SATA 2.5" Solid-State Drive
  • NVIDIA Quadro M2000 4GB

$3,225

Configure & Buy

HP Z6 G4 Workstation

 

  • 16 cores, 3.2 GHz base frequency | Intel Xeon W-3245
  • 96GB (6x 16GB) of 2933MT/s DDR4 ECC Memory
  • 500GB NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 Solid-State Drive

$4,775

Configure & Buy

HP Z4 G4 Workstation

 

  • Intel Core i9-10900X (3.7 GHz base frequency, 10 cores)
  • 64GB (4x 16GB) of 2933MT/s DDR4 Memory
  • 500GB NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 Solid-State Drive

$2,750

Configure & Buy

Hardware Reference Recommendations

Running additional applications on this system?

The recommended components and configurations provided on this page are specific to this software. If you plan on running other applications, view our recommendations for them as well and choose a configuration that best suits the needs of the application requirements collectively. Feel free to contact us for further assistance.

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Condition

New: Purchased new from manufacturer authorized distributors. Never used. Ships in original manufacturer packaging.

Refurbished: Pulled from corporate environment in working condition. Tested upon arrival at our location and also after customization. Cosmetically grade A or B. Overall in good condition, but could have light scratches / scuffs. Ships in double-wall brown box with durable packaging material.