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By Catahoula - 4 Years Ago
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Wondering what the world of iClone users would recommend for the following PC purchase.
Coming from being a long-term Mac user who knows nothing of the PC world, I will be buying a PC specifically to run iClone. As my character models are nearly done, I am ready to make the PC purchase. Following a bunch of research and great advice from forum member animagic, I have narrowed it to the three PCs below. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
I will be recording my main character live in approximately one hour-long session at a time. I do have the ability to start and stop as needed. All will be edited and cleaned up in post. I have a second character that will be animated in either live or later. Goals are to find a system that will smoothly run iClone, will be future-proof for at least a couple of years, and be not too expensive. If I need to buy a more costly machine, I will – but if I do not have to… well, great. Looking just at the components, I have: Unit 1: Uses Intel's i7 9700k CPU (a late 2020 design), with Nvidia 3060 graphics card with 12GB VRAM and 16GB RAM. Unit 2: Same as unit 1, but Uses Intel's i7 9700kf - the difference between the k and the kf is how it handles graphics, but not yet sure what that graphic handling difference is! Unit 1 & 2 are about $1500. The next unit jumps to about $2600. Unit 3. Uses Intel's i7-10700k. A mid-2021 design. It uses the Nvidia 3070. It only has 8GB VRAM (maybe it is still more efficient than Units 1 & 2 even though they have 12GB VRAM) and has 32GB RAM. I read the i7-10700 is faster than the i7-9700, but the 9700's are still incredibly fast, so 10700 may be overkill. I also see a lot of PCs with AMD processors and not Intel. I limited my search to intel. I am leaning towards either Unit 1 or 2 and possibly bumping the RAM to 32GB. What would you purchase from the above list? Would you recommend a different PC? All information is very welcome! Thank you in advance.
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By 3dtester - 4 Years Ago
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Catahoula (9/5/2021)
Wondering what the world of iClone users would recommend for the following PC purchase.
Coming from being a long-term Mac user who knows nothing of the PC world, I will be buying a PC specifically to run iClone. As my character models are nearly done, I am ready to make the PC purchase. Following a bunch of research and great advice from forum member animagic, I have narrowed it to the three PCs below. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
I will be recording my main character live in approximately one hour-long session at a time. I do have the ability to start and stop as needed. All will be edited and cleaned up in post. I have a second character that will be animated in either live or later. Goals are to find a system that will smoothly run iClone, will be future-proof for at least a couple of years, and be not too expensive. If I need to buy a more costly machine, I will – but if I do not have to… well, great. Looking just at the components, I have: Unit 1: Uses Intel's i7 9700k CPU (a late 2020 design), with Nvidia 3060 graphics card with 12GB VRAM and 16GB RAM. Unit 2: Same as unit 1, but Uses Intel's i7 9700kf - the difference between the k and the kf is how it handles graphics, but not yet sure what that graphic handling difference is! Unit 1 & 2 are about $1500. The next unit jumps to about $2600. Unit 3. Uses Intel's i7-10700k. A mid-2021 design. It uses the Nvidia 3070. It only has 8GB VRAM (maybe it is still more efficient than Units 1 & 2 even though they have 12GB VRAM) and has 32GB RAM. I read the i7-10700 is faster than the i7-9700, but the 9700's are still incredibly fast, so 10700 may be overkill. I also see a lot of PCs with AMD processors and not Intel. I limited my search to intel. I am leaning towards either Unit 1 or 2 and possibly bumping the RAM to 32GB. What would you purchase from the above list? Would you recommend a different PC? All information is very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Hi, since i recently built a new PC for iClone (and gaming), i have some experience.
I do now have a 10700k but i can say that this CPU gets pretty hot. I needed to install a water cooling system (AIO) to get the temps down.
If you have a motherboard which supports 11th generation Intel CPUs, i would choose the 11700k, because it has a lower TDP.
BTW: the "k" means that the CPU has an open frequency multiplier, which means it can be easily overclocked.
And the "F" means it doesn't have an on-chip GPU. Usually you don't need the on-chip GPU if you have a seperate graphics card.
But it doesn't hurt if it has it.
As for the graphics card: 8 GB of memory might be not enough for more complex scenes.
I would recommend the new 3080 TI with 12 GB of VRAM.
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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BY FAR the most important component of your PC for iClone is the GPU. You can get by with a MUCH slower/older PC with the faster/better GPU. And you want no less than 8GB but preferably 12GB or more (iClone itself will use 4GB just for starters).
Nowadays that means at least the 3080 or 3090, but they are hard to find. I had to buy a PC that came with the 3090, and you CAN do that, and if you are lucky enough to need a new PC that is the absolute best way to get the absolute best GPU for iClone (trust me, even 24GB won't be enough at times).
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By davidmaximo - 4 Years Ago
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I have to agree with Mike Kelley, if you're gonna get a new PC go hard and get at least a 3080. You can't even run Omniverse without an RTX card. As for CPU look for the higher single core speed if you want speedier interaction.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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And I'll add a third agreement to the last two replies. Don't worry too much about your CPU. What you want to spend your money on is the video card. One of my computers has a GTX 1080 Ti, and although that's just fine for simple scenes it bogs down on more complex scenes, especially with multiple avatars or Popcorn FX, which is a huge GPU hog. I recently bit the bullet and bought a computer with an RTX 3090, and it is incredibly better than the old computer, even though the CPU is roughly the same.
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By Catahoula - 4 Years Ago
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Thank you to all above. It is great information to have. I was feeling confident with my 3060, but now agree I need to jump up to the 3080. You may have saved me months of headache!! I have been looking at Skytech gaming's systems as they are well rated and have great pricing. They also have some AMD CPUs with the 3080 at decent price points (and liquid-cooled) so will explore those as well as the Intel versions (which I would pursue if I can afford!). Thank you again, it is very appreciated.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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Catahoula (9/6/2021)
Thank you to all above. It is great information to have. I was feeling confident with my 3060, but now agree I need to jump up to the 3080. You may have saved me months of headache!! I have been looking at Skytech gaming's systems as they are well rated and have great pricing. They also have some AMD CPUs with the 3080 at decent price points (and liquid-cooled) so will explore those as well as the Intel versions (which I would pursue if I can afford!). Thank you again, it is very appreciated.
I looked at Skytech and their prices seem decent.
I used the custom build option and found that they do offer a PC with an RTX 3900, so I think we would all agree that is the best option going forward. It all depends on your budget of course.
For the rest I selected:- Intel 11700k CPU (cheapest)
- Case, I would get the generic one without colored LEDS on the fans. It looks kind of ugly in the picture,
- Probably water cooling for the CPU
- 64 GB of RAM (max available)
- 2 GB M2.NVMe system drive
- Secondary drive you probably want an SSD. They only offer 2 GB, 4 GB would be better.
- 850 Watt Gold power supply
- Windows 10 Pro
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By Data Juggler - 4 Years Ago
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I am waiting for November 19th for Alder Lake. I waited this long for a 3090. If early benchmarks are correct it could be 15-20% faster CPU.
A 1080TI with a a 6 year old processor (I7-6700K) is not that bad for IClone until I add 5+ characters and lots of props like a rack full of poker chips.
Hopefully IClone 8 makes some performance improvements, because some things seem like it's not my computer is low on resources, IClone just goes into a loop and never comes back.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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>> IClone just goes into a loop and never comes back. <<
I'm glad that I'm not the only one encountering this. The worst is when it goes into a seemingly endless loop and I try to use the mouse to move the progress window out of the way. Then bam, iClone vanishes, instant total crash. Luckily, almost every time this happens it is able to recover recent work.
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By davidmaximo - 4 Years Ago
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absolute beast of a machine!
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By Catahoula - 4 Years Ago
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Thank you for that information and the time to put that together.
From your post and combing some previous, it sounds like I could go as low as 3080. I am just curious to check one last aspect: If my project is one primary character in a 3 walled bedroom background with an occasional second character (small, pet), would a 3070, with as much VRAM as I can afford, plus an intel i7 work sufficiently? We will record around 60 minutes live lip-sync per "episode" with starts and stops eventually editing down to about 20 minutes final. Will this set-up be sluggish or time-consuming?
My goal here is the performance versus budget. I will weigh the future-proofing and project expansion against this as well, but trying to feel out what limitations I will face if I am forced (budget forced) to start with a 3070 system.
Thanks again!!
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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I assume the 3070 comes with 8GB, right? Definitely do NOT get any less.
You have to do what you have to do. If your budget will only allow that, it's better than nothing. I suspect if there are no props and no huge set it might be just fine, but as a rule folks always want more. Plus it depends on what you are doing. If no mocap (or if just facial mocap) then you will be just fine. If trying to do the body mocap INSIDE of iClone then, no.
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By justaviking - 4 Years Ago
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I'll add a quick comment about water cooling
A good air cooler can be as effective as water cooling (generally speaking) if you have decent case airflow, and it avoids any potential leakage problems. I know this because I have a habit of browsing "reviews" that include actual benchmark results, including air-vs-water tests. But other than that I'm no special expert. A lot of people opt for water cooling because of aesthetics. Noctua has a solid reputation for high-performance coolers with decent sound levels, but their top-of-the-line ones get rather "tall" (perpendicular to the motherboard) and bulky, so be sure it fits in your case.
For an existing system that is running hot, you could always remove the cooler and ensure there is a quality thermal paste properly applied. And again, be sure your case air-flow is correct to exhaust the heat. It's amazing that people can have fans installed wrong, with both front and rear fans blowing into (or out of) the case, resulting in no real flow.
Me? I'm still using the fan that came with my CPU and am having no problems.
Good luck, enjoy the new hardware, and happy iCloning. :)
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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You could definitely go as 'low' as a 3080, which was absolute top-of-the-line until very recently. In fact, with the light load you have (just one, or at most two avatars and no Popcorn FX) you could do fine with much less than that. My old computer, with a GTX 1080 Ti is incredibly slower than a 3080 and yet it does just fine with small projects. I only jumped to a 3090 when I started doing projects with 6 avatars on the screen simultaneously, and Popcorn blowing up at the same time. Frankly, the difference between a 3080 and a 3090 is not huge. The 3090 has a few more compute cores, and something like 24 GB VRAM versus 16 for the 3080. I've done some really big projects with many hundreds of props and multiple avatars and never come even close to 16 GB required. So if every penny counts, you can feel comfortable going with a 3080 instead of a 3090. In fact, I bet if you tried the same project on two different computers, one with 3080 and one with 3090, I'm nearly positive you could not even tell the difference. I couldn't.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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From what I read the RTX 3080 has only 10 GB of VRAM not 16, so that makes a difference with the RTX 3090.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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This is very interesting. It appears that the laptop and desktop versions of the 3080 have different memory. When I bought my laptop with 3080, it was advertised as having 16 GB VRAM on the video card. I just went online and looked at mutiple laptops with 3080, and every brand I looked at with a 3080 said 8-64 GB RAM and RTX 3080 with 16 GB VRAM. And I just ran DXDIAG and it confirmed that my 3080 video does indeed have 16 GB VRAM. Yet when I went to the nVidia site it said 10 GB VRAM for the CARD version. So I learned something. I guess the card version for desktops and the laptop versions are different, although nVidia also had an announcement that they will soon be releasing a 3080 with 20 GB VRAM. I had no idea there was such variety.
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