Best Cpu for 3d Modeling – Balance your build between money put toward a CPU 3d Modeling and money put toward a graphics card, with the prioritized weight of that pair leaning slightly toward the graphics card. Make sure to pick up an NVIDIA graphics card so you can take maximum advantage of GPU rendering options.
All modern modeling and rendering applications are multithreaded and can utilize multiple CPU cores.
ROUND UP
So a workstation with multiple processors (and therefore more threads) will give you better performance than a single processor of the same specifications.
back to menu ↑1.Intel Core i7-11700K
To start off, if you’d prefer a deeper dive into all the 11th Generation goodness we’ve got to spare (including info on motherboard compatibility and cost of adoption), head on over to our review of the Core i9-11900K flagship for all the details.
For now, here’s how the various CPUs in the “Rocket Lake” lineup shake out. (Note that for legibility’s sake we’ve left out the low-power 35-watt “T” versions of these chips, which will be of interest mostly to OEMs.)
back to menu ↑2.Intel Core i7-10700K
That results in a surprisingly close competition for gaming supremacy between the Core i7-10700K and the Core i9-10900K.
The Intel Core i7-10700K also comes with a 3.8-GHz base clock that, paired with its 16 threads, improves its standing against price-comparable Ryzen processors in threaded desktop PC applications, while the snappy single-threaded performance gives it an outright win in lightly-threaded apps.
The Core i7-10700K also proves to be a nimble overclocker that doesn’t generate an untenable amount of excess heat, so off-the-shelf water coolers can unlock big gains.
back to menu ↑3.Intel Core i5-11400F
That ‘F’ suffix in the Core i5 11400F denotes a lack of iGPU in the processor package, which is no bad thing for a budget gaming CPU, and normally means a cheaper chip. Times are strange, however, and the Core i5 11400 is exactly the same CPU but with those integrated GPU cores enabled. It should be more expensive, but is actually available for a lot less right now.
Performance should be practically the same between the two so you can almost pick which of those two versions of the 11400 silicon is cheapest and be happy with your choice. Because the Core i5 11400/F is a great budget gaming CPU.
back to menu ↑4.AMD YD190XA8AEWOF
The company claims its 1900X is an ideal entry point for folks who might want one of the other Threadripper chips at some point down the line.
By now, we’re all familiar with the key tenets of AMD’s value proposition: you get more cores for less money, more affordable motherboards, and all of its architecture’s features. Ryzen Threadripper 1900X carries that philosophy forward, though it sports the same number of cores as its nearest Intel competition (at a similar MSRP, no less), resides on a very pricey motherboard, and it costs more than the “mainstream” Ryzen 7 1800X, also an eight-core contender.
back to menu ↑5.AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
The Ryzen 5 3400G is from AMD’s latest third-generation Ryzen CPU family, but it’s a bit different than most of the pack. Most of the third-generation chips use an entirely new 7-nanometer (nm) processor architecture (dubbed “Zen 2”) and offer significant improvements over their predecessors.
The Ryzen 5 3400G does not. Rather, it’s an updated version of the second-generation Ryzen 5 2400G, sharing many of the same features and a similar microarchitecture. It also generally matches—and in some cases slightly exceeds—the second-generation chip’s proficient computing performance.
Part of this proficiency stems from its support for multithreading. Of the third-generation Ryzen CPUs that have built-in graphics processing (a family of two, at this writing), the Ryzen 5 3400G is the only one of the pair to boast this feature. Here’s a cheat sheet of all the new-for-2019 desktop Ryzens…
back to menu ↑6.AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
We began with a look at the Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X last week and came away impressed, but our review left us feeling like something was missing.
That something is the Ryzen 7 3800X. AMD cranks the TDP dial up to 105W on this 8-core 16-thread chip, making it the high-performance counterpart to the 65W Ryzen 7 3700X, which is basically the same 7nm chip built with the Zen 2 microarchitecture, but with a lower TDP rating.
That chip came away from our first look at the Ryzen 3000 series with an Editor’s Choice award, going toe-to-toe with Intel’s Core i7-9700K, so it’s fair to say we have high hopes for the higher-performance model. AMD still hasn’t sampled the chip to the press, so we bought one at retail to put it under the microscope.
back to menu ↑7.AMD YD299XAZAFWOF
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8.AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
That system trounced competing high-end gaming rigs in many productivity tests. But Dell did a questionable job on the cooling front, including a single intake fan and a small radiator with the AIO liquid cooler.
AMD’s Ryzen family has completely redefined our expectations for desktop processors, and Intel has struggled to respond. The company has slowly dialed up the frequency of its aging 14nm process and added more cores, but those tweaks can’t offset the reality that AMD has moved onto a denser and more efficient 7nm process that enables higher core counts.
Of course, process technology doesn’t solve all the challenges of fielding a competitive chip, but that advantage is hard to beat when paired with a solid microarchitecture like AMD’s Zen 2.
back to menu ↑9.AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
Compare it to Intel’s closest options, such as the Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition and others in the decidedly pricey, definitely HEDT Core X-Series, and the value contest isn’t even close. In the core wars at the close of 2020, AMD simply can’t be beat. If you deal with demanding content-creation applications or need a workhorse CPU to handle the rigors of heavy-load, highly multithreaded productivity tasks day in and day out, look no further.
As AMD’s latest and greatest top-of-the-stack Zen 3 processor, the Ryzen 9 5950X delivers core-crushing power that bests an Intel chip meant to compete with AMD’s own “true HEDT” platform, Ryzen Threadripper. Most folks don’t need all the power the Ryzen 9 5950X packs, but few wouldn’t want it.
back to menu ↑10.AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
AMD also stopped bundling air coolers with its chips with a TDP rating that exceeds 65W, so the 105W Ryzen 7 5800X comes without what used to be one of AMD’s most prized value-adds for the Ryzen 7 series – the Wraith Prism RGB cooler.
AMD’s cooler-less Ryzen 5000 series models require a 280mm AIO cooler (or equivalent air cooler), adding plenty of cost into the equation. That will likely dissuade gaming-focused enthusiasts from dropping the extra cash for the 5800X’s two additional cores that don’t deliver meaningful gaming performance gains over the Ryzen 5 5600X.
back to menu ↑Best Cpu for 3d Modeling – BUYER’S GUIDE
back to menu ↑CPU
Once upon a time, this would have been the most important part of a 3d Modeling PC—so much so that I would have recommended putting all possible resources toward obtaining and supporting the most powerful CPU that your budget would allow.
But CPU rendering is no longer the only game in town, and the focus can be shifted somewhat in favor of the graphics card. That said, the CPU is still vitally important. The CPU is used for everything you do on a computer, so a faster CPU will always be at least a little bit better.
CPU rendering can take advantage of many CPU cores. For many years, Intel CPUs typically offered the best single-threaded performance, while AMD CPUs typically offered the best multi-threaded performance. Nowadays, both companies have some great chip options for rendering builds in both categories, and you’ll likely see the recommendations in the section above oscillate between Intel and AMD periodically throughout each year as new parts release.
If you use a different CPU than we recommend in our builds, make sure you get a compatible motherboard, RAM, and CPU cooler.
back to menu ↑Graphics Card
For rendering, unlike most other graphic design work, the strength of your graphics card is important for the speed at which you are able to complete your work. GPU rendering (when available) is much faster—in some cases, over ten times as fast.
You’re likely to want an NVIDIA graphics card. Here’s why:
Between the two most developed kinds of GPU rendering available now (AMD-backed OpenCL and NVIDIA’s proprietary CUDA), CUDA currently provides better performance. And while OpenCL is compatible with any graphics card (at least to some extent), CUDA is only available with NVIDIA cards.
To quote GPU Rendering Magazine’s article on OpenCL and CUDA: “As an easy rule of thumb, if your app supports CUDA, grab an NVIDIA card, even if it also supports OpenCL,” and “If the applications you use split their support between CUDA and OpenCL we recommend using a recent NVIDIA card.”
Hopefully AMD’s OpenCL will have wider support and better performance in the future, but for now NVIDIA is the better option.
back to menu ↑RAM
RAM is not going to be one of your biggest concerns. Modern consumer systems all use DDR4 RAM. The lower end systems here use dual-channel RAM, while the higher end systems use quad-channel. A Dual-channel configuration provides slightly better performance than a single stick, and quad channel is slightly better than dual channel.
Just make sure you’ve got at least 8GB, as the previewing process that makes up the view window of some 3D design programs like Cinema 4D can be a bit RAM-hungry. If you find that you need more RAM, adding more is easy as long as you still have open RAM slots on your motherboard.
back to menu ↑Storage
Unlike computers intended for filmmaking, traditional animation, gaming, or general YouTube video-making, a computer for 3D design doesn’t necessarily need a mountain of storage space. Images, assets, and modeling files are significantly smaller than videos or games.
HDDs
A terabyte or two of hard disk drive space, like a 1TB Western Digital HDD, might be plenty.
If you intend to do loads of animating. Animation videos—especially high-resolution, high-frame-rate animation videos—take up just as much space as any other space-hogging high-quality video files. Fortunately, upgrading your storage capacity is one of the easiest changes you can make to an existing workstation PC. If you’re on a budget, adding more storage is easy any time, and it always gets cheaper over time.
SSDs
Definitely get an SSD if you can. Everything will feel faster. Installing your OS, applications, and your project caches on an SSD will speed up your workflow in a very noticeable way. Programs and parts of programs will load faster. Cached information will be provided quicker.
Upgrading from a hard drive to a SATA SSD is a huge speed boost, and very noticeable.
Upgrading from a SATA SSD to a more expensive PCIe SSD is a big boost in peak performance. However, it is less noticeable in real-world use, unless you’re often transferring huge files. PCIe is the best and fastest, but it’s often worth sticking with a cheaper SATA SSD and spending the money on a faster CPU or graphics card instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
back to menu ↑FAQ 1: Why does 3d Modeling take so long?
It depends on which software you’re using, what options you have set, and what hardware you’re running.
You render a simple scene, e.g. a house sitting in a field next to a tree, with the sun shining on it. Your computer is calculating (or repeatedly estimating) the light bouncing from your one point light source (the “sun”) off of each individual polygon’s relative angle toward the camera. (There might be hundreds of polygons in the leaves of even a simple, not-particularly-realistic tree.)
At the same time, it is reflecting that light uniquely depending on the material, color, and texture of each simulated object. And then it is (again, depending on the software and settings) doing the same for the light reflected uniquely off of each polygon, such as from the house onto each leaf of the tree and vice versa.
It is attempting to map or reasonably approximate that set of calculations for each and every polygon visible in the scene in order to produce one cohesive image. And finally, it is doing any post-processing that you instructed your program to accomplish. And if you’re rendering out an animation, then it’s doing all of that for each frame.
The computer is simulating not just the eye that views the image, but also the world-like conditions that the eye is viewing. Some hardware is better than other hardware at accomplishing these kinds of tasks, but it is nothing short of astounding what kind of images can result from this herculean computational effort.
back to menu ↑FAQ 2: How can I speed up my 3d Modeling ?
If you’re still worried that your renders are taking too long after reading the answer to FAQ 1, I recommend going back to basics and checking your options:
Can you reduce computed passes, computed samples, or lighting bounces without harming your render’s quality?
Are you sure you’ve switched to GPU rendering?
If you are using a GPU rendering option, does your application require you to manually adjust a tile size so you can take full advantage of it?
Are you doing any post-processing that you can do without?
Test out all of your options in each of your applications. Different software will respond differently to different choices.
back to menu ↑FAQ 3: Why would you choose GPU rendering over CPU 3d Modeling ?
While CPU rendering is both accurate and reliable, it is very slow compared to what is possible these days with GPU rendering.
To give you a practical example, a couple of months ago I used Blender to make the animation that’s being worked on in the screenshot below this section (not exactly a complex scene). It’s an 11-second, 1080p, 60-FPS animated intro that was used for the first seven of my YouTube videos back in 2017 and 2018. Rendering the 660 frames of that animation via CPU rendering took over 20 hours (with an i5-6600K). Rendering those same 660 frames via GPU rendering took under 4 hours (with an i5-6600K and a GTX 1060 6GB).
Sequential operations are the CPU’s easy victory, but in the realm of outputting rendered images via parallelized rendering, the GPU is in its element. The CPU is still an important player regardless, but prioritizing the GPU when you’re budgeting can make a lot of sense.
back to menu ↑WRAP UP
Best Cpu for 3d Modeling – The most interesting thing about looking for a Computer or Workstation for 3D Modeling and Rendering is the fact that 3D Modeling and (CPU) Rendering are two very different use cases.
Each of them uses the Hardware of a Computer in very different ways!
Before we dive into it, take a quick look at the Table of contents here, in case you prefer to skip the theory and want to know my recommendations immediately:
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