The Big Ripper rendering rig
It’s time to create some content — which means it’s also time to build a monster machine with Zak Storey.
THE CONCEPT
It’s about time we put those rendering processors to work, huh? We certainly think so —16 cores and 32 threads are just too good an opportunity to pass up. And with a renewed push to produce more video content for our publisher Future's online properties over the coming months, it makes sense to piece together a workstation for our online team that’s a little more spec-driven than the Core i7-5820K and 32GB of DDR4 he has now.
At APC, our workstations are generally constructed out of parts we have on loan, they need to be flexible, and easy to take to pieces if certain components have to go back to their PRs. They also need to be versatile — from gaming, to standard office work, to photo editing, video rendering, and running through all manner of tutorials, our rigs have to be capable of doing it all.
This time around, our system is going to have a very large focus on video editing, so the monster component that is Threadripper is our processor of choice. Whether it’s the 8-, 12-, or 16-core parts, both the connectivity and quad-channel memory support, combined with Ryzen’s architectural prowess, make it the perfect match for our rendering aspirations, and anything else we want to throw at it.
So, what’s the plan? Grab the 1950X, an ASUS Prime X399 motherboard, 128GB of DDR4, a plethora of PCIe solid-state storage for scratch disk and OS use, and 20TB or so of hard drives for backup. No biggy, right?
TRULY TITANIC
The one thing we really enjoy about speccing systems like this is just how much they change over the course of the planning stage. First, we were going to use the 12-core Threadripper, and we decided the ASUS Zenith Extreme was our motherboard of choice. NZXT promised us a swanky new chassis exclusive... which, unfortunately, didn’t arrive in time, so we swapped to the Fractal Design Meshify, but that wouldn’t support the ASUS Prime X399-A we eventually went with, so we finally settled on our old favourite, the Evolv ATX, instead. Couple that with the drop in effective memory frequency from 3,200 to 2,933, and that’s one hell of a lot of different tweaks and changes to how this system was originally going to shape up.
It’s a monstrous beast, and at almost $10K it has a price tag to match. For most of us, that’ll admittedly be an outlandish amount of money to invest in any kind of build.
The problem, as is often the case with these builds, lies with the storage and memory. As core counts have increased, and graphical prowess has accelerated headlong into the clouds, maximum memory capacity and hard drive prices have faltered. Look back two years, and the rate of improvement pales in comparison. That said, if you want to make this build more affordable, you could shave a good $2,000 off just by lopping off some of that excess storage. Even cutting down the memory to 64GB at 2,933 would save you nearly $900.