Hi all.
I have to make computer configuration order for working with huge assemblies in Keyshot. (Really huge and shiny assemblies, Mostly aluminum and steel on outside)
My office have offers form HP, but I do not know how good are HP configurations for this purpose. I personally come from gaming world so enterprise configurations are not my forte…
Can you share your experience with different high end business computer configurations to help me choose what to order?
Thank you!
We work with Dell at our company. They offer pretty hefty configurations, you can pick and choose what components you want down to the detail, but there’s not a ton of options on some components. You can still pick pretty high end configs though.
Not a big fan of Dell personally, but it seems to work fine for our company.
I think it’s mainly a budget thing and weather or not you’ll do renders yourself or for example upload the files to a dedicated render farm.
Personally I think the ‘gaming’ PC is a better pick currently than most offered ‘workstation’ solutions but that’s also about budget. If you are going to do renders over GPU it need a lot of money to have a Nvidia pro GPU solution being as fast as the speed a 4090 offers.
The advantage of the pro series though is that most you can link using NVLink which will also expands the VRAM. The 4090 has no NVLink support so you can drop 3 of them in a PC which will render 3x as fast as a single 4090 but the VRAM is still limited to 24GB.
24GB is quite a lot but it really depends on how much textures you use or what resolution you render on how fast you run out of VRAM.
If you have budget than it’s great to have some workstation with multiple GPUs which have custom liquid cooling (keeps it quiet). HP doesn’t offer such solutions I think since they are way to specialized and have a limit target audience but for example systems like this would be amazing: Studio Series Liquid-Cooled Workstations for Content Creators – EK Fluid Works
The price will consist a lot of the GPUs you use. The 4090 is best in price performance, you get a lot of CUDA cores at one card for a ‘relative’ cheap price. While the 3090(Ti) still could connect multiple cards using NVLink NVidia ‘discarded’ that option on the 4090 because they like to push people into the pro series.
I think that only makes sense if your scenes are really that big. Especially because a lot of pro cards have actually less CUDA cores than a 4090 so it gets pretty expensive if you want to get the same render speed.
If the 24GB is not really an issue with the kind of renders you make you could go as crazy as a system like this, 4 (or up to 6) liquid cooled 4090s and a lot of jealous colleagues. BIZON Z5000 – Liquid cooled NVIDIA RTX 4090, 4080, 3090, A6000, A100 Deep Learning and GPU Rendering Workstation PC – 4 GPU, 6 GPU, up to 56 cores Intel Xeon W (bizon-tech.com)
If your renders contain a lot of metals without textures the VRAM usage is not as high as if you would apply a very high res rough/base color/normal map texture on every part of your assembly. So before spending the money it’s good to examine some scenes and check how much VRAM they actually use.
If you need to get HP I would go for the Omen series if that’s still a thing. I wouldn’t be happy with the Nvidia A2000 6GB card. That might be called pro but if it’s about renders, better continue in gaming mode 
The solution of EK Fluid Works is a nicer one in an office environment, the 4090 can make quite some noise if it’s not liquid cooled.
About the CPU, I’ve a 4 y.o. i9-9900K but that doesn’t matter much while rendering using my 3090+4090. It does while playing MSFS, than a better CPU would be nice
I prefer gaming configurations also, but I do not dare to try to explain to management why I want something that is not labeled as business or professional configuration.
Nobody in my office can recognize gaming computer from washing machine so nobody would be jealous 
I will keep Bizon in my scope for future, Now I just need machine that will not lag when I am preparing scenes. These rendering beasts will come as second wave of improvements when I can showcase why I need such beast.
Thank you for detailed answer and great link.
Haha, well just keep an eye on the CUDA cores / VRAM of the NVidia card inside a ‘pro’ configuration. The price/performance is a bit crazy. RAM ain’t that expensive anymore I think so 128GB would be a good pick.
There are a few things that KeyShot still does over CPU but to work fast having the viewport on ‘GPU’ makes a huge difference. Maybe you can convince them to buy a HP but just replace the GPU with a 4090. It’s cheaper and faster, well even a second hand 3090 is faster than a lot of pro GPU’s. For example, a A4000 16GB has 6144 CUDA cores while a 4090 has 16384. That makes a huge difference in how you experience speed while preparing scenes since KeyShot continuously renders it’s viewport.
@ivan.spasic Not sure where you’re located, so my suggestion may not matter.
Also, if your company is not willing to go with someone they don’t have an existing vendor relationship with, then this may not be of help.
That said, I’m a massive fan of Puget Systems. They have people you can literally talk to, explain what you need, and they do a great job configuring a system for you. They also do all their own internal testing and make very reliable machines and have a reputation for excellent customer service.
They may be a good option since they understand what each software requires and create high-end systems for creators in the media space, so lots of film/television, live events, virtual production etc.
And what’s great is they’re branded as workstations for professionals. You won’t get a bunch of RGB and other nonsense with their builds. Maybe an easier sell to your employer. Their website also is very ‘non-gamey’, which might help your case.
I love my workstation built by them, so I’m always quick to sing their praises when I get a chance.
Here’s their website: https://www.pugetsystems.com/
Thank you Will, I work in Sweden, but Puget Systems is very good place to start.