DTR for Blender 3d modelling / Rendering. Where to start?

[Gurnea]

Hi all, please forgive the n00b "Someone help me, I don't know my arse from my elbow" post.
I'm looking to upgrade to a DTR laptop and trying to find the best performance I can for a budget that tops out at around £2000 GBP ($2600 USD).

I've scoured all of the "best for" affiliate pages I can find for info to no avail, and a friend has pointed me to PC Specialist to spec my own.
Ideally, I'd like to replace my poor, over heating desktop that I don't really have room for, with a laptop. But am unlikely to need the portability of something small and light.
The gaming laptops are pretty, but I don't really value looks over brute performance, and my serious gaming days are long behind me.
The workstations/editing laptops seem impressive, but I'm lost tbh in what I need to improve performance specifically with Blender, etc.
Good sound, would be nice, but not critical - Most will cringe, but a I have decent set of headphones and that will do for me.
Happy to forgo the normal bells and whistles of a "high end" laptop, for more performance.
I'm just so out of touch with what to look for in comparators that I need some help in navigating away from simply Big numbers = Better spec.

Any info on pointers on spec, stuff to read, or where to start would be greatly appreciated.

TIA.

 

[FerrariVie]

The only DTRs that PCS has at the moment are the 17,3" RECOIL IV (Intel) and the 15,6" NOVA (AMD). Do you have any preferences of CPU manufacturer? I don't do modelling and rendering, but I'm assuming that more cores with higher clocks would be beneficial? If so, the AMD would be better, but maybe you might know if Blender is more optimized for Intel or AMD?

Regarding the GPUs, the RTX 2070 is the best one you can get on the Nova, while it is the entry model for the 17 Recoil. But I don't think you need more than that for Blender 3D?

On aesthetics, the Recoil 17 looks a bit gamier with a few RGBs around, while the Nova looks more like a workstation. The Recoil also has A LOT better speakers than the Nova (rubbish), if that makes a difference for you.

Regarding price, I don't think you can reach £2000 on the nova even with the highest spec available (Ryzen 9 3900 with RTX 2070), unless you put lots of storage. The Recoil, meanwhile, you'll need to be on the I7 with RTX 2070 (low-mid specs) to keep on that price point. Performance-wise, the Nova is a no-brainer to me

 

[SpyderTracks]

For any workhorse build like that, really it's the Nova which will be streets ahead of the Recoil.

 

[Gurnea]

The only DTRs that PCS has at the moment are the 17,3" RECOIL IV (Intel) and the 15,6" NOVA (AMD). Do you have any preferences of CPU manufacturer? I don't do modelling and rendering, but I'm assuming that more cores with higher clocks would be beneficial? If so, the AMD would be better, but maybe you might know if Blender is more optimized for Intel or AMD?

Regarding the GPUs, the RTX 2070 is the best one you can get on the Nova, while it is the entry model for the 17 Recoil. But I don't think you need more than that for Blender 3D?

On aesthetics, the Recoil 17 looks a bit gamier with a few RGBs around, while the Nova looks more like a workstation. The Recoil also has A LOT better speakers than the Nova (rubbish), if that makes a difference for you.

Regarding price, I don't think you can reach £2000 on the nova even with the highest spec available (Ryzen 9 3900 with RTX 2070), unless you put lots of storage. The Recoil, meanwhile, you'll need to be on the I7 with RTX 2070 (low-mid specs) to keep on that price point. Performance-wise, the Nova is a no-brainer to me

Thank you for taking to time to give your considered responses. Its appreciated!
Blender appears to be suitable for both AMD and Intel, however it enjoys the multicore performance given by AMD.
Arguably GPU rendering generally follows the bigger the better rule, but short of actually hiring a render farm, its unlikely to need the best and newest GPU. My skill certainly wont.
However, its always nice to get the best performance possible.

I dont mind rubbish built in speakers. I can always use an external speaker for the odd presentation, and headphones will suffice for the rest.

Regarding price - its always nice not to have to spend the whole budget! Or at least, have a little spare for a bit more storage.

The build posted by nursemorph above seems ideal - I may cough up for 64gb Ram but am unsure if this is overkill for the system itself.
Bigger number better, right?

The question now is: is there anything more powerful available for similar price?

 

[FerrariVie]

Thank you for taking to time to give your considered responses. Its appreciated!
Blender appears to be suitable for both AMD and Intel, however it enjoys the multicore performance given by AMD.
Arguably GPU rendering generally follows the bigger the better rule, but short of actually hiring a render farm, its unlikely to need the best and newest GPU. My skill certainly wont.
However, its always nice to get the best performance possible.

I dont mind rubbish built in speakers. I can always use an external speaker for the odd presentation, and headphones will suffice for the rest.

Regarding price - its always nice not to have to spend the whole budget! Or at least, have a little spare for a bit more storage.

The build posted by nursemorph above seems ideal - I may cough up for 64gb Ram but am unsure if this is overkill for the system itself.
Bigger number better, right?

The question now is: is there anything more powerful available for similar price?

I agree with @Nursemorph . the Nova is the best performance laptop you can get below £2000, unless you go for a Desktop PC. On the laptop side, only going above £2000 that the Recoil will offer you better GPUs, but even the best intel CPU is not so good as the 3900 AMD on the Nova (but still quite good, anyway).

Regarding the RAM, it actually only depends on how much will be used by Blender. For gaming, 32Gb is already overkill and I only bought that much RAM myself because I don't think I'll ever need to upgrade it during the whole life of the laptop. However, on my work's workstation (Xeon with Nvidia Quadro) I can easily use all the 32Gb of RAM and I'm asking for an upgrade to 64Gb. There are some data analysis tools that handle the data on the RAM to improve performance and user experience, so when the RAM gets topped up and it starts using virtual memory, it gets VERY slow and almost unusable (even with a SATA SSD drive). So only you will know how much RAM you need.

 

[RobSas]

Rendering on my (very old) first gen i7 with 4GB memory and a GTX770 was nightmare for high-poly scenes.

Kitbash-3D assets were especially a nightmare as their assets are extremely high-poly. The Blender viewport struggled, the computer cried and I ground my teeth in frustration.

After some searching and youtubing I came across the FREE Sheep-IT distributed render farm which is Blender focussed.

23 hour renders were done in 2 for high-poly PBR textured scenes!

Eevee and Cycles are both supported. You'll just need to clean your Blender file and pack the textures before uploading, run the render client on your PC and you'll drop into the queue. Once 1 frame from your file is done it's thrown to anyone else running the client for distributed rendering. Very cool.

I've only come across one instance that couldn't be rendered involving Blender Drivers. I was using Drivers to animate a propeller on a Spitfire model and Sheep-IT rejected it after it scanned the file citing security concerns due to python code / drivers.

Sheep-IT: https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/

I'm waiting on my new RTX3090 system due to be delivered soon but will continue to Sheep-IT even if it's to render for other users overnight. Just to be clear, I'm not affiliated or employed by Sheep-IT, just a very happy user!

Good luck!