iMac for 3D and VFX work, advice needed!

[LauraGrubbe]

I am looking to buy a new computer for work, and I would like to hear some experiences or anything about the iMac. I have a 5 year old iMac atm, but I can't do what I need to do, it's to worn down I guess. Here are the specs I was considering, as far as I understand you can't upgrade the new iMac more than this:

- 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
- 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
- 1TB Fusion Drive
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

And here is what I need to be able to do:

- Heavy 3D modelling/big projects in Autodesk Maya for up to 16 hours at a time
- 3D animation
- Rendering in Maya and V-Ray (easily 10+ hours at a time)
- Big projects in NUKE and After Effects. Again a lot of rendering and quick view.

My plan is to hook up my current 27" as an additional screen with thunderbolt, that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Anyway, will this work out? Do you have any experience/know anyone who works with 3D on a mac? It's a big investment for me so I wanna spend my money wisely and I feel much more comfortable working on a mac than a PC so it's definitely worth the few extra buck for me. I would just like some reassurance that it wont go slow or crash (My current iMac can barely do 4min of rendering before crashing so I have to use other computers for that)

Any help or advice is much appreciated, thanks!

 

[Ak907Freerider]

You should have no issues with that set up. That is the exact model I use. Thing is in that price range going for Mac Pro is in about the same price. For a base Mac Pro that will perform even better. But the 780m is pretty impressive. Going full ssd has it's speed perks but I needed room over full out speed. The fusion has been a beast for speed and has room for any project you need to tackle. I have yet to notice any slowdown. I also run a second monitor well a 32 inch samsung led tv has more inputs that I need use it for ps3. Using thunderbolt to hdmi has been perfect. Bought cable on amazon for $8 works perfect. So buy it enjoy it and if it isn't up to your standards return it and give a Mac Pro a shot.

 

[LauraGrubbe]

Sounds great, thank you so much for you respons! I usually only have the project/projects I'm working on on my com and the rest goes on an external hard-drive so I don't need that much space. I feel more comfortable about it now, but I'll probably have a talk with the guys at humac about the difference between iMac and Mac Pro

 

[yjchua95]

I am looking to buy a new computer for work, and I would like to hear some experiences or anything about the iMac. I have a 5 year old iMac atm, but I can't do what I need to do, it's to worn down I guess. Here are the specs I was considering, as far as I understand you can't upgrade the new iMac more than this:

- 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
- 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
- 1TB Fusion Drive
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

And here is what I need to be able to do:

- Heavy 3D modelling/big projects in Autodesk Maya for up to 16 hours at a time
- 3D animation
- Rendering in Maya and V-Ray (easily 10+ hours at a time)
- Big projects in NUKE and After Effects. Again a lot of rendering and quick view.

My plan is to hook up my current 27" as an additional screen with thunderbolt, that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Anyway, will this work out? Do you have any experience/know anyone who works with 3D on a mac? It's a big investment for me so I wanna spend my money wisely and I feel much more comfortable working on a mac than a PC so it's definitely worth the few extra buck for me. I would just like some reassurance that it wont go slow or crash (My current iMac can barely do 4min of rendering before crashing so I have to use other computers for that)

Any help or advice is much appreciated, thanks!

I use Maya on my 27" too for heavy rendering (3.5GHz i7, 32GB RAM, 4GB GTX780M and 512GB SSD) and it absolutely flies.

However, I suggest getting only 8GB of RAM first. Apple charges daft prices for RAM upgrades. You can buy 4x8GB sticks from elsewhere (like Crucial for instance) and get a lower price.

You might want to consider a pure SSD setup too. A Fusion drive is about as likely to fail as a HDD because the FD still has a HDD sector. If the HDD sector fails, the entire FD drive is toast (think of the FD as an RAID0 combination of a 128GB SSD and a HDD).

256GB should be plenty fast for your needs (720MB/s read, 670MB/s write) as it looks like Apple only uses the Samsung variant of the 256GB in iMacs. 512GB isn't that much faster (720MB/s write, 750MB/s read).