MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 for Maya 3D Production/Rendering

[rkruk]

Hi, I have scoured the web trying to find info on what a good spec machine would be for working with Maya specifically and rendering with Arnold/Vray. Let me know what you think or know with experience that would be best. I'm kind of on the fence with deciding 16 core or 28 core. But would like to know what others think. This is specific to CPU rendering and not GPU rendering as with Redshift or other. But with that said, what would be a complimenting system with CPU and what kind of GPU is adequate.

Note: In the past I was mainly mobile with MacBook Pro, but am more stationed now and need a good desktop for the flow of animation and rendering large graphical scenes between 2k-4k on textures, and am not looking to send to render farms, for cost and speed in rendering and would rather troubleshoot and render from in own office. Thanks.

 

[Mgmx]

The 16 core is great for rendering in Vray. I'm doing production assets in Maya 2020 using Catalina on a 16 core with 128gb of ram and the w5700 and having no issues. Thermals get to about 78 degrees celsius at 100 percent load on the CPU.

The computer in this configuration is about 10 percent faster than my dual 12 core 2680v3 xeon PC (24 total cores) and runs whisper silent on load.

I did the processor swap myself from the 8 core and added 4 sticks of 32GB. I'm pretty sure if I up to 6 sticks to use all the channels on the ram I'll eke out a little more performance as well.

I mainly chose this over the 28 core as the single core speed on the 28 core is not going to age well for single thread processes (like using the GUI in Maya, using the viewport, etc) and while the 28 core will most likely render the frames about 30 percent faster, quality of life in the applications matters just as much.

 

[rkruk]

I finally received my Mac Pro just last week and I also put 384 gb ram and a Vega II in the system. I did finally choose the 16 core model as I thought I could always upgrade later if needed. But compared to my 2017 MacBook Pro it flies through large renders and huge scenes. A definite leap up from my past system. Thanks, Mgmx, for your suggestions.