Fast Render Machine

[andycf]

Couple others that seem to get mentioned a lot are https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk & https://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/workstations but again, not dealt with them.

Another option would be to buy a workstation machine from one of the big manufacturers, Dell (Precision range), HP (Z series) and Lenovo (Thinkstation). You might not be able to buy these machines with the graphics card you want if going down the RT GPU route, but installing them afterwards isn't hard. Just make sure there's enough PCIe slots (on both the case and motherboard in the right configuration so they fit!) for what you want and the power supply can supply enough juice.

Hopefully someone else can chime in with some other options but have a read up online of those mentioned above as one of them should fit the bill. Hopefully some of that helps!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

platform can't get in the way of work unfortunately

True! Whether you do it now or you will have to do in future.Just like you,I'm not fan of windows,but it works and it does the job.

I may wait until the end of the month

+1 .. May is the worst month to buy hardware,both Intel and AMD will offer new platforms next month. In few days Intel will announce the new platform x299 for Skylake X and Kaby lake X CPUs. Same with AMD..So it is better to wait.

so we can fit 3 dual-width graphics cards inside standard (7 expansion slot) case

You should be able to do that with some Ryzen boards now and 3 FE cards or any 3 dual slot cards.

I feel like it's showing its age

the 2009 Mac Pro has the first generation of Xeon CPUs. This architecture is very outdated now and cannot be compared to any CPU manufactured in 2017. On paper,it has 12 cores,but the performance is way behind. the 7700K which has 4 cores and OCed to 5 GHZ cankeep up with multi threaded performance of those 2 Xeons. For other work loads like working with Modo viewport and any other apps,those Xeons will be very slow because their single threaded performance is not good enough (7700K has almost twice the single threaded performance). Using any newer machine you will be able to spot the difference

Mac OS is cut out these days for more advanced 3D stuff

I think it is not the case. The 2016 Macbook Pros work very well(but not the rendering speed) same for the newer Imacs. Nothing is wrong with Mac OS performance compared to windows.

we committed to maxing out one of the newer trash can Mac Pro's it would only be very slightly, marginally faster due to them only having one CPU vs the 2 in ours

Even the trash can has an outdated generation of Xeons. the second generation I think which is Sandy Bridge. the D700s are also outdated and performs like shit. This system is not worth its price at all. Also,having one CPU vs 2 CPUs will not be faster. The reason is that the 6 core Xeons has higher clock speeds compared to the 12 core Xeon,which is like 2.8 GHz or so,if all cores are in load. So for multithreaded performance such as CPU rendering the trash can is slower than the older 12 core Mac pro(2Xeons 6 cores each)

(And no V-Ray GPU rendering as AMD graphics cards only which I don't believe are supported?

You can use AMD cards in Vray using Open Cl. But it is a joke really. The better solution is to get an Nvidia card and connect is via thunderbolt 2 on the Mac Pro. you will get like 90% of performance of your card. Still Mac OS only recognises 3 cards only..and I think in older versions of Mac OS,you will be limited to 2 cards only.

Shame! Apple just seem to have forgotten about Pro users

No..The ignored us intentionally,that is why Apple will never get my money. I have been building hackintoshes since 2011 and it is been years since I bought something from them. Another thing is that Apple will never use Nvidia cards again. Their final cut is optimitzed to run on AMD cards. I have seen some tests where an RX 480 is 10 times faster than an Nvidia 1080ti in Final cut rendering.

[/QUOTE] The goal though, is to have a fast and low maintenance render machine[/QUOTE] peepo No idea why I cannot quote your name. It is stuck with Andy's name
Definitely go with Windows. You will have to do this sooner or later :I unfortunately. For 1200 USD or so you can build a Ryzen system that is faster in CPU rendering than the 12 cores trach can. Still I think you should wait to see what next month brings to us first

[/QUOTE]I'd personally prefer to buy something pre build in a box[/QUOTE]
If you know a friend or someone that can build it for you,it will be better and you will save a lot of money. I have had bad experience with many prebuilt machines unfortunately so I do this myself. the only system that impressed me and never had any problem was from Maingear. Check them out if you want something fancy,other than that,I recommend building it yourself if you have time or finding someone to do it for you. It is very easy. I can right you the parts if you want.

[peepo]

Thanks guys for all the very helpful responses here - extremely helpful and very useful. I'll follow up on the leads of the pre built machines, and also look at a pre built solution as you suggest Muhammed.