PC for Point Clouds

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ecasagrande
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PC for Point Clouds

Post by ecasagrande »

I am currently using a MS Surface Book 2 as my workstation. It is hobbled with a 25w CPU, and is very thermally limited with basically everything it does. I am potentially looking to replace it with a machine that is purpose-built to handle this work, as I see a lot of pinned CPU situations, and I want to reduce that.

My issue is that it doesn't seem like CPU is always the limit, so I'm not sure what the limit is in those not-because-of-the-CPU situations. I'm presuming memory bandwidth, but I am not aware of how I would test that. The SSD also seems to have no real problems keeping up.

Regardless, what should I be going for with a new PC? Max clockspeed (Intel i9), more cores (Ryzen 9), more cores and more memory bandwidth (Threadripper)? I know my current laptop peaks at about 2GHz when you're asking it to do actual work. I know my home PC (which I unfortunately do not currently have access to for testing) will happily run 4.4GHz on 12 cores for an unlimited amount of time. And I know the last workstation I built would do 4.2GHz across 24 cores for an unlimited amount of time, and at double the memory bandwidth.

I'm new to this place, so I'm not looking to have them throw a pile of cash at minimal gains. However, for $2k, I could build something pretty hefty, especially if I know where to put my $$.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by Carbix »

This is what you nee...want.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/7VnsRk

But what you need is 3 fast hard drives 1 with 500-1tb of storage and 2x drives with 3x times the capacity of your largest project. You might need to be creative with storage. The 2 drives are used for main “worksite” drive and the other is a scratch disk/temp file dump area.

When it comes to CPU go with speed over cores. But cores do come in a close second.

You could get away with this.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/W3Z4Rk

I did not show a video card. Find a used 1080ti, only thing you will ever really need is video memory. The 1080ti has 11gb. They can be found for like $700 used.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by Raimund58 »

Carbix wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 6:04 am I did not show a video card. Find a used 1080ti, only thing you will ever really need is video memory. The 1080ti has 11gb. They can be found for like $700 used.
700$ for a used GTX 1080ti? You can get a new RTX 3080 for 700$... Or a used RTX 2080ti for ca. 500$ :D
\o/
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by ecasagrande »

Thanks for the input! I contacted purchasing and they said it's going to be December by the time I have a CHANCE to replace this laptop :(.

Good news, I found an Alienware PC in accounting with a 3800X. Apparently was purchased "because accounting needed a more powerful PC", but changing licensing to the new PC was a problem. So, there it sat, collecting dust.

Come December, maybe ZEN3 will be able to bridge that clockspeed gap to Intel's newest heaters, and I can scoop up something shiny.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by VinceMain »

I recently did a "Budget" build for my boss following the guidelines of a build I have at home (had acceptable performance for pointclouds) But that worked out roughly to under $1000 . My findings are depending on the software you use, CPU helps processing point clouds ( Unifying and importing ) and GPU does not really do much but a SSD improve performance across the board. We have old workstations from 2014 we fitted with SSD and have seen a improvement on performance in Leica Cyclone. But saying this, working with 3D Reshaper ( 3DR Cyclone now ) that just grabs all the ram you have in meshing and cleaning up of the point cloud.

AMD Ryzen are a good prospect if you want to save money .
Nvidia 1660 are still viable if the money is tight
32GB ram or more is a must. But don't buy faster ram if you are buying intel CPU as most CPU's only support 2400mhz Ram.
SSD of 512GB
2X 2TB Hard drive that are reliable like surveillance drive that are used to a lot of read and writing onto the drive .
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by Groothedde-ing »

Carbix wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 6:04 am This is what you nee...want.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/7VnsRk

But what you need is 3 fast hard drives 1 with 500-1tb of storage and 2x drives with 3x times the capacity of your largest project. You might need to be creative with storage. The 2 drives are used for main “worksite” drive and the other is a scratch disk/temp file dump area.

When it comes to CPU go with speed over cores. But cores do come in a close second.

You could get away with this.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/W3Z4Rk

I did not show a video card. Find a used 1080ti, only thing you will ever really need is video memory. The 1080ti has 11gb. They can be found for like $700 used.
What is your experience with the Threadripper? The support department of Leica Benelux advised me against it, because Register360 could not handle this processor properly. Instead, an Intel i9 processor was recommended. I currently have this one in the PC.

I have no idea how Cyclone core deals with this, but from what I've heard it has only recently started using multiple cores.

We are about to purchase a new PC due to expansion and am also curious what the best PC would be. At the moment I work with the following components: NVIDIA Quadro P4000, Intel Core i9-7940X, WD Black 4TB, Samsung 970 PRO 1TB M.2, Samsung 860 PRO 4TB and Corsair Vengeance LPX - DDR4 128 GB memory. This combination works very well for me.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by Carbix »

If your able to get the system up to 4.5ghz it should be working very good.

AMD does work fine. There is a test file I uploaded that I can pump back up. Download Kingsway and see how well your system does.

I still need to make my second benchmark file. “The Forest”

I personally want to upgrade to a 3970x Threadripper but I’m honestly not sure how much of an improvement I would see. Going from 4 Numa nodes to 1 could allow more threads at once to be managed under the project.

In the end lots of threads is only really helpful when your viewing the point cloud in 3D bundle view and when you are importing and exporting with more than 64 setups at once.

Point cloud clean up is done with multiple threads. “The Forest” bench mark will test that. I might get it out next week.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by SailingBen »

Hi Team,

Can you kindly take a look at this spec and comment on it's suitability for Point Cloud processing and modelling etc. If you can see any obvious weaknesses etc I would be much obliged for your help.

Cheers,

Ben....

ThinkStation P620
Part Number: 30E0CTO1WW

Sale Price:£3,039.99

System Specs: ( Edit ) • Processor : AMD Threadripper Pro 3945WX Processor (6MB Cache, Max Boost up to 4.30GHz)
• Operating System : Windows 10 Pro 64
• Operating System Language : Windows 10 Pro 64 English
• Motherboard : MB AMD Castle Peak • Memory : Quantity 4 x 16 GB RDIMM DDR4 3200MHz ECC
• Memory Qty : 4 • First Video Adapter : NVIDIA® Quadro® P620 2GB (4xMini DP) High Profile
• First Onboard M.2 SSD Boot Drive : Yes • First Onboard M.2 SSD : 1TB Solid State Drive, M.2 2280, PCIe NVMe Gen4x4, TLC, Opal 2.0
• First Onboard M.2 SSD QTY : 1
• Second Onboard M.2 SSD : 1TB Solid State Drive, M.2 2280, PCIe NVMe Gen4x4, TLC, Opal 2.0
• Second Onboard M.2 SSD QTY : 1
• Quad AIC M.2 PCIe Adapter : Quad AIC M.2 PCIe Adapter
• Quad AIC M.2 SSD Boot Drive : No
• First Quad AIC M.2 SSD : Quantity 2 x 1TB Solid State Drive, M.2 2280, PCIe NVMe Gen3x4, TLC, Opal 2.0
• First Quad AIC M.2 SSD QTY : 2
• Second Quad AIC M.2 SSD QTY : 0
• Single AIC M.2 SSD QTY : 0
• Storage Controller Adapter : AMD Integrated Controller
• Ethernet Adapter : Aquantia 10G Ethernet Adapter Full Height
• WiFi Wireless LAN Adapter : Intel Wireless-AC 9260 2x2 AC, Bluetooth Version 5.0
• Audio Card : Integrated Audio
• Power Cord : LineCord - UK
• Power Supply : Tower WRX80 92% Power 1000W
• Warranty : 3 Year On-site
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by Leandre Robitaille »

That is an amazing pc! I would point towards 128gb of ram as a personnal preference for the minimum amount ram. I also would consider a hot pcie raid controller for "hot projects". Basically get the hyper x raid controller with 4x nvme ssd in a raid0 configuration
https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboard- ... 6-CARD-V2/
Thats what I did for my pc and was the best move ever.
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Re: PC for Point Clouds

Post by smacl »

SailingBen wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 4:26 pm Hi Team,

Can you kindly take a look at this spec and comment on it's suitability for Point Cloud processing and modelling etc. If you can see any obvious weaknesses etc I would be much obliged for your help.

Cheers,

Ben....
Depends very much on which software you're using. The bottleneck on your linked PC for anything that uses the GPU is the 2GB Quadro P620 which is not a great perfromer by todays standards for very big data sets. Midrange GPU would be something like a GeForce 2060 which is much faster and has 3 times the memory, a high end graphics card would be much faster again. You list the Power supply as "Tower WRX80 92% Power 1000W" but that seems to be a description of the case and a no-name PSU.

Not bad for the money, given parts have become very expensive and hard to get at the moment due to the upsurge in crypto currency and mining. Upgrading the GPU would also be an easy job as an when prices stabalise again.
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SCC Point Cloud module
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