Graphics Workstations for Unity

Understand Unity’s hardware requirements and pick the perfect 3XS Systems graphics workstation for your project

What is Unity?

Unity is a development tool for creating real-time 3D graphics suite that be used for all stages of the DCC (Digital Content Creaton) pipeline, including modelling, animation and rendering.

What makes the best system for Unity?

As Unity has many facets including modelling, animation, rendering plus game development tools such as AI modelling it demands a well-balanced workstation to perform responsively.

What CPU should I choose for Unity?

Many of the operations carried out in the Unity Editor are single-threaded so it’s important to choose a CPU with high frequency and high IPC. We recommend starting with an AMD Ryzen 9 or Intel Core i9 CPU as these have the best-in-class single-threaded performance, but a good number of cores for the more multi-threaded tasks in Unity such as baking lights and compiling. If you’re also going to doing heavy renders then an AMD Threadripper PRO or Intel Xeon W CPU is a good choice as these have more CPU cores and PCIe lanes, enabling the system to support multiple GPUs.

What GPU do I need for Unity?

A fast GPU is crucial for a responsive DCC experience in Unity, with more powerful models providing a more noticeable benefit when working with complex 3D models and high resolution textures. We recommend the NVIDIA RTX GPUs as a good starting point in the NVIDIA range, adding in more GPUs if budget allows if you’re also going to be rendering.

If you are considering a dedicated workstation for Unity then we recommend consumer-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards thanks to their outstanding value for money. This is particularly relevant if you’re developing games using Unity, as GeForce cards are the most popular gaming GPUs on the market so it makes sense to development using the same hardware. However, if you’re also planning on modelling on the same workstation then it’s worth considering a professional-grade NVIDIA RTX GPU thanks to their larger memory buffer and certified drivers. For the same reasons we recommend professional grade GPUs in rendering servers.

How much RAM is recommended for Unity?

The minimum RAM that we would recommend for Unity is 32GB, upgrading to more memory if you’re working with large projects or multiple applications at once.

What storage does Unity need?

We always recommend using an SSD for the boot drive that will host your OS, Unity itself, and any active projects you are working on. The high speed of SSDs allows your system to boot, launch applications, and load files many times faster than any traditional hard drive. Alternatively, as your work projects increase you may want to consider a second SSD or higher capacity HDD - depending on your budget - so your OS, Unity and live projects benefit from SSD speed, but your archived work uses the HDD where speed isn’t a necessity and costs can be lowered. Another archive solution could be to employ an external NAS device allowing sharing and RAID protection.

When it comes to deciding on drive capacity, this will very much depend on your number of files and the model sizes. You should also consider the space required by other applications and their associated files too.

Recommended Unity Workstation Specifications

Workstation specifications
	High-End	Mid-Range	Entry-Level
CPU	AMD Threadripper PRO / Intel Xeon W	AMD Threadripper PRO / Intel Xeon W	AMD Ryzen 9 / Intel Core i9
RAM	128GB	64GB	64GB
GPU	Up to four NVIDIA RTX	Up to four NVIDIA RTX	NVIDIA RTX