Graphics Workstations & Rendering Systems for Unreal Engine

Understand Unreal’s hardware requirements and pick the perfect 3XS Systems graphics workstation or render server for your project

What is Unreal Engine?

Unreal Engine is a suite of development tools 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. Unreal Engine also supports a wide variety of modelling applications such as 3DS Max, Maya and Cinema 4D to name just a few. Unreal Engine also includes audio production and game development tools including a multiplayer framework and AI editor.

What makes the best system for Unreal Engine?

As Unreal Engine is a suite of applications and is used by such a wide variety of content types, from game development, to TV and film and product visualisation there is no one ideal system configuration. Although every company will make different use of Unreal Engine most systems will fall into three scenarios.

The most common scenario is an all-purpose workstation that will be used to create and render a scene from start to finish, in which case you need to carefully balance the two most important components, the CPU and one or two GPUs in order to get good responsive content creation and rapid rendering.

Moving up from this is an organisation that requires faster rendering, such as a dedicated system in the corner of the office or a workstation that will be left on overnight rendering. In this scenario a workstation with a single CPU and up to four GPUs will provide much faster rendering while still retaining the ability to create models and animations.

The final scenario are companies working on very large projects or that need a rapid turnaround. In this case it makes sense to separate the content creation systems from the rendering systems. This means using workstations like in the first scenario with a good balance between CPU and GPU(s), plus one or more dedicated servers with up to eight GPUs that render offline while the workstation users continue working. These render servers can be hosted locally or provisioned in the cloud with NVIDIA vGPUs.

What CPU should I choose for Unreal Engine?

As explained above, a system that will be used for a mixture of content creation and rendering needs to strike a good balance between CPU and GPU(s). Like most DCC applications Unreal Engine performs best on a CPU with a high frequency and at least eight cores, although more cores can be beneficial in some processes such as compiling shaders. We recommend starting with an AMD Ryzen 9 or Intel Core i9. If you’re also going to doing heavy renders then an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO or Intel Xeon W CPU is a good choice as these have more cores, so will compile code faster and more PCIe lanes, enabling the system to support up to four GPUs. For a dedicated render server we recommend AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon CPUs as these support up to eight GPUs and are enterprise-grade for greater reliability.

What GPU do I need for Unreal Engine?

A fast GPU is crucial for a responsive experience in Unreal Engine, 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 Unreal Engine then we recommend consumer- grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards thanks to their outstanding value for money. 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 Unreal Engine?

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

What storage does Unreal Engine need?

We always recommend using an SSD for the boot drive that will host your OS, Unreal Engine 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, Unreal Engine 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 Unreal Engine 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