Foundry Developers provides a list of system requirements for Nuke software, which is used to ensure compatibility with the hardware in your system. but it doesn’t give you the full picture.
Best CPU for Foundry Nuke
To achieve optimal performance with Foundry Nuke, it is recommended to use a CPU with high clock speeds. Intel’s Core i7 13700K and i9 13900K are good options for this purpose, followed closely by AMD’s Ryzen 7 & Ryzen 9 chips. However, other factors such as the use of plugins or high memory requirements may impact performance.
For instance, if you work with particle effects, a higher core count CPU may be more beneficial. AMD’s Threadripper PRO processors support higher memory totals and provide more cores, making them an excellent choice for larger projects and multithreaded plugins/effects.
Best GPU for Foundry Nuke
As with Cinema 4D, Nuke’s viewport is powered entirely by the GPU. NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and 4080 are cost-effective alternatives, and the RTX 4090 24GB may be beneficial for particularly complicated environments that necessitate more VRAM. VRAM is critical for 3D environments with a large number of polygons and complicated animations.
It’s important to note that Foundry has a partnership with AMD cards, which they often suggest. However, they’ve also advised using NVIDIA Quadro cards at different times, indicating that both NVIDIA and AMD cards are acceptable. Based on in-house experience, TheMVP still advises NVIDIA GPUs.
To run Foundry Nuke, a significant amount of memory is required, especially when rendering a project. Some users even require up to 128GB of RAM.
If you’re dealing with longer or higher resolution projects, it is recommended to use an AMD Threadripper Pro configuration that offers 256GB or 512GB of RAM instead.
Although Intel Core and AMD Ryzen processors tend to offer better single-core performance, a higher amount of RAM is preferred for certain projects.
Storage for Foundry Nuke?
To handle large projects and cache files, it is best to have at least two drives. The primary drive with a 500GB SSD is enough to store Windows and the applications, including Nuke. The second drive, which is ideal for Active Projects and Media Cache, should be a 1 to 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD.
If you have a larger budget or need to store more assets and effects, you can add a third drive, whether an SSD or HDD, for storing those dump files. This drive is sometimes referred to as an “dump drive.”
If you require more storage space for archiving, an internal or external hard drive is a cost-effective solution. Network-attached storage (NAS) is a great choice for shared storage between multiple workstations and data redundancy.
Check out our catalogue of optimised Foundry Nuke builds here.
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