AJLynn Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 After getting sick of waiting for Intel to fix their motherboards, I went ahead and updated http://www.3datstech.com/ - it'll be updated again when Sandy Bridge motherboards become available again. Please post any and all questions about workstation buying advice here, and we'll do our best to field them. But for now I'm going home and watching TV, because the weirdos sitting next to me in this coffee shop are having a conversation about how nobody understands that they're immortal and it's starting to freak me out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Looks good Andrew but one thing I will disagree on, the high-end level workstation. I personally would go with the i7-970, seeing as it can be had for $300-$400 less than the 980x and 990x. With that savings, get you some higher capacity SSDs or get some more. Like you said, "Since this site does not actually recommend extreme overclocking, the 970 is the clear value winner." Thanks for another great months of builds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 , because the weirdos sitting next to me in this coffee shop are having a conversation about how nobody understands that they're immortal and it's starting to freak me out. you should have stuck a knife and see if they bleed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Chris, did I screw up? I thought I'd put the i7-970 in the High End (and the High End CUDA version) this month - that's what I see in my view of the Newegg pages. Is it showing you something different? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 Andrew, it is now....very weird. Maybe I had a 980x in my cart and some how it glitched into your cart. who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 Chris, I can't replicate the problem - I've tried it on different computers and different browsers and it only shows the 970 in both the regular and CUDA high-end boxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 It was something weird on my end. I see the i7-970 now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted February 24, 2011 Share Posted February 24, 2011 Thanks for the post Andrew. Very informative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jinsley Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 If you guys have a chance to take a peek, this is the build I am looking at purchasing on Monday. It is going to be for home use to work on some of my own projects and do a little freelance in any down-time I may come across... I am generally not to savvy with hardware and what to/ not to buy so any recommended changes or advice would be more than welcome... Intel Core i7 970 Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus Direct Touch 4 Heatpipe Heatsink Corsair TX750W Power Supply Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5IN SSD Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case ASUS Sabertooth X58 LGA1366 DDR3 CrossFireX SLI XFX Radeon HD 6970 ( I looked at the v5800, v7800, and Quadro 2000, but I am not totally sold on workstation cards... are they really necessary???) Mushkin Enhanced Blackline Frostbyte RAM - 12 GB to start and 24 down the road... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 25, 2011 Author Share Posted February 25, 2011 Yeah, that should work well. Workstation cards are optional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 If you guys have a chance to take a peek, this is the build I am looking at purchasing on Monday. It is going to be for home use to work on some of my own projects and do a little freelance in any down-time I may come across... I am generally not to savvy with hardware and what to/ not to buy so any recommended changes or advice would be more than welcome... Intel Core i7 970 Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus Direct Touch 4 Heatpipe Heatsink Corsair TX750W Power Supply Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5IN SSD Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case ASUS Sabertooth X58 LGA1366 DDR3 CrossFireX SLI XFX Radeon HD 6970 ( I looked at the v5800, v7800, and Quadro 2000, but I am not totally sold on workstation cards... are they really necessary???) Mushkin Enhanced Blackline Frostbyte RAM - 12 GB to start and 24 down the road... Funny! I had been checking on prices damn near identical to this. I was looking at the GTX 570 for around $379. I already have the case. After seeing the price point / processing power of the i7-970 vs the i7-980x I couldn't justify the extra $500. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jinsley Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 Thanks for the replies Andrew and Jason... Yeah, it seems like a pretty good set up to me, but I had some trouble picking the proper motherboard and video card... too many choices for cards, and the nicer quadros and ATI cards are out of my price range right now (I have to buy the missus a dishwasher and stove in the next few months...). I hear you can unlock a HD6950 to the HD6970 model, so I might check that out too. Some people have told me that the nVidia cards play nicer with max and PS... any truth to that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 26, 2011 Author Share Posted February 26, 2011 With Max... well, I guess it depends which company has the most recent driver update Both work fine, you could go with the ATI or some nVidia card - though there isn't really a directly comparable nVidia, the 560 being below the 6950 and the 570 above. I don't know about this unlocking and whether it's actually going to do much in Max. (Really, this stuff is getting so powerful, I can get... not great, but certainly usable... performance with a couple million polys on an i5-760 with a Radeon 5750 at 4gb in 64 bit. In Photoshop you're not going to see any difference between any reasonably competent video cards.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jinsley Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Thanks guys, your help was great and I bought the machine on the weekend... there were some great sales on at the NCIX store in Richmond. In the end I went with: Intel Core i7 970 Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5IN SSD Corsair Obsidian Series 800D case ASUS Sabertooth X58 Corsair Vengeance 12GB XFX Radeon HD 6970 2GB Corsair Professional HX850W Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 28, 2011 Author Share Posted February 28, 2011 Very nice. I think that's going to be fast. Didn't know NCIX had stores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jinsley Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 I hope so... I put a modular power supply in, with hopes that in a few more months down the road I am going to add another 6970 and top up the power supply a little more if needed... The NCIX stores in Van are OK, there are some really good ones and then some where the service is questionable... I like the Aberdeen store in Richmond, the sales guys know their stuff and are willing to sit and chat about hardware, software, whatever as long as you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xaoo Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Hi, I know that this listing is incomplete as it does not have Sandy Bridge motherboards, but I am planing to buy a PC based on that architecture and I would like to know your opinion. I should also add that I will use this machine for modeling in 3ds max and rendering in vray. I am intermediate level, but I would like to have a decent machine. CPU - Intel i7 2600K Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Motherboard - ASUS P8R67 PRO or ASUS P8R67 WS REVOLUTION RAM - 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) Graphics - PNY Quadro 2000 1GB or NVidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB or different? HDD - 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) Power supply - CORSAIR 650W TX Series I still cannot decide which graphics card should I buy. Can you please advise? Thanks for your help, xaoo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Hi, I know that this listing is incomplete as it does not have Sandy Bridge motherboards, but I am planing to buy a PC based on that architecture and I would like to know your opinion. I should also add that I will use this machine for modeling in 3ds max and rendering in vray. I am intermediate level, but I would like to have a decent machine. CPU - Intel i7 2600K Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Motherboard - ASUS P8R67 PRO or ASUS P8R67 WS REVOLUTION RAM - 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) Graphics - PNY Quadro 2000 1GB or NVidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB or different? HDD - 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) Power supply - CORSAIR 650W TX Series I still cannot decide which graphics card should I buy. Can you please advise? Thanks for your help, xaoo If you have a little bit more money, the cost of going from 8GB RAM to 12GB will only be about $40-$50. In the long run for those large scenes the extra RAM will come in handy. The Quadro 2000 is twice the cost of the GTX 460 2GB card. If you are willing to pay $449 for a card why not get dual GTX 560 2GB cards in SLI or a GTX 570? Do a search on NewEgg under the power supplies and on the left side of the screen you will see the Power Supply Calculator. Based on 12GB of RAM, High End Motherboard, DVD-RW, 7200RPM HD, and dual GTX 460, you should be looking at a PS of 700W or greater. Based purely on your specified system you are looking at you should be looking at a PS of 500W or greater. Please keep in mind that these are estimates by their software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Thanks guys, your help was great and I bought the machine on the weekend... there were some great sales on at the NCIX store in Richmond. In the end I went with: Intel Core i7 970 Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5IN SSD Corsair Obsidian Series 800D case ASUS Sabertooth X58 Corsair Vengeance 12GB XFX Radeon HD 6970 2GB Corsair Professional HX850W All you need to add now is a storage drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Hi, I know that this listing is incomplete as it does not have Sandy Bridge motherboards, but I am planing to buy a PC based on that architecture and I would like to know your opinion. I should also add that I will use this machine for modeling in 3ds max and rendering in vray. I am intermediate level, but I would like to have a decent machine. CPU - Intel i7 2600K Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Motherboard - ASUS P8R67 PRO or ASUS P8R67 WS REVOLUTION RAM - 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) Graphics - PNY Quadro 2000 1GB or NVidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB or different? HDD - 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) Power supply - CORSAIR 650W TX Series I still cannot decide which graphics card should I buy. Can you please advise? Thanks for your help, xaooGFX card wise I would get a 500 series by eVGA that has 1.5gigs of ram or a Palit/Gainward card that has 3gigs of ram. Also, you may jump up the PSU to the 750HX by Corsair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 8, 2011 Author Share Posted March 8, 2011 Yeah, right now unless you get a good price I don't see a compelling reason to choose a Geforce 460 over a 560, and I see very little motivation to buy a Quadro 2000. 12GB is a bit odd on a MB with 4 DIMM slots - I'd either get 16, or get 8GB in the form of two 4GB DIMMs to keep the option of buying two more later, unless 4GB DIMMs are particularly expensive in your area. And make sure to confirm with your supplier that they are providing a new motherboard, as in post-recall. These are in short supply, but you don't want an old one since it might have the bad SATA chip problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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