Need Advice on modeling/rendering workstation

[Gabriella_A]

Good evening to everyone

 

I work with 3dstudio max, Vray (not RT) and photoshop, most of the time.

 

I need a new workstation, I'm a freelancer and I'm starting to have a good amount of daily job (oh well, I hope It will improve, but these are hard days...)

 

I will transform my current pc in a render node, and I need a better pc...

 

I started with the Andrew Lynn's List on amazon in order to achieve a pretty good configuration ...

I asked to some vendors, but they can't really give a good avice...

 

These were my ideas... please advice, I'm a bit stuck...

 

processor -- i7 2700 or 3770 or 3820 ??

graphics -- Nvidia GTX 570 / 580 (1280 mb or 3,4 ?? ) or FirePro V5900 ??

(one vendor said that it's better to have a complete intel configuration, so i7+ nvidia or AMD + Firepro ... Other says that's quadro would be a better solution... but I DON'T make CUDA renderings so far and the only affordable quadro for me is the 600 that is REALLY old... I'm also a bit scared for the non-supported drivers for max using the NVIDIA... But on the other end I'm a happy user of a 5770 Radeon...)

 

16 Gb ram DDR3

SSD 128 gb corsair

HDD Seagate 1Tb 7200 rpm (I also have a backup 4Tb Western digital)

motherboard ASUS P8Z68-V-PRO/GN3 (this was reccomended from a vendor...)

 

Thanks in advance,

Gabriella

[sakiskalogirou]

Hey man, i would suggest you the following

 

Cpu: Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz £229.99

Mob: Gigabyte X79-UD5 Intel X79 £229.99

Gfx: Buy a quadro/firepro

Hdd: definitively an ssd for primary

Ram: 12 - 16Gigs should be fine

 

I have a dual xeon setup and am using a quadro 4000 it's stable and excellent viewport performance.

 

The new generation cpu's from intel perform very well. Now about the graphic card since you are not interested in vray RT both nvidia and ati will do your job depends by your budget.

[AJLynn]

i7 3820 - yes, that's a good option. You can get a 3770 if that saves you some money. They use a different motherboard. The Z68 motherboard you mentioned is for the 3770, not the 3820.

 

Video card - you've got a Radeon and you like it, why mess with what works? Personally I use a 5750. Currently the FirePro is a better bet than the Quadro - nVidia is still selling Quadros based on Geforce 400 series chips, and they haven't updated their performance plugin to work with recent versions of Max, so I don't see why you'd bother - but the Radeons are better value for money and do fine in Max.

 

Now the 3820 is a Socket 2011 CPU and Socket 11 motherboards come in 4 or 8 memory slot models. Check what you're getting. 8 slots is better, for future upgrades - you put 4GB DIMMs in 4 of the slots, for 16GB, and later if the urge strikes you can make it 32GB by filling the other slots. Most people wouldn't have any use for 32GB, but the extra 16GB would be under $100 so if you ever wanted to do it it's not a big deal.

 

Hard drives - the SSD is optional, but recommended. It speed up load times. Once your software is loaded it doesn't really do anything. So it cuts down those annoying waits but it's optional. The things are nice but they're a much bigger deal in laptops, I don't know why people get so enthusiastic about them that they're now considered a necessity in a desktop.

[Gabriella_A]

Thank you so much for your replies.

I will definitively switch for a faster Cpu, I've asked a New quotation.

 

@alynn

I agree completely with you, but here lots of People Are saying " only the quadro Are certified with Max" " the radeon and the gtx Are for gaming and not for professionals".. They scared me a bit

My radeon is a good card, but I had two years ago some problems with the drivers ( catalist) and had to refurbish a broken card. That series

Really unlucky.

What kind of radeon would you suggest? In your amazon's list you put the firepro v5900.. You still suggest that card?

Thanks again in advance

Gabry

[AJLynn]

The Amazon lists need an update (coming soon) but yes, the FirePro V5900 is still a recommendation, if you want a "certified" card. There are no Quadros I can currently recommend.

 

As for Radeon cards, I don't know what Italian prices are like or what you want to spend but going by what they cost here, a Radeon 6850 at about $150 is great on a budget, in the middle I like the 7850 for around $260 (performance compares to Geforce 570, which is no slouch at all, but cheaper and uses less power) and higher up, the 7870. But I wouldn't spend for the 7870, I'd choose from the 6850 or 7850.

[Gabriella_A]

Indredible to say, the i7 3820 has the same price of the i7 2700 K... I only need a bigger fan cooler.

The i7 2700 can be overclocked, but I think that It's not a safe thing to do with a machine that could render hours (or days...)

 

The motherboard has 4 free more slots, I could expand to 32 gb .. If I'll need it.

 

Probably I'll go for the GTX 580, some people had some problems with the radeon drivers (7850)... and I still remember the nightmare with the 5770 two years ago.

Here in Italy the GTX 580 has the same price of the V5900 FirePro.

 

Thanks again Andrew, You have been SO helpful.

 

Gabriella

[Dimitris Tolios]

CPU: i7-3770K

Mobo: ASUS P8Z77-V

RAM: I would get 16GB in 2x8GB Dimms (DDR1600~1866 recomended, above that the performance boost / price is unimpressive). You would still have 2x dimm slots free for getting up to 32GBs (the limit for that CPU/Mobo).

SSD: Samsung 830 or Crucial m4 128GBs for Win + Applications + Swap file - not required, but will make your new system feel zippier. Who doesn't like 3DS and PS launching in 1/10 the time?

 

The above is a pretty safe bet. I would say it's better than the 3820, as it is faster @ stock speeds (turboboosts more and the extra cache on the Sandy-E is not that useful in real life 3DS or PS performance. I believe the 2011 platform is cool if you are planning on going more than 32GB of ram (getting a 8 dimm slot mobo helps) and more than 2 GPUs. Since you don't care much for VRay RT GPU or other GPU accelerated renderer, I don't think you will need the latter...and I doubt that you would ask about mainstream i7s if you needed more than 16-32GB of ram - you would know already if you've hit a wall in the past. I read on the forums were games with more money than they need buy their Sandy-Es with 3-4GPUs and 64GBs of Ram where most games would do ok with 4-6GB (actually few games really occupy more than 2.5-3GBs).

 

Mild overclocking is actually pretty stable and I've been using hotter CPUs back in my days in Athens (Italy might be hot, but so is Greece), overclocked and air-cooled in naturally ventilated rooms with no issues after the first 1-2 weeks when settings would "settle" on a stable setup. 3770K can do around 4.3-4.4GHz on stock voltage with a decent air cooler or a corsair H80 water cooler. Pushing higher than that is getting tricky, as the CPU average temp jumps a lot with just a 100MHz increase above that. When O/Ced is leaving the 3820 further behind (which also does not o/c a lot). A H80 or H100 water cooler is not a bad investement for someone that doesn't want to get involved with custom water cooling rigs, otherwise there is a huge selection of sub $50 air coolers that can impove the stock cooler's performance a lot (2011 socket CPUs do not come with any cooler tho).

 

The GTX580 is not a good choice for view-port acceleration. It's bulky, noisy and consumes a lot of power even when idling. It is a definitive choice for CUDA accelerated renderers etc, only because it was available with 3GB of VRAM, often needed for complex scenes, and because Quadros and Teslas with equivalent performance and 3-4GB or memory cost 5 times the price. For viewport acceleration this amount of ram goes unused.

 

AMD/ATI cards have better viewport performance for the price, run cooler and consume less power. If you were planing to fund a GTX580, an ATI V5900 FirePro is within your reach and that card blows away Quadros multiple times pricier while having nice multi-monitor support (in case you need 3-4 monitors driven by a single card

 

I would go for a GTX 560 Ti 1GB if I wanted to stick with nVidia. I believe it's fast enough, and packs some punch for the occasional CUDA accelerated application and VRAM buffer is more than enough for everyday usage. Otherwise I would settle for one of the ATI/AMDs Andrew suggested.

[spanish pants]

Sorry to hijack the thread but i´m going to build a similar system, i´m just a little confused regarding the motherboard. I´ve heard go for the P8Z68-V as well as the P8Z77-V. There are so many versions of these two that i don´t know which one would give the best performance vs price.

This will be my work/render station for at least a year, but i need to control costs but get a good board.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Sorry to hijack the thread but i´m going to build a similar system, i´m just a little confused regarding the motherboard. I´ve heard go for the P8Z68-V as well as the P8Z77-V. There are so many versions of these two that i don´t know which one would give the best performance vs price.

This will be my work/render station for at least a year, but i need to control costs but get a good board.

 

Totaly depends on your budget and the processor you plan on using:

Z77 adds native USB 3.0 and Sata 6MBps on the chipset. Z68 is not "slower" in most cases, and most mobos enable the above features through 3rd party controllers anyways.

 

The best performance / price is almost always the cheapest one. The more expensive versions add more controllers, more brackets / cables, more complex UEFI BIOS implementations that most likely will mean nothing to you unless you plan on tweaking / overclocking etc often, and better/smarter speed (noise) control options for your CPU and case fans (it is said that the ASUS fan control software is actually the best around). And ofc is the vanity factor, as many enthousiasts want to have the absolute bigger/latest/better/more expensive, thus the gazilion options to keep the market - and bragging rights - alive an kicking for long after the launch of the basic model.

 

Generally the Z68 was meant for the Sandybridge CPU generation, but will work with Ivy bridge aswell. High end Z68 mobos tend to be getting cheaper as shops try to get rid of their stock. Generally you will get a similarly "tiered" Z77 mobo 10-20% more expensive than a Z68 one. Ivy CPUs are within 5-10% of the equivalent Sandy model, and in some cases there is no price diff. at all.

 

I tend to believe that for the 99% of the consumers, even for demanding applications and prof. use, even the most basic models provide more than you will ever need: lots of USB 3.0s with some 2.0s for input devices etc that couldn't care less for 3.0, at least 6 Sata ports (com on, it's enough, if not you would get a proper 3rd party RAID controller anyways as no Z68/77 mobo solution would have a good one onboard) and at least 2x full length PCIe for dual GPUs. Also even the most basic models (at least from manufacturers like ASUS) allow for 90-95% of the overclocking potential to be reached in a couple of easy steps with proper stability - aka it boils down again to absolute extremes, bragging-right-pee-contests etc - just like all geek-related extremes, tuned cars, card-game collections etc...if you were into this, you would not ask for price/performance, you would go for the shinier or you would not be happy and your friends would tweet about you being inadequate as a man unless you had a "man's mobo" (along with the fetish case, cooler etc).

 

Long story short, you can rarely go wrong choosing even a cheap mobo featuring a hi-end chipset like the Z series - given it's made from one of the well known brands - Asus / msi / Gigabyte are all safe bets, with ashrock / ecs / EVGA etc also throwing great designs. It's like buying a mid-range car - most likely better than anybody would dream of 10 years ago, still people will find things to whine about. personal pref aside, how wrong can you go buying either a Honda / Toyota / Hyundai for example? All are safe (conservative most likely) bets, and 99% of the people who will claim otherwise, have driven none and are inflating stories they've half-read and half-understood about in some forum or review site.

[spanish pants]

Dimitri, thanks for the info it eases some of the stress i tend to associate with these types of things.

 

The processor i´ve decided on is the i7 3770. It falls within my budget and will be miles above what i have now. I think perhaps i should lower my budget slightly for the board though. The ones i´m looking at currently sit between 165 and 190€. Based on what you´re telling me i can get away with something slightly cheaper, still get a good board and use the difference for more memory.

 

As for the penis waving aspect of this, it hadn´t even come into the equation when selecting my components. Those years are long behind me...for the most part, lol! I tend to focus on what gives me the best deal for my money, but it´s been a while since i´ve had to think about putting a system together i thought i had better ask people who are more knowledgable than myself.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Dimitri, thanks for the info it eases some of the stress i tend to associate with these types of things.

 

The processor i´ve decided on is the i7 3770. It falls within my budget and will be miles above what i have now. I think perhaps i should lower my budget slightly for the board though. The ones i´m looking at currently sit between 165 and 190€. Based on what you´re telling me i can get away with something slightly cheaper, still get a good board and use the difference for more memory.

 

As for the penis waving aspect of this, it hadn´t even come into the equation when selecting my components. Those years are long behind me...for the most part, lol! I tend to focus on what gives me the best deal for my money, but it´s been a while since i´ve had to think about putting a system together i thought i had better ask people who are more knowledgable than myself.

 

Sounds good.

3770 is a solid choice. Latest APUs from AMD do promise a lot as the OpenCL acceleration built-in is very good, but as most applications are not "up to the task" in implementing these routines, the raw computation power of the i7 is unmatched. I hope serious houses like Adobe which seem to embrace OpenCL more and more will push things into a more competitive market (and make tick+s and tocks be even more significant every year for us consumers).

 

Z77 boards just above €100 seem to provide everything actually needed, especially if you don't plan on overclocking, custom cases, a gazilion of extra fans and in-case storage devices.

 

Spending more money on a high efficiency PSU can mean more towards system stability and longevity than a couple of extra phases regulating Vcore - perhaps the only significant upgrade "premium" MoBos over over their "lite" siblings. The rest is extra USB slots which most ppl have an abundance of unused anyways, and in some cases useful niche controllers - a wifi adapter you might need, a thunderbold port you just have to have etc - most of those can be added as expansion cards, usually for less money or with more features than the embedded card. You can also return/decommission/u[grade/ replace/RMA/re-sell those without much of a downtime for your workstation.

 

A small % performance advantage the "premium" mobos also promise, is negated by spending the price difference to buy slightly better RAM and/or GPU etc.

 

I used to be a hardware upgrade junkie for more than 10 years, and learned the hard way that it doesn't worth the trouble or the money, unless your workflow performance increase will help pay for itself - most upgrade junkies are forum warriors and/or gamers that use their PCs as money sinks and pee-contest measurements, not productivity tools, as it is obviously counterproductive! Wise are the men who learn from the mistakes of others without the need to repeat them, so...I think you are on the right path

 

I hope I will always run into people willing to share the lessons learned from the mistakes I am about to make, before I do

 

stealth edit: it is rare that someone knows how to use my name - almost forgot that is possible since I moved in the US

Edited June 19, 2012 by dtolios