2500-3000 euro workstation

[deepyellow]

I'm going to invest into a new workstation for 3d rendering:

 

After some research I decided to assemble a custom unit. This is what I came up with:

 

Intel Core i7-3930K

Socket LGA2011 MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Frio Adv

2x Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2/16G (32GB)

NVIDIA Quadro 2000 1GB PCI-E

Noctua NH-D14 SE201

be quiet! Dark Power PRO P8 - 1000W

Antec P280

Samsung 830 MZ-7PC128D/EU

Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200 64MB SATAIII*

2x Eizo FS2331 23''

 

I probably made some silly mistakes choosing stuff, so please don't copy this setup

 

I'm still not sure about the Quadro graphic card, and CPU - It looks like the best possible quality/price choice, but I probably could fit some Xeon in this budget, to get better performance.

 

There is still some money left in the budget, I just don't know what to improve or change.

 

Any suggestions?

[RyderSK]

Is it gonna be also your workstation ? Not just render slave ? In that case, yes, keep 3930 instead of pair of xeons (only price viable alternative here is E5 2620 in dual setup, but you won't do much manual work on those, since they are 2,2Ghz).

Go 4x8Gb, cheaper, and 2011 platform does utilise 4 channel setup.

Skip on quadro (that is really slow model btw), buy regular gtx/radeon of your choice.

 

2+k euros and no mention of SSD disk ? Go for 256GB M4 Crucial at minimum. There is nicely spent money ;- )

 

Your Eizo is s-pva which is nice (not as nice as ips) but FullHD only (the miserable 16:9 ratio..) and why not go that one inch up atleast ? Either 24" Dell Ultrasharp for that money, or there is nice cheap 27" HP with ips panel now (27 "HP ZR2740w), 500 euros, 27", 2560px, ips panel...total steal. Much better than those two Eizos.

[deepyellow]

Wow, thank You for such a detailed answer.

 

Yest, It's going to be my workstation. I mentioned an SSD disk - Samsung 830 MZ-7PC128D/EU

 

I like the Dell idea. I got used to work on two screens - that's why I'm more convinced to by two smaller ones, then one 27''.

 

I also heard that with resolutions higher then HD, You have a significant loss of performance on graphic card, at least on GF cards - that's an argument to stay with max 24''.

 

I just need to confirm this info somehow, because 27 "HP ZR2740w sound great as well

[deepyellow]

UPDATE:

 

Intel Core i7-3930K

MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Frio Adv

4x8GB Corsair CML16GX3M2A1600C10

EVGA GeForce with CUDA GTX 570 HD EVGA 1280MB*

Be Quiet! P9-750W

Antec P280

SSD Corsair Force 3 240GB

WD 1TB Caviar Black 7200 64MB SATAIII*

27" Dell U2710

[Dimitris Tolios]

UPDATE:

 

Intel Core i7-3930K

MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Frio Adv

4x8GB Corsair CML16GX3M2A1600C10

EVGA GeForce with CUDA GTX 570 HD EVGA 1280MB*

Be Quiet! P9-750W

Antec P280

SSD Corsair Force 3 240GB

WD 1TB Caviar Black 7200 64MB SATAIII*

27" Dell U2710

 

The MSI X79A-GD65 gets mediocre reviews. It used to be the case that the BIOS would not support the quad 3820, memory would not work on all dimm slots, and even with the BIOS updated is a mediocre overclocker etc.

In general I am in favor of MSI which usually produces solid products with good stability / voltage regulation etc, but this might be a bad moment for the company.

In general the most solid performers for the 2011 socket are the X79 Asus mobos, with the Pro and sabretooth model being available around $40-60 more than the MSI X79A-GD65. Think this fluctuation is well within a $/€ 2000 tower budget.

 

 

I am not familiar with Be Quiet PSUs. I would pick a top-quality PSU, especially if I would like to pair my beasty 6-core Sandy E with a powerful GPU. Overclocked such a system will routinely pass 500W of actual usage, so a 750W is enough on one hand, yet stressed over 50% or so constantly surely will make a low quality unit to fail pretty fast – with probably disastrous consequences to at least your MoBo – in some cases everything might be fried. I would generally recommend a Seasonic or Enermax PSU, or one of the few companies that use OEM re-badged Seasonics and Enermaxes. Also I would recommend a quality 80+ unit. Bronzes are cheap, but silvers are usually better in quality and will save you the extra expense over time. Golds and platinums are too expensive for my comfort zone, but that's me.

 

 

 

The GTX 570 1280MB is in some ways a waste of money: it is not faster than most modern Radeons, certainly way slower than a GTX 670, but at the same time it increases PSU stress, energy consumption, heat released into your tower and most likely fan noise. It is a competent gaming card, but not a real value 3D modeling card. It is fast in Cuda/GPU accelerated rendering software, but severely limited as a 1280MB card. Ofc it will have little problem accelerating 2x 1200p screens, just like most cards above the $/€ 200 price range, so don’t even worry about that. I would choose something different. Probably a newer Radeon if I wasn’t interested at all in CUDA (OpenCL is gaining popularity anyways), or a 670 if I thought GPU acceleration + nVidia was a must-have.

 

 

SSD wise, I would stay away from Sandforce (like that corsair) drives due to BSOD problems that not even Intel could solve, and would stick with the tried and true m4 from Crucial, or 830 from Samsung that are solid performers, providing 80-95% of Sandforce performance in a way more stable package.

 

 

The 27” Dell is a great choice. Depending on your needs/workflow, 2x smaller panels can offer benefits for similar price. 2x Low end 24” 1200p IPS Ultrasharps can be bought for roughly the same money as the 27”. The panels are not that great when you go for something in the $300-350 range, but you get more pixels to work with. Nothing stops you from pairing the 27 with a smaller screen in the future though, and that’s what I would probably do in your case. I don’t believe that you need 2x identical monitors, but I do strongly believe in 2-3x monitor setups.

[deepyellow]

Thanks for all tips!

 

Here is the update:

 

Intel Core i7-3930K

Asus SABERTOOTH X79

Kingston HyperX 8x4GB 1600MHz

GeForce GTX 570

SeaSonic SS-1050XM

Antec P280

SSD Samsung 830 MZ-7PC256D/EU

Seagate Barracuda, 3.5'', 1TB

27" Dell U2710

 

 

I want through some mobo tests and I find nothing wrong about MSI X79A-GD65, and it produces a little bit lower temperatures then Asus Pro. I also found out that there was some overlocking problem, but with GD45 only. Sabertooth looks great to me but it's over 100$ more expensive. I'll probably pay more

 

I definitely want to keep a CUDA card, so I'll try to stick to Nvidia. GTX 570 is probably still to strong for my needs, i'm not going to use RT on big scenes anyway. How did you come to the conclusion that GTX 670 is way faster? I used this test to determine speed:

 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

570 is is 6th, and I can't see any cheap radeons there GTX 480 looks like even better price/quality choice.

 

Nothing stops you from pairing the 27 with a smaller screen in the future though, and that’s what I would probably do in your case.

 

This is exactly what I'm going to do, thanks.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Ofc the older GTXs have better price/performance. The 670 is faster than the 580 in most reviews in everything but computational tasks, where the gap is getting smaller due to newer driver optimizations for the Kepler architecture. It's funny that in the page you've posted the 670 is also faster than its big sibling the 680...(newer drivers for the 670 I guess).

 

The 570 is still a pretty fast card, yet the 1.2GB version might be too restricted for VRay RT and kinda complex scenes, and the 2.5GB version is hard to find and often around $350. That is too close to the faster, cooler, less power hungry 670 with 2GB which is around $400. I know - $50 here $50 there makes a big hit, still this is an important component.

 

$50-70 could be shaved off the PSU, which is a solid unit, still seriously over-sized for this build. And even more if you go Kepler instead of Fermi. I believe a quality 800-850 will also allow for SLI Kepler without breaking a sweat - but that's me.

 

Last but not least, most ppl do not like stability / compatibility etc with 8 slot configs. It's good to have, yet those $50 saved with a smaller PSU, can also be spent to get 4x8GB instead of 8x4GB.

[deepyellow]

GTX 670 is tempting, I'll have to think about it.

 

I made some calculations and got 550W total power demand. 850W Seasonic will surely be enough.

 

Ok, just one last question: I still haven't looked into coolers.

 

This i7 will probably need something special if it's going to work on full power for several hours?

[Dimitris Tolios]

I would think that a CM Hyper 212 (all versions) would keep up just fine with a stock speed 3930K running 24/7.

Should you wish to push it a bit, either a Thermalright Silver Arrow or a Noctua NH-D14 should be fine - those are the best air-coolers money can buy. Remember that the thermal output of CPUs under stress of all cores and when O/Cing with the generous use of extra juice (lotsa Volts) is nearly doubled. For a 130W TDP CPU, this is serious heat that needs to be dissipated fast, and ofc a 212 (any version) would start to have troubles despite the excellent performance for the price.

 

As an alternative to air coolers you could go with a corsair H100...nothing too great about it, other than the fact that it will outperform the above 140mm monsters with proper aftermarket fans @ a bit lower noise, or pretty much match them in medium fan speed where it is bearable.

 

A clear advantage is (other than bragging rights cause you are water-cooling and your friends will envy you) is that if you can fit the radiator in your case (the P280 does fit it fine I think), the pump/waterblock unit of the H100 is much-much lighter (those monsters are about 1kg or more including fans and mounting hardware) and easier to mount than the massive coolers from TR and Noctua + you will have less issues with fitting dimms under their protruding fans etc...you would probably be ok either-way with low-rise ram heatsinks.