Need some direction on a new tower

[anthonybillet]

Hello,

 

My name is Anthony Billet. I am currently looking to upgrade our work flow and processes. I am looking to purchase a new tower that will handle the following software. I have a budget of 7-9 thousand dollars.

 

1. 3DS Max

2. Sketchup

3. VRay

4. Lumion3D

5. CAD

6. Photoshop

 

We turn out a good bit of renderings and are currently hampered by the render times. I am clueless when it comes to hardware and would greatly appreciate any help!

 

Kind Regards,

Anthony

[John Dollus]

Assuming that budget is only for hardware/OS and not the programs-

For that budget, get two. One as your workstation and one as a dedicated render node for DR and network rendering.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Actually for that kind of money you can get way more than 2 machines...

 

At least one powerful manned workstation -

probably a 3930K 6C/12T,

decent graphics: A 7950 Radeon will be great, Nvidia GTX580/670/680 if you want GPU accelerated VRay RT etc

Any 8slot Dimm X79 mobo (unless you really want to O/C it where you have to go for the $300-400 ones

A good PSU (O/Ced 3930K full load = 250-300W / each high tier GPU can be 200-250W, add HDDs and fans = a 800W will allow for some head-room of safety).

4x8GB - 32GB quad channel Ram is usually OK, the 8-slot mobo will allow you for cheap(ish) expansion to 64GB if you need to

256GB SSD (Samsung 830 / Crucial M4 best value, Plextor drives are excellent but a bit more pricey, OCZ Vertex 4 drives are speed demons but lose much of their speed after going 50%+ full)

 

$2000 +/- 10% do that before OS and your choice of HDD for storage/libraries

 

and maybe half a dozen of Rendering nodes:

i7s - 2600K/2700K are great and decently priced till stock runs out.

Z68 chipset mobos (cheaper), mATX saves money and space - beware that most of them only have 2x Dimm slots, so more than 16GB per node will be pricey.

No GPU needed

PSU: a quality 350-400W is more than enough

Small HDD - typically you need space for the OS. 2,5" HDDs are fine, you don't need SSD for that, Gbit ethernet is your bottleneck anyways.

 

$550-600 before OS per node. Each node will deliver 66-75% the rendering performance of a 3930K, for slightly more than the price of just the 3930K.

A home-build simple enclosure can hold all of those without too much trouble.

 

If you want you add a 2-3 24" 1200p S-IPS or 1-2 1440p 27" and your money flew away - in a stylish way.

Edited August 23, 2012 by dtolios

[anthonybillet]

Dimitris, thank you very much! I have no idea what all that means, but I will send it to my computer guy for a quote. Thank you so much again.

[anthonybillet]

This is what my computer guy is suggesting. Does this look right? Is the CPU good enough?

Dell Precision T5600 1 3,290.10 3,290.10

Dell Graphic Cards - GE Force GTX 670 2 509.11 1,018.22

Dell 22" Ultrsharp FP Monitor 1 259.00 259.00

Office 2010 Professional

Dell Precision T5600D ell Precision T5600, 825W

Operating SystemW indows 7 Professional,SP1, No Media, 64-bit,

English

Processor Eight Core XEON (E5-2650, 2.0GHz, 20M, 8.0 GT/s,

Turbo+)

Memory 32GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1600MHz, ECC (4 x

8GB DIMMs)

KeyboardD ell USB Entry Business Keyboard, English

Graphics 512 MB AMD FirePro 2270, Two Monitor, 1 DMS59

Boot Hard Drive2 56GB, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive

Hard Drive ConfigurationC 2 SATA/SSD 2.5 Inch, 1-2 Hard

Drives

Mouse Dell MS111 USB Optical Mouse

PERC ControllerP ERC H310 SATA/SAS Controller for Dell

Precision

DVD and Read-Write Devices8 X DVD+/-RW SATA

Speakers No Speaker option

Power Supplies 825W Power Supply, 85% Efficiency

Documentation Documentation English and French

Productivity SoftwareO ffice 2010 Professional

Intel Chipset ControllerI ntegrated Intel chipset controller

Energy Efficiency OptionN o Energy Star

Systems ManagementN o Out-of-Band Systems Management

Resource DVD No Resource DVD

Hard Drive RAIDN o RAID

Hardware Support Services3 Year Basic Hardware Service with 3

Year NBD Limited Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis

[Valtiel]

- Is that a pair of E5-2650s in a two socket board or just one? If just one I'd suggest going with the 3930K Dmitris recommended; it's clocked 60% higher and overclocks higher still. That'll likely make up for the 2C/4T difference between them for almost half the price of a 2650. Alternatively you could go for a pair of E5-2620's in a dual socket board: A total 12C/24T at 2.0Ghz and still save 300$ on the chips (going by NCIX's current prices).

- Go big and go dual (if not triple with your budget) on the monitors. A 24-27" main monitor and a 22-24" secondary in portrait will do wonders for your experience.

- I'm not sure I completely understand the line about your hard drives but definitely go larger on your SSD. I don't know if 56GB will even hold much more than windows, and even 128GB SSD's are a stretch with as much software as you will have installed. 256GB is a nice, safe size, especially considering the performance degredation that SSD's get when nearly full. A pair of 2TB drives in RAID 1 is a good idea for your data.

 

-The only other thing I'd recommend is a DIY build, but that's just how I like to do it as an individual. Your company may have a deal with Dell as a vendor for pricing/warranties/service perks that make it attractive to lock into them.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Yeah, it is hard to understand the specifics the way it is copy-pasted, but doesn't look an attractive build - always judging with the price in mind.

 

Xeons are nice, but only if you go in dual CPU configs (priceyyyyyy, yet easily within reach if you really want to deplete the initial budget). For single CPU rigs, the i7-39xx line catches up despite having 2x less cores from the top Xeons, due to a tad faster clocks, and are actually faster in applications that do not use more than 1-2 cores (aka pretty much anything but the rendering process - modeling / texturing etc will be same or faster with the cheaper i7s.

 

Any SSD smaller than 128GB is too small. If you are to get something in the 60-64GB range, it will be better for you to use it as a caching drive for your HDDs.

[anthonybillet]

I wish I understood the inner workings of computers better to understand what components I need. Is there anything specific I should be asking for from my computer guy? So he knows exactly what to build?

 

Thanks again!

[Dimitris Tolios]

I wish I understood the inner workings of computers better to understand what components I need. Is there anything specific I should be asking for from my computer guy? So he knows exactly what to build?

 

Thanks again!

 

My 1st post (#3) is quite descriptive. He should be able to pick up.

I will edit this post for more specifics later...

 

Edit: did not want to repeat the same old rant -

In this older post of mine I am suggesting a couple of machines that I was considering buying for myself, with minor adjustments. Ended up getting the Sandy -E (yellow), yet I opted for the 3820 quad instead of the 3930K / Crucial m4 256 (I already had it, the Samsung 830 is better), XFX Pro850W XXX 80+ Silver and WD 2TB black (more into the 5y warranty than speed differences from the greens). Oh, and also used Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E for cooling instead of H100, but that's personal preference. Hunted newegg / microcenter / amazon for a 2-3 weeks and picked the parts I wanted with good discounts or mail in rebates. Microcenter had the 3820 for $230 and -$50 off any compatible mobo. Otherwise I would go with the 3770K which also comes with the -$50 if purchased with a Z77 mobo. Offer available for local pick ups, so a quick drive to tustin last saturday did the trick.

 

Got it up and running just yesterday after work, after getting cooler and ram in the mail, so I cannot comment on 3D rendering performance - or GPU rendering with the 670 4GB - no 3D app is yet installed in it, finished with OS. The processor @ stock speeds is pretty fast, give or take 2700K/3770K - we knew that. Beats the hell out of the dual Xeons E5420 I have @ work (not my choice, not my pocket either). Only "benchmark" run in it is F@H.

 

The board is compatible with the next generation of Ivy Bridge s2011 (IB-E) that won't be coming available before Q3 2013. That means a comfortable 1.5-2 Years before availability and demand settles a bit price wise. Ivy Bridge based Xeons are announced @ 12 core/ 24 threads, so an i7 IB-E with 10 or even 12 cores is not out of the question. Even with 8C/16T - it will be a decent upgrade, even from a 3930K. If the chip is similarly priced to the 3930K today, it will be a sure hit and probably one will land in my ol Asus...

Edited August 30, 2012 by dtolios

[anthonybillet]

You are very helpful! Thank you so much for all of your help!

[anthonybillet]

So a I better off getting One really awesome processor? Or dual processors?

[Dimitris Tolios]

So a I better off getting One really awesome processor? Or dual processors?

There is no in-between really...

For a single processor, your best bet is the 3930K. 3960X is faster, but not enough to justify 2x the cost.

Xeons are not clocked fast enough to compete really - even the top 8C/16T Xeons are not really faster than the 6C/12T i7s for rendering, and slower in single thread. And here we are talking 3x the 3930K cost.

 

For dual processors, you have to go for hi-end dual Xeons in order to get nearly as good single thread performance as you would with the SB-E 6core i7, and single thread performance is very important still for the fluidity of your workflow (most applications are not multi-threaded - or are partially multi-threaded).

[Valtiel]

Yeah, you definitely want a 3930K in your workstation where single-threaded performance is going to matter.

 

Xeons may make sense if your budget allows for a second machine to serve as a render slave. Extending Dimitris advice on price-perfrormance, a heap of slower cores in a second box as a render slave will work better than packing all the horsepower into one box. At 2.0Ghz, a single 2620 won't be near as fast as your 3930K but with two in a board you'll get a total of 12C/24T helping your higher clocked 6C/12T workstation. I couldn't bench the difference without the hardware handy but I'd imagine they'd outdo a second 3930K slave in pure rendering workloads from the doubled core count though the steep clock difference will narrow that advantage. Two slaves (totalling 3 boxes with your workstation) with single 3930K's would perform best, getting the best of the core count and clock worlds, but adds cost and complexity due to the additional hardware to build the machines. Because they're in one chassis, the dual Xeon slave will save you on space and money. The 2620 is the cheapest available 6 core I can find but seems to be the most cost/performance-effective as, like with the 3960X, higher-clocked models get unattainably expensive.

[anthonybillet]

thank you guys again for all of your help. Hopefully this is enough info for my computer guy to build a great machine! Thanks again