Thinking about a new Workstation, Need advice

[shauncarollo]

So I'm contemplating a new build. I currently am using a Lenovo W510 that is issued by my school. It's great because I get all the current software (Autodesk, Adobe, etc) but the hardware is just really starting to become a huge bottleneck. I have been using 3ds Max for one year now, and have been pushing ever closer to starting to freelance for stills and animation.

 

I'm trying to get something that can hold me over thru grad school (I have one year left with undergrad now) so I can earn extra income on the side while I am employed full time at an A/E firm. So, the machine will take the place of my workhorse laptop, and I will basically be using it everyday for school or work; mostly 3ds Max, Rhino+Grasshopper, Revit, Adobe PS, IL, and AE.

 

Given a limited understanding of what is good enough/overkill for this situation; I'm asking for your input on where I can swap components out for cheaper items or where I need improvements. Having said all that, I should add that I just finished an summer internship creating a 3+min exterior and interior animation and I was spoiled on a dual Xeon, k4000 set up, so I kinda don't wanna go too far back from that

 

Here's my list:

 

CPU: i7-3930K Hex-Core (overclocked eventually)

MB: ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011

CASE: Fractal Design Define R4

COOLING: Corsair Hydro H80i

MEMORY: 32gb Corsair Vengence DDR3 1600 mhz

SSD: Samsung 840 120 GB

HDD: WD Caviar Black 2 TB

VIDEO: EVGA GTX780

POWER SUPPLY: Corsiar HX Professional Series 750w

OS: Windows 7 Professional

 

All in all this totals $2,475, plus the cost of somebody building it. I should add that I just went to Amazon for prices to keep it simple, I would search the whole internets for the final purchases to ensure the lowest prices. I am unsure if it's worth the extra $$ ($400 or so) to buy a prebuilt machine off Ebay or some other online source since they can oc the rig for me, without having to go to someone and pay for it to be done after the parts are sourced.

 

I guess my main concerns are, can I obtain the same performance with other less expensive parts? I want a machine I can grow into a little bit as I take on more work, but not something that is top of the line as I don't do this 24/7 (yet).

 

What are your thoughts?

Edited September 2, 2013 by shauncarollo

[numerobis]

I think this is already a nice system, but i would maybe change some things.

 

- First of all, next week Intel will present the new i7 4930K. And even if it will be only a few percent faster than the 3930K at the same clock speed and will not overclock better, it will at least consume less energy and could be a bit cheaper after the price has settled.

 

- If you plan to overclock i would at least take an Asus P9X79 PRO

 

- i think i would go for the NZXT Kraken X60 instead of the H80. Much better cooling at lower fan speeds ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/nzxt-kraken-x60_4.html#sect1 ) or the H110. Your case supports double 140mm fans so why not use them?

 

- The vengeance is ok. I would maybe take the Low Profile (LP) version to be more flexible if you maybe have to use it later in another system with a bigger CPU-cooler.

 

- The normal 840 has much lower write speeds than the 840 Pro or at least EVO. And the the 120GB version is even slower than the 250GB version (write speed only 130MS/s). If you compare the test results:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested/10

There is no standart 120GB, but there is a 120GB EVO and you can see that this one is much slower than the 250GB EVO.

So i would say: at least a 250GB EVO, better a 256GB Pro.

 

- Not much to say about the GTX 780. I think EVG is ok - but i don't know their cooling. Personally i would not use a card with such a high power consumption for a workstation (and for this price). Only if it is needed for GPU rendering. But then the 3GB of the GTX780 is limiting. I think i would look for a GTX 760 or 770 with 4GB and a silent cooler. Not to forget that the next nvidia chip generation (Maxwell) is already announced for next year, coming with real innovations like unified memory addressing to enable the GPU to access the system RAM.

 

- As far as i know the 750HX is based on CWT OEM tech (but i'm not sure about it) and not Seasonic like i.e. the 650HX, so i can't say anything about it. Personally i'm using only seasonic for years now, but maybe CWT is ok too. If you take the corsair you should look for the 80+ Gold and not Silver or Bronze, which should be even cheaper.

 

- If you pay someone for the overclock then make sure that he does serious stability testing and voltage optimization and doesn't only use the auto overclocking feature! This can be done in seconds by yourself and is nothing you should pay for (and can be dangerous for the components - some boards are setting too high voltages).

Edited September 3, 2013 by numerobis

[Dimitris Tolios]

numerobis gave you a nice breakdown of issues & recomendations. My 2 cents will follow =)

 

* 3930K (or 4930K) + cooling : those chips are beasts. Off shoots of the Xeon production line, those chips were designed to dissipate a maximum of 130W using 8 cores (more for the 49xx line). 1 or 2 cores didn't pass the QC for Xeon, so - there you go - lets name it i7 extreme and sell it as a consumer part. Lets also clock it higher than any Xeon, as now we have less cores running in the same envelope: tada - 3930K.

 

All great, till you start overclocking it: that thing can easily produce more than 300W of heat when pushed hard. That's real heat, forget the 130W TDP etc @ stock. a H80i or H100i can do a good job @ stock speeds, but as soon as you will be pushing close to 4.4-4.5GHz, the chip requires more Vcore, and then heat production starts rising exponentially. Long story short, don't aim for overclocking up there and staying below high 70s oC with the mainstream close loop water coolers like the above. The H110 and the Kraken X60 are using 280mm rads and are a tad better, but not that much. Consider 4.5GHz to be your hard limit without custom water cooling. Some chips are better than others in overclocking, and you might do that or a tad more, others are running hotter won't - known as the silicon lottery (i.e. will you be lucky to get a good chip or not). Consider this an average expectation.

 

* RAM: not an issue with heatsinks if you are going water - even closed loops like the H80/100. Big issue if you are going air-cooling using serious twin tower coolers (Silver Arrow, Phantek, ND-14). All of those air coolers require low profile heatsinks to fit (or you will be blocking dimm-slots). In exchange, you will get comparable performance with the H100, only much quiter. I could do 4.6GHz on my 3930K and a Silver Arrow perfectly stable 24/7. 4.7GHz were doable, but I was breaking 82oC every afternoon, so I pulled back a tad (to lower Vcore).

 

* 780 - as said above, not unless you plan on gaming. I switched to a Titan from a 670, and I don't see ANY significant difference in viewport acceleration. Afaik EVGA has great products.

 

* SSD: yes, the 840 is slower than the EVO or Pro, but not a big deal...SSD advantages are in nearly zero seek times. That said, 130MB/s writes still is 2-3 times faster than the best HDD out there, and far more consistent. Reads are on-par with the best (i.e. above 450MB/s).

 

* PSU: if you will go hex-core and 780, with the posiblity of overclocking both, I would go for a cooler master V850 Gold...latest Seasonic OEM, and trust me, you will be pulling a lot out of it. A 650 will be struggling, being @ 80%+ capacity when 100% load (300W CPU + clost to that for the GPU). That said, it is VERY rare to get to 100% load on both CPU and GPU, especially for a CG workstation, unless you are using some short of CPU+GPU progressive rendering software.

 

And that brings us to the big question: will you be rendering A LOT on that? Or the occasional render here and there?

If you will be rendering a lot, then the 3930 or the more expensive for some time 4930 when it comes out eventually will do fine. If not, a 4770K will be faster across the board, as most apps favor single threaded and not multi-threaded performance, with the latter being utilized only when rendering (3DS & AE). Yes, there are multithreaded filters in photoshop, but please, those keep your PC Busy for seconds, not minutes or hours to worth mentioning.

[shauncarollo]

Thanks guys! I've switched my component list to your suggestions since you two seem to be the computer hardware gurus around these parts. As far as the workload goes; I think I will still keep my laptop so I can stay mobile and still have the opportunity to work, as well as keeping it for distributed rendering, but the workstation will be my workhorse. As I start picking up more clients, I'd like this to turn into a workstation when I'm able to put in the time due to school. So being able to fire off quick test renderings, with the possibility of animations, I'd like it to run as fast as possible. I won't be rendering every single day, but I'd like to take the hardware bottleneck out of the equation for my studio projects, that way during crit, I can let my work speak for itself when professionals in the area are the jurors. Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys! You were a big help, and I value your wisdom.

[Jason Matthews]

I only wish these components were available when I was in school. I was stuck with a Pentium 4 and 2GB of RAM. Graphics card? Ha what graphics card?

[Dimitris Tolios]

I only wish these components were available when I was in school. I was stuck with a Pentium 4 and 2GB of RAM. Graphics card? Ha what graphics card?

 

Yeah, I was so happy when I got my used A64 X2 to replace my A64...the boost in performance was amazing...that was my last "desktop" CPU as a student, bought a few weeks before presenting my senior project.

 

For deadlines I was happy I could borrow single core P4s and 1.6~1.7GHz Centrino laptops with 512MB of Ram for distribute renderings, which otherwise could take 20-30 Hours for a decent A3 print size and Vray (which would ofc be blown up to about twice that for some boards, used to be good if you could get close to 100dpi). Circa 2005, and it seems so far...and like yesterday.

 

I had no issues with GPUs, as I always had a medium~upper range gaming card due to other vices.

 

When I moved in US, I only got a 1st gen i7 with 8GBs, which was sockingly close to my stock (was running it clocked) Q6600 quad core in performance.

 

Both my Q6600 and my current 3930K - by comparison my greatest CPU upgrades ever - were bought well after the long nights and deadlines for school...

 

It is frustrating some times when ppl whine about how slow their 1st experiences with GI renderings are, when you know they were using a SandyBridge or newer CPU!

Edited September 6, 2013 by dtolios

[numerobis]

I remember that I had to increase the RAM of my Pentium III 700MHz (overclocked to something around 800 MHZ if i remember correctly ) from 256MB to 384MB to be able to render a higher resolution in Lightscape 3.2 for a university project!

[Dimitris Tolios]

I remember that I had to increase the RAM of my Pentium III 700MHz (overclocked to something around 800 MHZ if i remember correctly ) from 256MB to 384MB to be able to render a higher resolution in Lightscape 3.2 for a university project!

 

Derailed thread, count me in

 

Probably it was a P3 600 (6x100) overclocked to 800 (6x133), otherwise your 700 would probably be as high as 933...woot woot.

Never was into P3s...skipped their niche era holding on my P200 MMX (lol?) till I got to college and got an Athlon XP 1100MHz circa 2000.

 

Remember back then, was a period were SDRAM 133 (lol) was dirt cheap, so I ended up buying 3x 256MB sticks over the course of a few months - serious overkill at the time.

Some market manipulation issue / natural disaster etc came up, and the SDRAM supply dropped / price skyrocketed...

Ended up swaping my XP 1100 with a P4 1600 + 512MB DDR(1) with no loss, as PC133 became so expensive I could sell it at a decent profit even used...that 1st batch of P4s would clock to 2.4GHz from 1.6...was nuts

 

Weird how only the RAM and HDD supply line keeps attracting all the disasters and production line deficiencies almost exclusively after all these years heh? 13 years after, and we still have the same market manipulation issues: its always RAM and HDDs that get the floods and quakes and fires =) (sorry, had to refer to the recent price spikes due to the accident in the Hynix factory).

[numerobis]

Ah... yes, you're right and now i remember what it was... i just knew that it was a slot CPU, but it was a Slot A Athlon 700MHz, not a PIII! And it was overclocked via FSB to 770-784MHz!

This was the first Chip of my AMD period. There where some nice AMD overclocking CPUs between 2001 and 2005... i had an Athlon XP 1700+, Athlon XP-M 2500+, Opteron 165 and an Athlon 64 X2 3800+. And then i switched to Intel again with the Core2Duo E6600 and then c2q Q6600 in 2007.

 

And concerning DRAM... i think i allways bought them right before the prices dropped. Last year was the first time that i managed to buy near the bottom price..

[shauncarollo]

Ok, so here is my updated parts list:

 

CPU: i7-4930K Hex-Core (overclocked to 4.3-4.5Ghz)

MB: ASUS SABERTOOTH X79 LGA 2011

CASE: Fractal Design Define XL R2

COOLING: Corsair Hydro H110

MEMORY: 32gb Corsair Vengence DDR3 1600 mhz

SSD: Samsung 840 250 GB

HDD: WD Caviar Black 2 TB

VIDEO: EVGA GTX660 SUPERCLOCKED

POWER SUPPLY: Cooler Master V850W

OS: Windows 7 Professional

 

I opted to go for the newer processor just so it would be newer when it comes time to get rid of the machine, any drawbacks to doing so? The thing I'm most uneasy about at this point after reading hundreds of reviews for all the parts, is the cooling. Seems like the Hxx series is plagued with hit or miss performance and reliability. Is there something in the $150 price range that is a solid performer and can take some of the anxiousness out of me? I've never built an OC'd rig.

 

All can be had for around $2200 built. Any further reviewing necessary? Thanks guys.

[numerobis]

I think it looks fine, if you don't want to change the SSD.

 

A 660 TI would be maybe 10% faster and 15% more expensive. (and consume 13W instead of 7W Idle and a few Watts more under load)

 

If noise is an issue for you, i'm not sure if the WD Cavier Black is the best choice.

 

And as said before, a 850W PSU is a bit oversized for this hardware, with only one GTX 660 (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/evga_geforce_gtx_660_sc_review,7.html) and with a 4930K which need almost 20% less power than an equally clocked 3930K under load.

 

 

Seems like the Hxx series is plagued with hit or miss performance and reliability. Is there something in the $150 price range that is a solid performer and can take some of the anxiousness out of me? I've never built an OC'd rig.

- i think i would go for the NZXT Kraken X60 instead of the H80. Much better cooling at lower fan speeds ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/nzxt-kraken-x60_4.html#sect1 )

but i can't tell you if it is better in the long run and i have read somewhere that it is based on the same components as th H110...

Here is some more feedback http://www.overclock.net/t/1343837/the-kraken-x60

 

I'm using a custom build water loop with now two eheim pumps - one running for 10 years now ond the other for 4 years. But i can't speak for closed loops.

Edited September 14, 2013 by numerobis

[unrinoceronte]

one running for 10 years now ond the other for 4 years

 

wow!, i tought water cooling was kind of a newer thing...well at most i tought it was 4 to 5 years old...

 

Numerobis, how much faster in %percentage do you think you get on your custom water cooled machine, VERSUS if it would have been Closed water cooled or Air cooled? I am wondering these to understand how big is the advantage of oyur method regarding the inconveniences (i mean inconvenience for someone like me that knows nothing about custom water cooling, and risks like damage of the pumps or spills, etc..)

[numerobis]

Sorry for the late reply! I overlooked this thread...

 

If you compare a closed loop watercooler to a custom one or air cooling one of the most important things to look at is the size of the radiator. The main advantage of watercoolers is that you're able to transfer the heat to a greater cooler, which results in a better cooling performance and gives you the ability to use bigger fans which can run slower and produce less noise. So it's not said that a closed loop water cooler with a 120mm radiator and fan will be any better than a good air cooler with 120mm or even 140mm. One advantage is that you get the heat directly out of the case.

 

If you ask how much better my cooling solution is than a closed loop water cooler with one or two fans i have to say that this is not a fair comparison, because i'm using an external radiator on the right side of my case (like this one http://www.abload.de/img/mora3hochzeitl8c1.jpg without the fan grill) with four 180mm fans and a cooling surface of ~9 120mm radiators.

(MoRa 3 4x180 LT http://watercool.de/en/mo-ra3 )

My other components are from aquacomputer http://shop.aquacomputer.de/index.php?language=en&cPath=7 . The CPU cooler is a cuplex kryos Delrin.

I'm not sure about the exact cooling power, but i can say that it's much better than a 120mm, 140mm or 240mm cooler.

I'm cooling a 3930K @4,6GHz and a GTX560 TI with four 180mm fans at their slowest speed and very quiet (less noise than my external 2,5" HDD ) The CPU stays between 50°C and 65°C when rendering.

I have only two SSDs in my system and no HDD, so the system is really very quiet. I have two slow 120mm fans blowing at the graphic card (because i don't have a full cover cooler, but only one for the GPU chip) and one blowing at the mosfets of the mainboard.

Like i said before, my pumps are running for 10 years and 4 years no. I started 10 years ago with two 120 mm radiators then upgraded to a triple fan solution (3x 120mm) and 3 years ago i changed to the MoRa. Eheim pumps are long proved aquarium pumps. Since a few years there are some other brands like Laing which are also proved to be long lasting.

 

But beside the maybe "extreme" solution like a MoRa you can already get much better performance than with a 120mm or 240mm closed loop sys using a radiator with something like 2x140, 3x120, 3x140 or 4x120mm.

Edited October 10, 2013 by numerobis

[shauncarollo]

So here's what I ended up going with:

 

Intel 4930k

Asus Sabertooth x79

32gb G.Skillz 1866mhz

250 Samsung Pro SSD

2 TB Caviar Black

Kraken x60

MSI GTX660 TI

Cooler Master 942

Corsair gx650

Windows 8.1

 

This thing screams Thank you all so much for your advice. I am currently typing away at 4.7 ghz and stable and cool as can be, and I owe it all to you guys! I have never been on a computer that was this responsive, quick, and so far trouble free. My render times are very, VERY good so far--beating that dual Xeon that I was on over summer by quite a bit- so again...THANK YOU!

[RyderSK]

So here's what I ended up going with:

 

Intel 4930k

 

I am currently typing away at 4.7 ghz and stable and cool as can be

 

You are running this on all cores ? If that's the case, congratulations :- ) might I ask what voltage you got away with ? Looks like you were extremely lucky with your 4930k, that's not usual result.

 

But that case...everytime I see it (or anything from CM..)...

[shauncarollo]

You are running this on all cores ? If that's the case, congratulations :- ) might I ask what voltage you got away with ? Looks like you were extremely lucky with your 4930k, that's not usual result.

 

But that case...everytime I see it (or anything from CM..)...

 

I think I spoke too soon! I had ran prime 95 really quickly with no problems, along with about an hour of test renderings on a scene I am working on with no problem, and then got a blue screen so back to more testing. I have backed it down to 4.65ghz for now. I am running 1.37 volts, courtesy of Intel Tuning Protection plan

 

BTW, this cooler/case combo is great...You don't like it? I haven't seen a core over 66*C yet with RealTemp. Aesthetics were not a concern of mine if that matters, plus I got the case with power supply for $170 shipped.