Cheap hardware

[Stephen Thomas]

Saw this on ebay and thinking it's time to upgrade my current quad core setup at home. For this price it would be stupid not to! Worth checking out their other items too, they have a load of liquidated stock including rack mounted servers etc. This workstation may actually be my old one from a previous job

 

http://r.ebay.com/7pVa5X

[Dimitris Tolios]

Saw this on ebay and thinking it's time to upgrade my current quad core setup at home. For this price it would be stupid not to! Worth checking out their other items too, they have a load of liquidated stock including rack mounted servers etc. This workstation may actually be my old one from a previous job

 

http://r.ebay.com/7pVa5X

 

What's your current setup?

What are you going to do / expect to be doing with the new one?

[AJLynn]

I dunno. Those are older model Xeons. The two of them together would run renders about as well as one i7-4770K. At about $1000 for the HP box, used and needing upgrades to video card and storage, you could make a new DIY box with as much power come out about the same:

 

Motherboard $195

CPU $340

RAM $130

Case $110

Power $164

DVD $22

 

Total: $961

[numerobis]

Saw this on ebay and thinking it's time to upgrade my current quad core setup at home. For this price it would be stupid not to! Worth checking out their other items too, they have a load of liquidated stock including rack mounted servers etc. This workstation may actually be my old one from a previous job

 

http://r.ebay.com/7pVa5X

This is 4 generations old hardware from 2007. Like Andrew said, even a single i7 4770K would be faster - especially in single threaded tasks. And a new system will consume much less energy.

The announced sys has no SATA 3 support, no USB 3, no SSD (only a slow 500GB HDD), a very old graphics card with only 256GB RAM...

 

It is not cheap, it is just old!

Edited September 27, 2013 by numerobis

[Stephen Thomas]

I guess it's a while since I had a proper look at specs! I paid around £1000 for a PC built by a local shop around 5 years ago and that was a dual-core E6600 with Nvidia 8800 GTS. Swapped the motherboard and CPU for a factory-overclocked Q6600 and upped to 8GB of ram around a year ago when a friend was upgrading his system.

 

Just looking for more render power really when working on freelance jobs. Currently using a 12 core (24 hyperthreaded) HP Z800 at work and the speed difference is ridiculous. Out of my personal price range but would like to close the gap a little as I'm due payment for a couple of jobs shortly.

[AJLynn]

I'd definitely look into something based on current generation i7s. They've been refreshing the line regularly, with new CPUs taking the price points of the old ones, the result being that a reasonable system is still going to run you $1500, plus or minus a few hundred depending on the feature set you want, but "reasonable system" gives you a lot more power.

[Stephen Thomas]

Thanks for the input and links guys. Will have a think about it some more then. I need to have a thorough look through the workstation configurations on your website Dimitris! Also having a look at http://www.logicalincrements.com as well which seems helpful for weighing up options.

[Stephen Thomas]

I have done some upgrade stuff before myself, new mobo and cpu, cooling fan, hard drives etc. Not sure about doing a whole build from scratch myself though. So I just saw this on Amazon, I've decided I want to go for the 6-core i7 and to me this looks a good deal. Does anything stick out to you guys, and would I save a lot if I did attempt the build myself? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ankermann-PC-NEW-i7-3930K-3-20GHz-GeForce-Professional/dp/B0075WK7TK/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2TMAGE5YL1WXN&coliid=I25FL41GJFMGPW#productDetails

[RyderSK]

I find it un-balanced. I am strongly in odds with building enthusiast LG2011 platform on budget, as it makes no sense to me. You would build that with probably exactly the same price. It's not about saving.

While it does have 6-core, it comes with ugly and cheap case, poor PSU unit, very low end graphic card, 8GB ram only, no SSD.

1300 euros is not a correct budget for this. 1500-1600 is just so-so when building serious LG2011 workstation, and 2000+ euros being around the right budget (which would already have solid case, 32gb ram, 256GB SSD, gold/platinum80+ PSU from reputable brand, 760/770 GTX, silent and powerful aftermarket cooler,etc..).

 

If your budget is around that price,~1300 euros, Haswell 1150 is the platform to build upon. Within the same price, you will have most of the upper mentioned benefits with sacrificing only the CPU power, and definitely not by drastic margin.

[Stephen Thomas]

Ok, good points. I think I was just thinking 'the more render buckets the better' and trying to get as much as possible for my money!

 

Assuming my budget was more towards 1800-2200 euros should I be thinking about 1 great machine or a more modest workstation plus render node? I don't think I need to go crazy on GPU as most of my freelance scenes are fairly simple and I don't tend to utilise RT so much. I would however like the extra rendering power when deadlines are approaching. Looking at the $500 node on Dimitris' site I am wondering is there still the same issue about not mixing AMD and Intel CPUs when doing distributed rendering? I remember it being a no-no before as some buckets would render darker.

[Dimitris Tolios]

I am wondering is there still the same issue about not mixing AMD and Intel CPUs when doing distributed rendering? I remember it being a no-no before as some buckets would render darker.

 

When was that an issue really? And it was an AMD + Intel mismatch thing?

(Honestly wondering).

[Stephen Thomas]

In a firm I worked at previously we had some older AMD Opteron machines and we never used them for DR because of that issue. I'm only basing that on what I was told by my colleagues at the time, though I did see the bucket difference. Perhaps it was something else causing it? This is going back about 6 years or so too.

[Stephen Thomas]

Tried a quick search there. Found some other people talking about it but chaos group confirmed no known problem, so maybe it was down to some other factor.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Well, I am no expert in this thing, but it could be the case in the not-so-far past (i.e. 9-10 or so years? First years of Athlon 64/Opteron), when AMD was rocking 64bit AMD x86 instruction sets, and intel was still 32bit or trying out a different 64bit instruction set (Pentium 4 32/64). That could mean differences in floating point precision calculations, which could lead in differences in procedural textures / light calculations or animated procedural textures and crazy stuff like that.

 

Since then, intel has embrassed the AMD64 x86 instruction set for desktop & Xeon CPUs, so regardless of speed and the blue vs. red arguements, both intel and amd are "running on the same platform" and there should be no real differences in the results from two different CPUs, by the two different companies (other than processing speed per core), given that the "biased" portion (i.e. light cache, irradiance map) of the rendering is shared between the nodes.

Edited December 11, 2013 by dtolios

[RyderSK]

Ok, good points. I think I was just thinking 'the more render buckets the better' and trying to get as much as possible for my money!

 

Assuming my budget was more towards 1800-2200 euros should I be thinking about 1 great machine or a more modest workstation plus render node? I don't think I need to go crazy on GPU as most of my freelance scenes are fairly simple and I don't tend to utilise RT so much. I would however like the extra rendering power when deadlines are approaching. Looking at the $500 node on Dimitris' site I am wondering is there still the same issue about not mixing AMD and Intel CPUs when doing distributed rendering? I remember it being a no-no before as some buckets would render darker.

 

I will just share my personal opinion, so it's not completely objective, it's very individual. I dislike any "budget" scenario thinking, imho the slight benefit of best price/performance ratio is not worth the compromises.

 

Single powerful (and overclocked, which does require the good case/psu/cooler, so no cheap compoments) 4930k will bring enough power for small jobs, and if it would be paired with slow AMD (any of them...) or i5, it would still not be enough performance for bigger jobs, so it's not worth to compromise the main workstation.

 

Buying cheap node is just another thing to care with maintenance. 4770k is lowest I would go for node as well, and 4930k + 4770k would be around 2800+ euros combo, so again, above the mentioned budget.

[Stephen Thomas]

Ok, so having a look around Amazon I can get a decent setup for just under £1500 with only the GPUs left to decide on. Still undecided on that one, would prefer to keep it all under £2000 though. Here's the list so far:

 

Intel Core i7 4930K Extreme Hex Core CPU Retail (Socket 2011, 3.40GHz, 12MB, 130W, Hyper-Threading Technology, Virtualization for Directed I/O)

£430

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Hyper-Threading-Technology-Virtualization-Directed/dp/B00EMHM622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386854967&sr=8-1&keywords=Intel+Core+i7-4930K

 

Asus P9X79 Motherboard Socket 2011, Intel X79, DDR3, ATX, PCI Express 3.0, Dual Intelligent Processors 3 with DIGI+ Power Control)

£197

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motherboard-Express-Intelligent-Processors-Control/dp/B006665HGY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386855832&sr=8-2&keywords=p9x79

 

Antec P280 Performance Series PC Tower Case (Nine Expansions Slots, XL-ATX, Standard ATX, MicroATX, Mini-ITX, Enlarged CPU Cutout)

£104

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-P280-Performance-Expansions-Standard/dp/B005X3E5BO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386854354&sr=8-1&keywords=antec+p180

 

Corsair AX Series AX860 860W Platinum Power Supply (CP-9020044-UK, ATX 12v v2.3, Active PFC, EPS 2.92, 80 PLUS Platinum, 7 Years Warranty)

£140

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-Series-Platinum-CP-9020044-UK-Warranty/dp/B00AO0YRMI/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386855984&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=corsair+80%2B+platinum

 

G.Skill 16GB (2x 8GB) Dual Channel Ares Series Memory Kit (DDR3 1333, 9-9-9-24, 1.5v, Intel XMP Extreme Memory Profile Ready)

£128

http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Skill-Channel-9-9-9-24-Extreme-Profile/dp/B0079TBHGG/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386854562&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=G.SKILL+Ares+Series+16GB+%282+x+8GB%29+240-Pin+SDRAM+DDR3+1866+x+2.

 

Samsung 840 Series Pro 256GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive

£160

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Series-256GB-Solid-State/dp/B009LI7CTY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386854729&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+840+pro

 

WD Black - 2TB Desktop SATA Hard Drive - OEM =

£114

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Black-Desktop-SATA-Drive/dp/B004CSIG1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386854792&sr=8-1&keywords=caviar+black+2tb

 

Corsair CWCH100 Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance 240mm Radiator All-In-One Liquid CPU Cooler

£88

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CWCH100-Performance-Radiator-All-In-One/dp/B0051U7HMS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1386855177&sr=8-3&keywords=corsair+hydro+h100i

 

Win Pro 7 SP1 64-bit OEM

£108

http://www.amazon.co.uk/64-bit-English-software-intended-builders/dp/B004Q0T0LU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386855275&sr=8-1&keywords=windows+7+professional+64+bit+oem

 

Sub total = £1469

[numerobis]

i7 4930K - 32GB (4x8GB) - GTX760 4GB

 

1 x Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, boxed (BX80633I74930K)

1 x Corsair hydro Series H100i (CW-9060009-WW)

1 x Kingston HyperX Beast DIMM XMP kit 32GB, DDR3-1866, CL10-10-10 (KHX18C10T3K4/32X)

1 x Gainward GeForce GTX 760 phantom, 4GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort (3033)

1 x ASRock X79 Extreme6 (90-MXGL80-A0UAYZ)

1 x Samsung SSD 840 Evo Series 250GB, 2.5", SATA 6Gb/s (MZ-7TE250BW)

1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB, 64MB cache, SATA II (WD20EARS)

1 x Antec P280 black, noise-insulated (0761345-82000-4)

1 x Sea Sonic X-Series X-750 KM3 750W ATX 2.3 (SS-750KM3) (semi-passive)

1 x Samsung SH-224DB black, SATA, bulk (SH-224DB/BEBE) (if you need a DVD-recorder)

1 x Microsoft: Windows 7 Professional 64bit, DSP/SB incl. Service pack 1, 1-pack (English) (PC) (FQC-04649)

 

=£1635 excl. shipping

 

- you need 4 RAM modules for quad channel

- maybe add some quiet 120mm fans to replace the stock fans of the H100i

- i would maybe go for a 2x140mm water cooler solution like the H110i or NZXT Kraken X60 http://skinflint.co.uk/nzxt-kraken-x60-a861054.html - but this would require a case with 2x140mm fan holes.

- alternatively to the GTX760 a GTX770 (+~£40 with 4GB), maybe Gainward GeForce GTX 770 phantom, 4GB GDDR5

or maybe a MSI or Gigabyte card looking at the noise values:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-760-review-gk104,3542-6.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-770-gk104-review,3519-26.html

 

all prices from http://skinflint.co.uk/

Edited December 12, 2013 by numerobis

[Dimitris Tolios]

Pretty solid built by numerobis.

The PSU could be smaller - you won't need more than a good quality (i.e. you cannot go wrong with Seasonic) 500W PSU if you are not overclocking that 4930K, and you could also "side-grade" to a H80i (or a $30-40 air cooler) if you won't be overclocking.

 

Otherwise this is a solid build, with almost nothing excessive / overkill etc.

[Stephen Thomas]

Really appreciate the input guys, thanks for taking the time. I think I would overclock, having done it on the last two incarnations of my current PC (e6600, q6600 and memory voltage plus factory OC'd GPU). Could do with refreshing my knowledge on the subject first though.

[Stephen Thomas]

I like the look of the Gigabyte card, numerobis. Would it be worth keeping a larger capacity psu in case I decided to add another 1 or 2 in the future?

[Dimitris Tolios]

I like the look of the Gigabyte card, numerobis. Would it be worth keeping a larger capacity psu in case I decided to add another 1 or 2 in the future?

 

Sure on the PSU.

Think a base of 500W for 1 CPU/1GPU (rest of the components are not that power hungry to really matter, we have it in the factor of safety), and add 200W per additional GPU. That's safe for mid-range GTX & Radeon cards - i.e. up to 770s locked voltages (no custom bios) and the such.

Top end and/or overclocked top-end might be in the 300W range, custom BIOS top-end (i.e. my unlocked Titan) can be 320-350 for just one GPU if you really pump things up (not that wise for longevity, i keep mine mildly o/ced when I do GPGPU, folding etc).

 

Keep in mind that "open shroud" GPU coolers, like Gigabyte's tripple windforce or MSI's Twin Frost are the best in efficiency/noise, but the mix starts to break down when you add multiple cards: most of the hot air in these designs is exhausted all-over the place, which in tight situations might affect the top/middle (if you have more than 2) GPUs that have less access to fresh air (the lower one usually gets a fresh supply, intakes face downwards in normal case/mobo orientations).

 

In multiple card scenarios, the single intake @ front end, exhaust above the ports design found in most reference coolers from both AMD & nVidia seems to work the best. The card with the most unobstructed air supply (i.e. usually the lower one) will run always a tad cooler, but at least it will by just obstructing the one next to it a bit, instead of also feeding it hot air.

 

 

EDIT: mind that orientation doesn't really matter. A common misconception is that since air hot rises, there is stratification inside the minute air volume of the case, and things low are cool and up are hot, or that intakes have to be @ the bottom and exhausts @ the top.

 

PC cases are not affected by natural convection as long as there is even a single exhaust fan properly placed. A single 120mm fan moves 500-800 times the air volume per minute that natural convection does. Natural convection is a joke when we are talking heat intensities of 200-300W coming out of 1-2 cm^2 (1/5th ~ 1/3rd of a sq. in.) - i.e. our super-hot CPU/GPU dies (read: super hotter than ambient).

 

Proper spacing of things and ofc forced airflow is all you need. Turn a properly ventilated case upside down, and it should be operating identically within "measurement error" tolerances.

Edited December 12, 2013 by dtolios

[numerobis]

I like the look of the Gigabyte card, numerobis. Would it be worth keeping a larger capacity psu in case I decided to add another 1 or 2 in the future?

A single GTX770 pulls 180-240W under load (only the card without the rest of the sys)... so 2 GTX770 would be ~400-450W

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-770-gk104-review,3519-25.html

 

Add maybe 250W for an overclocked 4930K and the other components and you're already at ~700W...

This is an extreme case which will maybe never happen but for two GTX770 i think i would take a 850W PSU - if you take into account that these PSUs normally has the best efficiency around 40-60% load

(http://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/netzteile/25223-seasonic-x850-km3.html?start=3) and the fan will start to run at higher load levels. The X-850 will run passive in hybrid mode up to 50% load according to this review. But it should work also with the 750W Seasonic and the efficiency is still very good at higher load levels.

[RyderSK]

Here is what I bought last week, so my suggestion will slightly differ from Nuberosis, although nothing dramatic.

 

 

This is my 4th and 5th LG2011 build, and I've tried quite few options so here is my suggestions :- ) But anyway, there is nothing wrong with

upper suggested builds, I only offer another view.

 

I dislike the close-looped Corsairs, they are ugly and noisy and not even powerful. If you swap the fans you'll get decently silent system, but it's not even notch more powerful than top air coolers like Noctua NH-D14. But you've already invested 50+ euros on top for almost nothing. I have zero experience with the others, like NXT Kraken but they look more sympathic, but also more expensive. Money almost pointlessly spent imho.

 

I've opted for the Gigabite 760 these time, otherwise I have Asus versions of the same, but they use identical cooling setup, which is opposite of the reference. I can't say if it's more efficiently cooled than my Evgas 660/670 which I bough last year and those use reference cooling, but it is more silent, that's for sure. Looks bit nerdy also..

Regarding the problem with multiple cards, that does indeed sound logical..but I doubt anyone uses SLI in workstation and for GPU computing you can just skip one position in-between.

 

The Antec case looks ok but it's not as pretty as Fractal. I see zero reason why not go for FractalXL directly, it's literally the best performing and looking case for such price. And those aesthetics...odes could be written about it. It impresses everyone. This is pure personal opinion :- D I have very biased opinions on how computer cases should look like...

 

With suggestion to move to air cooled Noctua, you can also skip the ridicolously high ram modules. Every low-profiled ram will make the same job. The Kingston is though great choice. Not sure about the G.Skill and alikes, we don't have those brands here but even the name sounds ridiously nerdy so I would skip..

 

Completely agree on SamsungPro. It's to this date the very best SSD I owned. The difference in writting speeds compared to my older Crucial M4 is noticeable.

 

Seasonic, nothing to add, can be seen from picture, I never bought different brand.

 

I found the choice of Asrock odd. It never owns up in reviews compared to Asus and the gimmicks it adds is worthless to workstation. Regular Asus X79 is just fine with upgrade of Uefi, or you can go directly to deluxe for the extra good feeling, but there is almost no benefit.

 

Again, just another opinion :- ) No battle. I don't read every and all reviews on extremeoverclokers but I own these and did my research on that quite in depth.

[Tommy L]

Be interesting so see what CPU you have there Juraj.

 

I just pulled this from the Wiki on Haswell:

 

Performance Compared to Ivy Bridge:

Approximately 8% better vector processing performance.[9]

Up to 6% faster single-threaded performance.

6% faster multi-threaded performance.

Desktop variants of Haswell draw between 8% and 23% more power under load than Ivy Bridge.[9][10][11]

A 6% increase in sequential CPU performance (eight execution ports per core versus six).[9]

Up to 20% performance increase over the integrated HD4000 GPU (Haswell HD4600 vs Ivy Bridge's built-in Intel HD4000).[9]

Total performance improvement on average is about 3%.[9]

Around 15 °C hotter than Ivy Bridge and unable to break 4.2 GHz easily.

[RyderSK]

It's 4930k. I have 3 4930k, 2 3930k, and one old 2600k that I will get rid of and swap for 4930k as well. No noticeable difference between the 4930k and 3930k in performance at ll, just "novelty" feeling of owning the latest toy. Price is oddly identical in most e-shops. I keep them identically clocked at 4.2GHz for good feeling and silent mode.