New workstation build: Need some advice for 3D work

[palosanto]

Hi,

I'm long overdue for a new rig for my 3d work. I'm currently working with an Asus G73 Laptop and want to move to a desktop workstation since my mobility is not required anymore and my models keep getting more demanding in size and rendering requirements

I model in Rhino, render in Vray 2.0 for Rhino. Vray-RT top performance is not an absolute must but welcome, of course. I use also Cinema4D mostly for animation and complex ocean water systems, foam and ship wakes since my specialty is ship design. Occasionally I do some video editing in Premiere but not with huge projects.

I've been browsing through forums such as this one and tom's hardware, and I came across this recent thread which I feel matches somehow my needs:

 

http://forums.cgarchitect.com/75345-some-advice-new-workstation-appreciated-3.html

 

However, my budget is somewhat lower, around US$1800-$2000 (~CAD$2200)

I quoted the list in post #23 from Newegg canada at around US$2300).

What Items do you feel that I could downgrade to trim about $500 (as I will have to pay shipping and taxes on top ... ) and still have a nice solid system?

 

For example, I'm wondering whether I need 32Gb of RAM. I have now 8Gb and I have not ran out of memory even with my large models (120Mb, 1.5M polygons), and looking at the resources monitor, there is always memory left even when rendering reaching maybe 85-90% of physical mem (which of course includes windows tasks and whatever else I have open). Just wondering if more memory would necessarily improve performance if I'm not paging to disk yet. Would 16Gb would suffice? That alone would save $200.

 

Your help is really appreciated !