Looking for advice on a new Workstation

[fluxmax]

Hey look, it's another workstation thread!

 

You guys must be sick of these by now but it's really hard to track down what to get when everyone has different needs and budgets.

 

I'm looking for a new machine, I can probably build it myself, I was hoping for a few suggestions on a couple of peripherals. I'll be using 3DS Max and VRay mainly, perhaps a little gaming at some point but that's not a priority. Renders around 4k usually.

 

I need this PC to last a good 3 or 4 years. My budget is £1500-£2000.

 

1. CPU - I'd be looking for at least 16 threads, what sort of price would I be looking at for this?

 

2. Graphics Card - I've used the quadro cards at work quite a lot but they never felt particularly quick, hard to know without testing the same scenes on another card but ideally I'd rather not buy one of these. I'm wondering since GPU rendering is becoming more popular whether a Titan Black would be suitable for both heavy scenes and gpu rendering?

 

3. RAM - Assuming more is obviously better, what's the best type of RAM to get? How much of an impact does the Mhz have on RAM? I'll be aiming for at least 16gb- preferably 32gb of ram.

 

4. Motherboard - How do you find one of these suckers that supports the CPU I decide on? Also, what's really the difference between motherboards?

 

 

Quite a few questions there, but really appreciate the help.

 

Thanks a lot!