Desktop for a daily work horse. What would you get with unlimited funds?

[rad_thundercat]

I work at a large architecture firm, and our practice technology guy just got the green light to buy us new machines (for three of us in our little rendering dept). So he's asking what we want. I've been doing some passive research but I wanted to ping you guys and get some opinions. If you could have any desktop setup, what would it be?

 

The machines will be used mostly for stills (3k-10k renders). It needs to push lots of polys, we do tons of sport stadiums so the scenes we get are MASSIVE. We use 3ds max, vray, photoshop, and after effects. We do a few animations here and there, but that's not the problem we're trying to solve now. We'll get a legit farm in the future.

 

So what's out there? I've done some research but I've been out of the hardware loop for about a year.

 

Thanks in advance!

[numerobis]

budget?

[Nikolaos M]

Unlimited funds? OK, that would be fun!!!

 

That's what I would get if I had unlimited budget today for a single workstation:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($999.99 @ SuperBiiz)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE/U3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($389.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($249.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($325.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Storage: Crucial MX200 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($315.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Storage: Crucial MX200 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($315.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card ($999.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX ATX Mid Tower Case ($179.99 @ Amazon)

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA T2 750W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($219.99 @ Amazon)

Monitor: HP Z24i 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($344.99 @ Mac Mall)

Monitor: HP D7P92A8#ABA 60Hz 27.0" Monitor ($634.00 @ B&H)

Total: $5112.89

 

Edit: If someone's really interested in 10-bit color depth, this is another setup

PCPartPicker part list

Edited March 4, 2016 by nikolaosm

[rad_thundercat]

Awesome, thanks for the input!

 

An idea I had was to get each artist an Apexx5 from BOXX, along with a RenderPRO2 BOXX unit along side it. The idea being each artist is responsible for managing the workload on their own mini 'render farm'.

 

Would that make sense, or is that just crazy talk?

 

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx-5

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/rendering-and-simulation/renderpro

[numerobis]

If you're really planning to buy something in the $10k+ range i would wait for the upcoming Broadwell-EP Xeons (announced for Q1 2016) and build a dual CPU system with a high single core turbo clock and as much cores as possible with this high turbo. The final specs are still not released - only the single core turbo for the 20- and 22-core version (3.6GHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5-26xx_v4_.28dual-processor.29 http://wccftech.com/intel-broadwellep-xeon-e52600-v4-skus-leaked/ ) but it seems there will be a quad core with 5.1GHz so maybe we'll see some 12-18 core CPU with more than 3.6GHz turbo...

 

Some components:

2x Xeon E5-26xx v4

ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS

64-128GB RAM

Samsung 950 Pro 512GB

GeForce GTX Titan 12GB

 

NEC MultiSync PA322UHD-BK; 31.5", 4K (but only if they finally fix the 4K issues in Max 2017)

 

 

Your linked Apex 5 comes only with "up to 3Ghz" single core turbo clock which is not enough for a workstation in my opinion.

 

 

Another solution would be an overclocked i7 5960X (Apex 4). But i think BOXX has ridiculous high prices for these few extra GHz. It would be better to find another dealer that offers overclocked systems.

Edited March 5, 2016 by numerobis

[Nikolaos M]

No, it wouldn't make sense at all, at least not to me. You're talking about 15K$ for each artist=45K$ for all. Am I right? You could buy much-much better and faster machines with a fraction of this price.

 

Lets make some things clear. I understand that you're interested in 3 Workstations, one for each artist, and separate/discrete render nodes. With this budget you could really do hardware miracles and purchase the best pieces in the market today. No need to pay this huge premium for just the brand's name and some business type support and warranty.

 

If the rendering is going to take place in separate machines, then the main Workstations could be much cheaper and built upon another philosophy: cpus with less but faster cores and a beefy gpu for all these massive projects.

 

Could you verify the total budget, please? Also, are you interested in 4K monitors or in 10-bit color depth and 1 billion colors? Are you interested in gpu rendering at all, at least for real time previews?

 

If you answer these questions, believe me, it would be much easier to get the proper help from many guys here.

[Scott Schroeder]

Say I had $10k for each artist's machine.

 

I'd buy a very good machine for my workstation (in the $2-3k and under range) and then spend the other $7-8k on dedicated rendering solutions or DR boxes. Your workstation does very little processing during the day and putting in super powerful components only has diminishing returns when you are in the office. Sure it's an awesome render box the other 40-60 hours you aren't in the office, but what are those components really doing when you are in the office? Sitting at 100% use or somewhere in the 10-15% average use? Do you really need 10,000 cores to open Outlook?

 

To echo others. BOXX is a waste of money wrapped in a fancy marketing gimmick. You pay way too much just for the BOXX name. You can build them yourself for far cheaper or have a local PC shop build them for you and still save large amounts of money.

[Nikolaos M]

I like playing with combinations, so I made this config for the main workstations:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($374.88 @ OutletPC)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus Z170-DELUXE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($299.99 @ B&H)

Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($249.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($325.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($138.89 @ OutletPC)

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card ($999.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ATX Mid Tower Case ($182.16 @ Amazon)

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ NCIX US)

Monitor: Dell U2414H 60Hz 23.8" Monitor ($234.49 @ B&H)

Monitor: Dell UP2716D 60Hz 27.0" Monitor ($688.41 @ Amazon)

Total: $3720.77

 

A 6700K slightly oc'ed would the faster single core worker in the market today. No compromises in the gpu either.

 

3 of these WS would cost around 10-11K$. So, we're left with almost 10K$ for each render node. So, here is the render beast:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2699 V3 2.3GHz 18-Core OEM/Tray Processor ($3889.99 @ SuperBiiz)

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2699 V3 2.3GHz 18-Core OEM/Tray Processor ($3889.99 @ SuperBiiz)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($61.88 @ OutletPC)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($61.88 @ OutletPC)

Motherboard: Asus Z10PE-D16 WS SSI EEB Dual-CPU LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($495.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory ($210.99 @ Newegg)

Memory: Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory ($210.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Crucial MX200 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ Adorama)

Video Card: Asus GeForce GT 720 2GB Video Card ($53.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Series Primo Aluminum ATX Full Tower Case ($229.99 @ Newegg)

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($66.99 @ NCIX US)

Total: $9262.67

72 threads for rendering.

Of course, as numerobis mentioned, we're close to the release of Broadwell E processors, with the big guy, the 2699V4 offering an insane 22c/44t, so a 2P system like the above would end up with 88 threads for rendering. I'm sure there are going to be scaling issues with both solutions, but nevertheless, I think the new cpus are worth waiting.

 

Just compare these specs with the BOXX machines, and compare their prices too.

[rad_thundercat]

This is fantastic information, thank you all! I'll try to come back with some answers to your questions (hopefully budget??). The paths are sort of open ended to solve our rendering hardware problem here, so I'm trying to gather any sort of info you're all willing to share.