new pc

Middnight

Hey guys,

buying a new system in the next few weeks, got something for another forum, hoping for some input here;

CPU > INTEL Xeon E5-1650v2 6-core 3.5

CPU Cooler > Hydro Series; High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler; 120mm fan; 2000RPM; 54CFM; 2.36mmH20; 30.85dB (CW-9060007-WW)

Motherboard> Asus Z9PA-U8 Server Board (Socket 2011, C602-A PCH, 8x DDR3, S-ATA 600, 2x USB 3.0)

RAM > Kingston ValueRam 32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC REG Single Rank x4 DIMM Memory Kit (4 x 8 GB)

GPU > NVIDIA PNY Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB Kepler Graphics Card

ALT. > PNY Nvidia Quadro K5000 Kepler Graphics Card

HD 1 > SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

HD 2> Western Digital Black WD2003FZEX 2TB 7200RPM SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive (3.5 inch) )

PSU> Corsair CP-9020054-UK RM Series RM650 80 Plus Gold 650W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit

Case > Lian Li PC-6B Midi Tower Chassis

Optical Dr > LG BH16NS40.AUAR10B 16x SATA Internal BD-RW Retail Kit

OS > Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (Full Version) - OEM > £100


I'll be using it for character creation, mainly zbrush, 3ds max, and photoshop. Also like to do realistic (character) rendering with vray.

The problem is the quadro card. first it's freakishly expensive and second, the only reason to buy it seems to be for 3ds max, and since only 20% orso of my work is done in 3ds max, it seems kinda stupid to buy the quadro just for that.

I keep reading that geforce can do the job aswell and it leaves me some more room for gaming. budget for card would be remain the same, 600-700 euros.

So, any toughts on this? anything would be greatly appreciated

ZacD

Buying a Quadro just for max seems like a bit of a waste.

/anty/

I see no reason paying for xeon and quadro, it will not make your art better but made your PC way-way more expensive. You can get pretty similar performance with non professional hardware.
I really suggest to read some reviews and comparisons and think - is that difference really worth to pay 2K+ extra cost?
Ones I was really close to pay 700 Euro for Titan, but then I compare it with gtx 780 and well Titan obviously more powerful, but not that much for extra 300 euros..

beefaroni

Don't buy a quadro. My boss and I just finished building his new workstation and we went for a Titan Black.

Does Max support DX11 viewports yet? If so, definitely go for a Titan or 780.

EarthQuake

Get a 770 or 780 and save your self a lottttt of money. Both of these cards are way faster for anything game related (realtime shaders, unreal 4 or marmoset toolbag), and will run Max etc just fine. Also don't get a Titan, anything past a 780 represents a really poor value (unless you do a lot of CUDA stuff or something). The 780 is essentially the same card, underclocked a bit with less cuda cores and ram, for 30% of the money.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

An i7-3930K will give you the same performance for a bit less money. Or a 3770K will give you 82% of that Xeon for about half the price.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You can probably save some money on the motherboard too. Do you need a crazy amount of ram? Probably don't need a server board if the answer is no.

Also why are you getting a water cooler? Do you plan to overclock your cpu? If not its a waste of money, and you run the risk of it bursting/leaking and damaging your system. Stock cooling is generally fine, or get an after market air cooler if you're worried about it. Unless you're doing something extreme or require a completely silent build, there is no need for watercooling, certainly not in a dev machine where failure can mean serious damage to your system.

The rest seems generally fine though.

Put the money you save by buying a sane GPU into a nice IPS monitor if you really feel like spending the cash.

Middnight

wow, very nice feedbck, but on the ram part, yes i do need crazy amounts of ram because i work pretty much only in zbrush, and i keep reading on zbrush forums " more ram, more zbrush"

thanks guys, really appreciat the effort

AtticusMars

Zbrush is a 32 bit application, it can't use more than 4 gigs of ram so no you don't need that much

EarthQuake

Middnight wrote: »

wow, very nice feedbck, but on the ram part, yes i do need crazy amounts of ram because i work pretty much only in zbrush, and i keep reading on zbrush forums " more ram, more zbrush"

thanks guys, really appreciat the effort

Sorry I should have been more specific, that server motherboard supports 256GB of ram, that is what I mean by crazy. Many boards support 32GB.

Also yes that is true, ZB can't allocate more than 4GB.

Anchang-Style

If you want to save some money look for the Gainward 780 Ti, it's the cheapest around, atleast in Euro regions. Not by a lot by atleast 30-80 depending on other devices.

I thought about going SLI with two 760 GTX with 4GB but turned out the GPUs are just slightly cheaper but the power consumption, volume levels and heat production are so much higher that it's just not worth it. Especially since the 1 GB VRam barely makes a difference.


Is there a reason why you don't go with Windows 8.1? Yeah it got a bad rep (for a reason) but with Classic Shell you can make it work 1:1 like 7 but it has a quite better system performance and adds DX 12 in the future. Aside from that i didn't have a problem with stuff i wanted to run from the 7 days. Just saying (i totally get not wanting to change though it's such a horrible development it's hard to put into words , it's just with tools it runs pretty much like the old one)

Middnight

hi, thanks again

ok so Cpu, not going with xeon, but when i checked that list i noticed the i7-4930k is higher ranked then the 3930k and only costs 10 dollar more, any reason not to get that one?

then for gpu, GeForce GTX 780 Ti seems like the obvious choice? defenatly gonna pass on the quadro

ok then any advice on what motherboard i could take? and will the case still fit? thanks alot guys

Middnight

oh and i just don't really like to change a wining combo, windows 7 is really good and i hear laods of bad stuff about 8, so wy risk it?

EarthQuake

Yeah, typo, I meant the 4930k.

For mobos, you need something that supports the 2011 socket, I don't have specific recomendations (and looking now, it looks like most compatible ones aren't going to be much cheaper than that server board), but start here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%20600238945&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=RATING&PageSize=20

or here: http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/?compatible_with=intel-cpu-bx80633i74930k

beefaroni

Middnight wrote: »

oh and i just don't really like to change a wining combo, windows 7 is really good and i hear laods of bad stuff about 8, so wy risk it?

Meh. I've been running Windows 8 for awhile now and haven't run into any compatibility issues with 3d software (or games..). It boots up super quickly and some of the UI improvements are nice.

The only thing that I think is a MUST ADD is Start8. Gets rid of metro entirely. I don't think I've been into the metro interface in weeks.

Middnight

here is my latest build, just not sure what cooler, and which geforge gtx 780 ti card i should take, it appears there are loads of price difference for the exact same card, and i can't find anywhere what would be the difference between them

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

Anchang-Style

somehow the link shows your card empty...

RobeOmega

Anchang-Style wrote: »

somehow the link shows your card empty...

Not for me

ZacD

Hermit wrote: »

The GTX 780 Ti 3GB is a great GPU.

But I personally chose the R9 290x 4GB instead, because the RAM doesn't stack in crossfire or SLI if I later feel the need to have more power. And some games I've tested recently in 1080p were busting 3GB VRAM. Even over 3500MB. So, I'm glad I chose the 4GB card instead of a 3GB. Sounds like a Titan with 6GB is future proof.

What do you guys think?

A lot of game artists run into software and viewport issues with AMD cards, and some people use CUDA acceleration. AMD does give you the best bang for your buck right now, but there's other things to consider.

I would never get SLI or crossfire, too much heat, need a more powerful PSU, I'd rather save money and upgrade to a new GPU sooner. Also new games aren't very well optimized on launch for multiple GPUs, and I don't believe you get any extra performance in production applications. I'm expecting the next few series of GPUs to add a lot more vram, and the features bring discussed on road maps are interesting.