PC for Maya Zbrush and Photoshop
vertex
Hello Guys
I really need some advice on what machine I need for running Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. It's mainly design work that I will be using it for.
Can I get a machine off the shelf or is it best to build one?? Any advice would be hugely appreciated.
My budget is up to £1000
Many thanks in advance
I really need some advice on what machine I need for running Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. It's mainly design work that I will be using it for.
Can I get a machine off the shelf or is it best to build one?? Any advice would be hugely appreciated.
My budget is up to £1000
Many thanks in advance
Replies
Here's my recent build, pretty happy with it. I already had my old displays, keyboard, mouse and an nVidia GT730, which is a budget card. But I needed it fast to replace a dead card and plan on something better later; though this thing does really well for $60. Motherboard is definitely overkill, but the bios is pretty slick with lots of options...
I'm very happy with it, but I was in a hurry. If I could've waited, I probably would've held out until DDR4 memory had come down in price a little and gone with a skylake 6700k with 64GB of ram (or at least 32GB of ram as 16x2 for a future upgrade). Also, by Christmas, expect a much wider variety of M.2 hard drives, which just blow most standard SSDs out of the water. Finally, I never want to be the first penguin for PC parts, and I prefer to purchase products that have been on the market for a few months so they have an opportunity to correct bugs, and when I built my most recent machine Skylake had just been released.
So, if you're in a hurry on a budget, go with the 4790k. You will not be disappointed. However, if you've got a little more time and cash, I'd wait for a little while for the M.2 drives and better DDR4 to build a 6700k based machine.
Thanks for getting back to me.
I have since been looking into it further and I have started to put something together.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
You can see the setup here
http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/custom/intel-haswell-custom-pc/step6.html
If your budget is £1000, than I'd certainly try to go with a quad-core processor (important for zbrush), and if at all possible you want at least 16GB of ram for decent modern zbrush performance, but ideally 32GB or 64GB if you can afford it.
I am not familiar with the processor you've chosen, but I usually point to the Xeon 1231 for a budget build. User benchmark has a great feature for comparing components.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com
The set up I have started is as follows -
Computer Case
Black ATX Tower Case
CPU
Intel i7 4790K - (4 x 4.0 GHZ) - Haswell
CPU Heatsink
Intel Heatsink & Fan - Low Noise
Memory
16 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz (2x8GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 - 2 GB - (Zotac) - (PCI-E)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z97M-D3H (Intel Z97) - 4xUSB3/4xUSB2 (M-ATX)
Sound Card
Motherboard Integrated HD Sound
Wired Networking
Motherboard Integrated Ethernet Lan (Broadband Ready)
Power Supply
Corsair 650W PSU - Low Noise
CPU Compound
Standard CPU Compound Supplied With Heatsink
Extra Case Fans
Standard Fans Included With Case
Hard Drive #1
500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD SATA-III, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s - Silent
Hard Drive #2
4 TB Seagate (4000 GB) SATA-III HDD 5900 RPM 64MB
Free Gift
FREE - 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive
Power Cable
1 x 1.8 Metre UK Mains Power Cable
Graphics card:
I would go for something much stronger at least an 960 however I would 100% recommend a 970 here.
CPU Fan:
If you are going for over-clocking I would go for an Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO here instead of stock cooler.
Power supply:
Can you specify which Corsair power supply this is like model number of full name?
Hard Drive:
4GB is very overkill unless you got some very large files in there. I had a 2TB hard drive for 4 years and did not even fill half of it.
Case:
What black ATX case have you gone for? This is just about as specific as saying the size and the colour of the case but not the case name.
I don't have any more details about the case or power supply unfortunately.
Here is the latest -
Computer Case
Black ATX Tower Case
CPU
Intel i7 4790K - (4 x 4.0 GHZ) - Haswell
CPU Heatsink
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 - Low Noise
Memory
16 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz (2x8GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - 4 GB - (MSI) Twin Frozr V - (PCI-E) - (Free Metal Gear Solid V Game)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z97M-D3H (Intel Z97) - 4xUSB3/4xUSB2 (M-ATX)
Sound Card
Motherboard Integrated HD Sound
Wired Networking
Motherboard Integrated Ethernet Lan (Broadband Ready)
Power Supply
Corsair RM 650W (Modular) PSU - Low Noise/Silent
CPU Compound
Standard CPU Compound Supplied With Heatsink
Extra Case Fans
Standard Fans Included With Case
Wireless Networking
Wireless Network Card 600Mbps (PCI-E)
Hard Drive #1
500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD SATA-III, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s - Silent
Hard Drive #2
1 TB Seagate (1000 GB) SATA-III HDD 7200 RPM 64MB
Power Cable
1 x 1.8 Metre UK Mains Power Cable
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Graphics Card : 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - 4 GB - (MSI) Twin Frozr V - (PCI-E) -
CPU Heatsink : 1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 - Low Noise
Memory : 1 x 16 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz (2x8GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
CPU Compound : 1 x Standard CPU Compound Supplied With Heatsink
Extra Case Fans : 1 x Standard Fans Included With Case
Power Cable : 1 x 1 x 1.8 Metre UK Mains Power Cable
CPU : 1 x Intel i7 4790K - (4 x 4.0 GHZ) - Haswell
Motherboard : 1 x Gigabyte Z97M-D3H (Intel Z97) - 4xUSB3/4xUSB2 (M-ATX)
Power Supply : 1 x Corsair RM 650W (Modular) PSU - Low Noise/Silent
Hard Drive #1 : 1 x 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD SATA-III, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s - Silent
Wireless Networking : 1 x Wireless Network Card 600Mbps (PCI-E)
Hard Drive #2 : 1 x 1 TB Seagate (1000 GB) SATA-III HDD 7200 RPM 64MB
Wired Networking : 1 x Motherboard Integrated Ethernet Lan (Broadband Ready)
Sound Card : 1 x Motherboard Integrated HD Sound
Computer Case : 1 x Black ATX Tower Case [/FONT]
In addition to that, if you go with the haswell-e lineup... which uses the x99 motherboards you can have access to ddr4 RAM, which is blazing fast. In that case it would be something like Intel i7 5820k 6core, x99m (m-atx, asrock, asus, evga have good options there also good motherboards), ADATA DDR4 (Adata is pretty competitive price wise). Additionally, I would recommend a closed loop cooling option. For affordability, the Silverstone Tundra td02-e/td03-e are good options (make sure its the -e version, for a bit more one can get the corsairs or NZXT, which are also good).
How much ram you've got defines how much detail you can have in a scene. When I had 16GB of ram, I could push about 12 million active points before things started to act strange. Now that I've got 32BG of ram, I can handle about 25 million active points.
One of the only regrets of my current build is that it only supports 32BG of ram, because I'd love to see what I could do with 64GB.
So, if this computer is specifically being built for ZBrush, don't skimp on the ram.
Basically, going 5820k Haswell-E typically costs around $200 more (for the ram and motherboards) than going with the 4790K. The 4790K is better at tasks that only take advantage of 1-4 cores, the 5820k is better when you are doing tasks that can use all 6 cores. It's a toss up, and not worth the extra $200 in my personal opinion (this is coming from a guy with a Haswell-E processor in my main rig). But either option is a completely valid one.
Even though DDR4 ram is faster, it's not much of a bottle neck for most applications, so you don't really leverage it much. Typically more ram is more important than faster ram.
I'd suggest avoiding all-in-one liquid cooling. They do work well, and can keep temps and noise low. But they are expensive, and can fail. A $35 air CPU cooler is good enough to keep a 4790K cool, and quiet.
The 5820k is slightly faster for some of ZBrush's most computationally demanding applications, but it's more expensive and requires a more expensive motherboard as well.
When it's all added up, the 5820k should be slightly more bang for your buck related to multi-core tasks, but it's guaranteed to be substantially slower for single-core tasks, and all for a higher price point.
When I spec'd it all out, the 5820k was benchmarked to be about 12% faster than the 4790k for multicore tasks, but the 4790k was 16% faster for single-core tasks, and a 5820k build was about 15% more expensive. So, it's 15% more expensive for something that's 12% faster some of the time and 16% slower the rest of the time. In my opinion, the 4790k was the better choice.
But, the 6700k and the promise of 64GB of ram... that was very tempting.
This is great - thanks so much.
I think I'll go with the [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Intel i7 4790K and bump up the RAM to 32GB.
Also, what about the Motherboard and Graphics card choices? Any good??
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Motherboard : 1 x Gigabyte Z97M-D3H (Intel Z97) - 4xUSB3/4xUSB2 (M-ATX)
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Graphics Card : 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - 4 GB - (MSI) Twin Frozr V - (PCI-E)
Fans too - how many do I need?
[/FONT]
I have made a couple more tweaks.
This is looking like the rig. Could you kindly advise if this is worth going for, bearing in mind the machine is primarily for high end Zbrush work along with Photoshop and basic Maya use.
Again, thanks in advance.
Tom
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Graphics Card :
1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - 4 GB - (MSI) Twin Frozr V - (PCI-E)
CPU Compound :
1 x Standard CPU Compound Supplied With Heatsink
CPU Heatsink :
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 - Low Noise
Extra Case Fans :
1 x 120 MM Cooler Master Blue LED Fan - Max Fans Supported By Case - Price Per Fan
Hard Drive #2 :
1 x 1 TB Seagate (1000 GB) SATA-III HDD 7200 RPM 64MB
Memory :
1 x 32 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz (4x8GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Power Cable :
1 x 1 x 1.8 Metre UK Mains Power Cable
CPU :
1 x Intel i7 4790K - (4 x 4.0 GHZ) - Haswell
Motherboard :
1 x Gigabyte Z97M-D3H (Intel Z97) - 4xUSB3/4xUSB2 (M-ATX)
Power Supply :
1 x Corsair RM 650W (Modular) PSU - Low Noise/Silent
Hard Drive #1 :
1 x 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD SATA-III, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s - Silent
Computer Case :
1 x Corsair Carbide Series 200R
Wireless Networking :
1 x Wireless Network Card 600Mbps (PCI-E)
Wired Networking :
1 x Motherboard Integrated Ethernet Lan (Broadband Ready)
Sound Card :
1 x Motherboard Integrated HD Sound [/FONT]
All I've got left is personal bias.
I prefer Asus to Gigabyte for motherboards because I believe them to have higher reliability, although I've been told that belief is unfounded. My rigs tend to last 10 or more years, so I've been sticking with them. I got a Z97-A, that's more of a personal preference than strictly based on fact.
Also, I don't trust Seagate hard drives for reliability. They're unquestionably cheaper for comparable features, but I've never seen Seagate ranked among the top few competitors for reliability. As far as I know, Western Digital and HGST seem to make the hard drives that are most dependable, for for my storage drive, that's very important to me.
But, overall, it looks like a good rig. I like the 950 evo,
You're probably right.
I was just looking at this list
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/
And by that, it's a little faster than the 4790k, but checking Cinebench, and it's a lot slower on multi core.
http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r15_multi_core-8
Or you can tack on an extra $120 to upgrade it to a 6700k, and it's not a 10% upgrade.