Professional Desktop Workstation advice - no custom built
polycounter lvl 8
Hey Polycounters,
I'm going to buy a desktop workstation for my work and I'd like to hear from you any advice you'd like to give me.
No homemade custom builds, I need something reliable with a typical 24/7 "next business day" warranty. I live in Italy. So I was looking at Dell and HP workstations... (been using Dell mobile workstations for years).
Main usage: content creation for both 3D real-time and offline graphics, content creation and rendering (Maya, Max + VRay, MARI, Photoshop, Unreal, Unity, ZBrush).
Some specs: RAM 32GB or more, SSD for OS and current working projects, any NVIDIA card with performance like my current Quadro K3100M or better. I'm not sure about CPU, not very interested in a lot of cores since I find that a lot time-counsuming operations are usually single thread (Maya combine, etc). Anyway for VRay rendering they might help
Budget: 4000$-5000$ (with display)
I'm going to buy a desktop workstation for my work and I'd like to hear from you any advice you'd like to give me.
No homemade custom builds, I need something reliable with a typical 24/7 "next business day" warranty. I live in Italy. So I was looking at Dell and HP workstations... (been using Dell mobile workstations for years).
Main usage: content creation for both 3D real-time and offline graphics, content creation and rendering (Maya, Max + VRay, MARI, Photoshop, Unreal, Unity, ZBrush).
Some specs: RAM 32GB or more, SSD for OS and current working projects, any NVIDIA card with performance like my current Quadro K3100M or better. I'm not sure about CPU, not very interested in a lot of cores since I find that a lot time-counsuming operations are usually single thread (Maya combine, etc). Anyway for VRay rendering they might help
Budget: 4000$-5000$ (with display)
Replies
apple also does a seemingly quite nice workstation. the OS is the seller since it's nicely multithreaded as opposed to windows where i can make the mouse cursor stutter with a simple background process... max is the one program on your list that's not compatible there, obviously.
your use case might still be better served by a consumer level machine though. workstations are typically more about multiple processors often with lower clock-frequency, many cores and options that probably are not relevant for someone who just needs a fast machine for interactive 3D work. at your budget you could probably buy two identical machines that each match a low end workstation on performance and use one as a backup for the other to make sure you never have proper downtime while waiting for the machine to get serviced.
one thing to look out for with workstations is also noise. these are not necessarily as silent as a modern PC since they are intended to also be run in server rooms and harsher environments than your usual air-conned office. check out reviews touching on that!
interesting advice! 2 consumer/prosumer workstations might be an idea
I've been using my Dell M6700 for ~4 years now, recently upgraded to 24GB RAM. I did a lot of quite serious real-time and off-line work. Anyway I tend to work with single assets, but with many software running at the same time (especially for texturing). I also love Dell warranty/service: an old Precision I got broke 2/3 parts (motherboard, quadro card...) and I got them replaced very quickly for free. For my current M6700 I payed something like $4000. I thought that now that I don't need to travel a lot, a desktop workstation "of the same power" might be cheaper. Probably I was wrong...
BOXX are interesting but from Italy it might be a problem. Anyone has some opinion about HPs (ie z840) vs Dell?
Thanks!!
the HP Z-series are good i think. very common on the high end. rather silent for workstations as well, from what i remember. don't count out lenovo though, they are what was formerly sold as IBM intellistations which were very well engineered beasts. not great to listen to though...
if you have an opportunity somewhere near to you, go check out the apple machine. should be pretty neat for your purposes with that 6-core 3.7 ghz CPU option. as said their OS is very responsive and a definite advantage (if you can live with compatibility). also, there's an awesome photoshop alternative available for only that platform that is incredibly fast.
I have a HP Z workstation at work now; also works quite well. Also very silent, and light! (I remember I had a HP workstation in 2007 and it felt like it weighted a ton). We had some Lenovo machines too, but we abandoned them after 1 year and switched to HP. IT wasn't too happy with them.
Aside the consumer-level solution, I had a look at HP and Dell.
HP z840 seem quite expensive compared to Dell Precisions. But there's no HP online configurator so I'm not sure.
I made a Dell Precision t5810 configuration (without display) that might suit my needs:
Intel® Xeon® E5-1620 v3 (4C, 3,5 GHz, 10 MB, 140 W) - July 2014
RAM 32GB (4x8GB) (256GB MAX)
NVIDIA® Quadro® K4200 4GB (2 video cards MAX)
HD SATA 2TB 7200RPM + SSD 256GB (4 slots MAX)
Price: ~$3500
Anyway available processors seem a bit old (but seems the same for HP workstations).
But the new Dell Precision t5xxx worstation line might be available not very soon from now (I see that the previous was released in 2012, so it means a ~2.5 years cycle)...
You'd wanna check to see if K4200 is supported by software you use... K4200 isn't compatible with Mudbox 2011 and wouldn't bake displacement maps. Might not be a problem with the software you use, but worthwhile to check before you buy.