Seanug

I've been doing a lot of 3D animation and my render times are outlandishly long. This is due to my current cheap CPU. I want to shorten my render times. I use Blender for my animations. The AMD FX-9590 is an 8 core clocked at 4.7 GHz and runs around $280 The Intel i7-5820k is a 6 core clocked at 3.3 GHz and is $370. Does raw horsepower/cores yield better results or is there something behind the i7 which makes it better for rendering? My GPU is a R9 285 so I don't know if that could be a factor.

Thanks Alve, From all the comments I think I have a good idea for how I'll make the build. If a moderator could close this thread that would be good. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions.

The CPU is a "LGA2011 -3", but the motherboard you selected is "LGA2011 -3 Narrow", is there any difference? Whats the Narrow?

DrM, I like your choices for the case/cpu and MB. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/JKMVqs As for ram, would going for 32gb be worth it? I'm willing to spend a little over the $700 limit.

I've started to get into 3D modeling with Blender and as my projects grow more complex so does the render time... I'm in need of a few new parts. My current build was made for 1080p gaming. - AMD Athlon 750k (quad core - 3.4 Ghz) - 8Gb of ram - R9 285 - ASRock FM2A88X-ITX - Samsung 840 evo SSD (500gb) - H55 (water cooling for my CPU) - Silverstone SFX 500w (80+ Gold). I'd like to spend $600-700-ish or less on the upgrade. I'll probably keep the power supply/SSD/water cooler and maybe the GPU. I'd like to have at least a 6 core CPU with 16-32gb of ram. If anyone has any suggestions for motherboards/graphics cards or good CPUs then let me know. Edit: Gaming isn't a priority, so more of the budget should go into the CPU/case/ram.