3d workstation Under $2000 workstation

[Sazarret]

Hi, this is the list of parts I've being considering buying for my new workstation (the first I'm building myself). I have roughly US$2000 for a machine that is mainly going to work with CPU and GPU powered 3D and After Effects. Could you please take a look at them and tell me if all the parts are in order or if should get any other instead?

At first I was going to get an i9 9900K but because of its recent vulnerabilities exposed and the price of the Threadripper 1950x being almost the same but with more cores I'm more inclined to go for an AMD system instead. What do you think? Is also worth noting that I almost never going to play any game in this system.

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor                                                       $499.99

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Wraith Ripper 76.4 CFM CPU Cooler                                               $119.99

Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X399-A EATX TR4 Motherboard                                                        $295.99

Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory                                 $179.99

Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive                                                 $159.99

GPU: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card                                                             $469.99

Case: Carbide SPEC-06 RGB Tempered Glass Case ATX Mid Tower Case                                    $59.99

PSU: Corsair - CXM V2 (2017) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply      $64.99

 

Total: $1850.92

 

One more thing. I know Zen 2 is about to be launched but I my thinking is that I won't be able to find any comparable performance at this price within the new AMD CPU line. Any thoughts about it?

[trevb0t]

19 minutes ago, Sazarret said:

Hi, this is the list of parts I've being considering buying for my new workstation (the first I'm building myself). I have roughly US$2000 for a machine that is mainly going to work with CPU and GPU powered 3D and After Effects. Could you please take a look at them and tell me if all the parts are in order or if should get any other instead?

At first I was going to get an i9 9900K but because of its recent vulnerabilities exposed and the price of the Threadripper 1950x being almost the same but with more cores I'm more inclined to go for an AMD system instead. What do you think? Is also worth noting that I almost never going to play any game in this system.

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor                                                       $499.99

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Wraith Ripper 76.4 CFM CPU Cooler                                               $119.99

Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X399-A EATX TR4 Motherboard                                                        $295.99

Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory                                 $179.99

Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive                                                 $159.99

GPU: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Black Video Card                                                             $469.99

Case: Carbide SPEC-06 RGB Tempered Glass Case ATX Mid Tower Case                                    $59.99

PSU: Corsair - CXM V2 (2017) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply      $64.99

 

Total: $1850.92

 

One more thing. I know Zen 2 is about to be launched but I my thinking is that I won't be able to find any comparable performance at this price within the new AMD CPU line. Any thoughts about it?

Zen 2 will be a thing to wait for either way. But for the sake of making the list, here's my build suggestion:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$484.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! - Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler	$88.09 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS ELITE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$169.78 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$154.99 @ Newegg Business
Storage	Intel - 660p Series 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$108.90 @ OutletPC
Storage	Seagate - Constellation ES 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	Gigabyte - GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB WINDFORCE Video Card	$699.99 @ Amazon
Case	Cooler Master - MasterCase H500 ATX Mid Tower Case	$95.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair - HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$99.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1977.70
	Mail-in rebates	-$20.00
	Total	$1957.70
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-24 02:33 EDT-0400

Recent security issues aside, the 9900K is still the CPU to go with for most processes. 

As to the GPU, this is a solid 2080 model. The 2070 offers perhaps the worst value of the RTX cards. The cost vs performance is not great. If the 2080 (still in budget) is too much to look at, you could always check out a Vega 64 for similar performance to a 2070 with a much neater price tag.

[Daniel Z.]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$484.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! - Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock - Z390 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$154.89 @ OutletPC
Memory	G.Skill - Trident Z RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$159.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 860 QVO 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$107.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Hitachi - 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$74.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	ASRock - Radeon VII 16 GB Phantom Gaming X Video Card	$679.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair - Crystal 460X RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$129.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair - RMx (2018) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$119.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$2022.72
	Mail-in rebates	-$35.00
	Total	$1987.72
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-24 03:29 EDT-0400

 

[Sazarret]

Wow! Thanks guys this is really helpful, many great ideas to think about. I'll definitely consider the RTX 2080 and you are right, waiting for Zen 2 is most likely the best idea.
However, perhaps I should be more specific about the type of work I expect this system to perform on.
As a freelancer I work mainly with both Cinema 4D's default render engine and Arnold render Engine for CPU rendering. As far as I understand, for both of them thread count is much more important than clock speeds, is this correct? The benchmarks that are more relevant for my type of work are Cinebench (Cinebench and Cinema4D are both made by Maxon and the test utilizes C4D's default render engine) and Blender because both have somewhat similar approaches to render (and most CPU render engines do for that matter).
As for a graphics card I'm starting to deep my nose into GPU rendering using Redshift and Octane that benefits greatly from Raytracing, so I have to stick with RTX for that reason.
I sincerely apologize if this sounds a little bit ranty but most tech channels in Youtube are heavily oriented to gaming and their general idea for a workstation is a very fast editing machine but there are thousands of studios like mine that almost never edit a piece of footage and have similar requirements for their workstations as me. I was hoping this thread could be helpful for all the Maya, 3D Max, Blender and Houdini users as well.

All this considered will you still recommend the same CPU? Why? I’d really like to know your opinion.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Bearmann]

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Cinema-4D-166/Hardware-Recommendations

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-OTOY-OctaneRender-192/Hardware-Recommendations

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Redshift-195/Hardware-Recommendations

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-V-Ray-199/Hardware-Recommendations

[brob]

12 hours ago, Sazarret said:

At first I was going to get an i9 9900K but because of its recent vulnerabilities exposed and the price of the Threadripper 1950x being almost the same but with more cores I'm more inclined to go for an AMD system instead. What do you think?

 

No cpu seems immune from vulnerabilities. Threadripper suffers from Meltdown and Spectre. The nature of all of these vulnerabilities require system specific targeted attacks. Unless one is dealing with very sensitive or valuable data, it seems to me that there is little need to worry.

 

Choose the cpu and gpu that provide the best performance for your workflow. Data from sites like Puget Systems should be used in deciding. Counting and comparing core counts, threads, and GHz is pointless. Only good data should count. After all your time is valuable and saving that will more than pay for good malware/virus protection.

[Sazarret]

Guys this its being really helpful for me. I've being wondering around for a quite a while but now I'm much more confident about the parts that I should buy.

 

In the end I'm going to go for the i9 9900K system with a Gigabyte RTX 2080 GPU.

 

Thank you so much to you all.

[trevb0t]

4 hours ago, Sazarret said:

Guys this its being really helpful for me. I've being wondering around for a quite a while but now I'm much more confident about the parts that I should buy.

 

In the end I'm going to go for the i9 9900K system with a Gigabyte RTX 2080 GPU.

 

Thank you so much to you all.

Awesome! Just a note to the build you listed, I would opt for a gold plus psu. The Corsiar RMx series or the BitFenix gold (if you don't mind non modular) are not too pricey and are solid units.

[Sazarret]

11 hours ago, trevb0t said:

Awesome! Just a note to the build you listed, I would opt for a gold plus psu. The Corsiar RMx series or the BitFenix gold (if you don't mind non modular) are not too pricey and are solid units.

Noted. I'll definitively check into that and post my final build in here.

 

 

I have one more question though. I want to be sure that the be quiet! - Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler that you recommended its going to be sufficient for handling a non-extreme overclocking of the CPU, maybe just to 5Ghz. Perhaps I should go for a more robust cooler like a big bulky ugly brown Noctua? AIO maybe? Any thoughts on that?

 

[Bearmann]

The Dark Rock PRO 4 will be able to handle a maximum overclock.

 

Where are you located? If in the US or Canada, maybe I can find some promotions.

[trevb0t]

10 hours ago, Sazarret said:

Noted. I'll definitively check into that and post my final build in here.

 

 

I have one more question though. I want to be sure that the be quiet! - Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler that you recommended its going to be sufficient for handling a non-extreme overclocking of the CPU, maybe just to 5Ghz. Perhaps I should go for a more robust cooler like a big bulky ugly brown Noctua? AIO maybe? Any thoughts on that?

 

Well the ugly brown Noctua (dual tower) is actually pretty much on par with the DRP4. Most affordable AIOs are going to be noisier, and most won't cool as well.

Linus had a video where he uses both the higher end Dual Tower Noctua and the DRP4 against heavy AIOs.