"Workstation" Build Assistance.

[RafaelDeJongh]

Budget (including currency):  €7000 EUR (seven hundred euro) - €10000 EUR (ten thousand euro) 

Country: Belgium

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: webdeveloping, coding, programming, compiling, hosting, server and network management, NAS, 3D Modeling, Game Development, PBR Real Time Rendering, Video Editing, Encoding/Decoding, Graphic Design, Illustrations, Virtual + Augmented Reality applications and games, ultra high settings for most upcoming triple a games. 

Other details: I am going for a complete new rig so nothing specific to this. 

 

So in general I would like to have a workstation like computer with generic consumer products as my workloads doesn't benefit when using enterprise grade equipment like xeon or epyc cpu's, quadro cards or ecc memory so I don't need anything of those things at all. 

 

I do have a very decent budget as far as I think I do for what I need it for. For starters my hobby is being a game developer but my job is being a Web developer so web developing/coding isn't really that heavy but the game development, rendering, real time PBR and even now GI+Ray Tracing does require quite the horse power. I don't play games often but one thing I always wanted when I wanted to buy a new pc was a VR headset probably and most likely the vive index but if anyone has other suggestions be my guest. 

 

I do work with immense high-quality and size images which easily reach in 30GB PSB (Photoshop Big Documents) and more that I work with and Photoshop being Photoshop it eats ram like crazy. I also have various other game development programs like quixel studio's who just consumes ram in a way that chrome seems to be very kind to the ram usage. 

 

So with that I need A LOT of ram and I think currently 256GB would be more than enough. I'm already used to 32GB and 64GB ram but that doesn't cut it by far. So yea the workflow I use would benefit with a high amount of ram and while I know ecc ram might get me even to like 1TB of ram I don't think I would need that much for now. But 128GB minimal but 256GB preferred. And with all the bios crap that Intel is pulling with the z boards and limiting ram and xmp profiles I do mainly therefor want to stick to the highest possible yet completely compatible set for whatever motherboard you would suggest. 

 

In the past I was thinking I needed pci4 but for the foreseeable future I don't think I do. What I however do need is immense fast read and write times where I currently am thinking of using the Aorus m.2 nvme gen4 which in both the pci version or the m.2 version seems to be the fastest ssd on the curre 't market? Most higher end motherboards like the Threadripper Aorus Master motherboard would have 3 x m.2 slots and these 3 in raid 0 as I would probably only use it for my os and programs and cache to parse files from hot to cold storage which would be the Seagate 16TB Exos as they seem to be cheaper than the iron wolf even though the exos are enterprise rated? Could anyone explain that to me to why this exactly is? But yea probably one or two 16TB HDD's, i don't know if octane would work with this kind of setup and especially if I would go for the Threadripper 3970x or would anyone recommend a different cpu? Is Intel's i9 even worthy to look at these days? 

 

So yea as I'm a huge Aorus fan I would prefer to have most if not all items to be aorus so for the GPU I don't think nvmi link would be any much better but do correct me if I would get an RTX2080Ti. The vram is perfect and should normally be able to run most things I including vr? Or would vr or games in general do make more use out of the nvmi link compared to SLI? 

 

For cooling I wanted to go with an AOI cooler from aorus or Corsair but I've been informed some heavy fan cooling would actually be the same if not better? So if anyone could provide me with some pro's and con's on this that would be certainly helpful. I'm not that interested in custom water cooling loops but an AOI if they're good I don't see a problem using it, likewise for the aorus 2080ti AOI water cooling edition. 

 

For the psu most likely the 1000 watt Corsair one or should I go with that one that doesn't have a fan? As I also do want this build to be extremely quite to what js possible of course. 

 

I also want to up my in home intranet from 1Gb to 10Gb so that might require an additional pci card. And for the m.2 raid does anyone think it would be a good idea to use a raid card over software raid for m.2 related memory? I could certainly go with 3 exos where I then could use raid 5 with these 3 drives and I do think that that does would be better with a hardware raid card. Suggestions welcomed. 

 

For the casing I do want something special not something typical and I first had my eyes on the Quadstellar case from Deepcool as that sure is one hell of an impressive case and with the way it separates its compartments I also found very interesting. But I am open to suggestions as appearance is one thing but sound and thus fan Noice does have a higher priority. 

 

So yea I have that kind of budget, with most of the specs listed or at least what I have in mind, I would love to have some opiniond on this and perhaps some suggestions to if I should wait for something to come out like in q4 of this year that is worth waiting for then I would. But if it's for mid next year then it doesn't matter. 

 

I do need a computer sooner or later as my current rig is about to die, I'm amazed that it still boots (well sometimes it doesn't) but yea I can wait but not too long either. 

 

So any suggestions to what specs I should for to have a multimedia/workstations like computer. 

 

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide me and future information. 

 

 

R. 

 

[porina]

On a quick skim of your needs I think you have the right idea. 3970X will give you plenty of CPU power, and the platform will support a good amount of ram and other expansion possibility. The nearest Intel have might be the 10980XE, if you can even find it in stock, which only goes up to 18 cores.

 

2080Ti will be fine for anything consumer VR related. I don't know about your development work needs in that area. If the 2080Ti VRAM is ok, we're done there. If you need more, the Titan RTX might make sense.

 

PSU wise, many higher end PSUs can operate in a fanless mode at lower proportions of their rating. So if you get a high enough power unit that supports this, it might not make any fan noise at all. 

[Kilrah]

If splurging that much on a build I wouldn't do it just before major components are refreshed. Wait 2-3 months, buy "top meaningful" end of what's arriving.