(Another) Workstation build

Badgerbaiter · July 28, 2014

Hello

I have been out of the pc building life since I built my current - 2700k, 16GB etc a few years ago, however, I am thinking it is time for an upgrade.

I have about £2000 - £2200 at the most.

I currently work primarily with 3ds Max and Photoshop, however I do use Maya as well and I have promised myself to finally learn ZBrush as well. Premiere pro and After Effects are not used much at all.

I DO also play computer games when I am not doing environment/architectural visualisation.

I am in the UK

This is what I have thus far:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/fzJ4YJ

I already have 2 monitors, 240GB SSD, 7TB in HDD Wacom etc, only other thing I am tempted to get is another (bigger) monitor. I have Windows 7 and 8.1. I already have a Coolermaster Stacker 830 but I am tempted by either the Temjin or the Obsidian 700D.

The other issue is GPUs - I am not entirely sold on the SLi to be honest, I originally had the Superclocked Titan Black there, but I can't make a firm decision.

Any help would be great.

PokémonTrainerFour · July 28, 2014

NZXT Kraken X61 is better than the H100i in performance (and possibly silence), that's about all I would change here.

Katsu-K1L · July 28, 2014

Hello

I have been out of the pc building life since I built my current - 2700k, 16GB etc a few years ago, however, I am thinking it is time for an upgrade.

I have about £2000 - £2200 at the most.

I currently work primarily with 3ds Max and Photoshop, however I do use Maya as well and I have promised myself to finally learn ZBrush as well. Premiere pro and After Effects are not used much at all.

I DO also play computer games when I am not doing environment/architectural visualisation.

I am in the UK

This is what I have thus far:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/fzJ4YJ

I already have 2 monitors, 240GB SSD, 7TB in HDD Wacom etc, only other thing I am tempted to get is another (bigger) monitor. I have Windows 7 and 8.1. I already have a Coolermaster Stacker 830 but I am tempted by either the Temjin or the Obsidian 700D.

The other issue is GPUs - I am not entirely sold on the SLi to be honest, I originally had the Superclocked Titan Black there, but I can't make a firm decision.

Any help would be great.

Titan black is better than 780 sli.

SAV1OUR · July 28, 2014

there's very few situations where you need 64gb ram so 32s fine and for the love of god don't get a those 780's they're a waste of money

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor (£412.50 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£110.38 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus P9X79-E WS SSI CEB LGA2011 Motherboard (£301.59 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston Beast 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£239.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£200.62 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£68.98 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£68.98 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£279.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£279.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case (£121.76 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£128.89 @ More Computers)
Total: £2212.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-28 01:18 BST+0100

Badgerbaiter · July 28, 2014

Appreciated, folks.

I didn't even know about the Kraken, so I will definitely check it out.

I'll scrap the SLi 780s then.. how do the Crossfired 290s hold up against the Titan Black?

As for the RAM, the 64GB was 'only' £100 more, I figured it would be cheaper to get it all now rather than get a further 32GB down the line.

And yes, thank you, I meant the 750D

partick.lii · July 28, 2014

there's very few situations where you need 64gb ram so 32s fine and for the love of god don't get a those 780's they're a waste of money

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor (£412.50 @ Aria PC)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£110.38 @ Scan.co.uk)

Motherboard: Asus P9X79-E WS SSI CEB LGA2011 Motherboard (£301.59 @ Amazon UK)

Memory: Kingston Beast 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£239.98 @ Amazon UK)

Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£200.62 @ Amazon UK)

Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£68.98 @ CCL Computers)

Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£68.98 @ CCL Computers)

Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£279.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)

Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£279.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)

Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case (£121.76 @ CCL Computers)

Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£128.89 @ More Computers)

Total: £2212.86

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-28 01:18 BST+0100

why do you need 2 wd reds?

I would go with blues or blacks, idk your choice

SAV1OUR · July 28, 2014

why do you need 2 wd reds?

I would go with blues or blacks, idk your choice

reds are the best for raid configurations and raid with worksation's always make a great combination, for general storage he can toss anything on the ssd thus the 500gb

MikeTz · July 28, 2014

You build pretty good, but since the budget is so high and you dont have a bad pc now i would wait for x99 and ddr4 in 6-12 months because then you are not going to have to upgrade for a long time

brob · July 28, 2014

I am partial to the SeaSonic Platinum-1000 psu. Other than that with the change to a Titan gpu I like the configuration.

July 28, 2014

You build pretty good, but since the budget is so high and you dont have a bad pc now i would wait for x99 and ddr4 in 6-12 months because then you are not going to have to upgrade for a long time

^^This. The 2700K is still a very good cpu. Haswell-E is supposedly due around September, along with DDR4.

Badgerbaiter · July 28, 2014

Ah. The only thing is at the moment I am stuck doing 2+ day renders and that means that I am technically out of action while I await for that to finish. If I build this then I can keep my current setup to still work on projects while I leave the new PC to render away.. possibly.

As for DDR4 - I am not sure I can wait that long, I can't be sure of the pricing for a decent amount (ie 32GB to 64GB), plus combining that with an uncertain cost for the mobo and CPU doesn't help. Plus I would only get the mid range CPU, the one that has the same amount of Cores and threads that the 4930K has. This is just my opinion obviously based on a quick butcher's at google etc. I wasn't aware DDR4 was coming out so soon, but I have to bite the bullet at some point and I don't think I can wait maybe another 9 months.

Badgerbaiter · July 29, 2014

Over thinking now

Just thought before I purchased about rendernodes.

I can technically afford 4 of these:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/YkLGbv

Or 3 of those and just about Titan Black.

If I get the rendernodes they'll decrease my rendertimes and by the time new processors and DDR4 come out and are a suitable price the Titan Black should still be going strong.

Do those nodes look ok? Not entirely sure watercooler is needed as I doubt I would overclock.

brob · July 29, 2014

Over thinking now

Just thought before I purchased about rendernodes.

I can technically afford 4 of these:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/YkLGbv

Or 3 of those and just about Titan Black.

If I get the rendernodes they'll decrease my rendertimes and by the time new processors and DDR4 come out and are a suitable price the Titan Black should still be going strong.

Do those nodes look ok? Not entirely sure watercooler is needed as I doubt I would overclock.

If rendering is the big time consumer then nodes make sense. But they do add complexity to the workflow.

With respect to the particular parts. 500GB is actually as or more expensive than 1TB hdd these days. The Spinpoint is relatively slow because it only has 16MB of cache.

I came up with two slightly different alternative render nodes.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£191.17 @ More Computers)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£62.36 @ Scan.co.uk)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£66.96 @ Scan.co.uk)

Storage: Crucial M550 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£149.99 @ Amazon UK)

Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£22.99 @ Novatech)

Power Supply: Super Flower Amazon 300W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£39.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)

Total: £533.06

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-29 18:08 BST+0100

is the more expensive but will be quieter and a touch faster because of the ssd.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant