$2300 working/gaming build

[mfenn]

There are items in your build that I wouldn't touch for love nor money. Seagate drives suck and are unreliable. WD Blacks all the way

Debunked above.

ASRock is still a rather new entity and have yet to prove themselves to me. I have the X79 E11 M/B and there are still quite a few glitches in it. The XMP would not let me go above 2133 even though I set it for 2400. I would save and restart and then go back into the bios and it was back to 2133. I have flashed the bios a few times already. It seems like they have a new one every two weeks. The board features are next to none but they haven't got their full act together yet. I will stick to Asus for the time being on important builds. If you put the hardware that I have on an X79 Asus board your prices would skyrocket. The same system I already priced out with and Intel X79 system and it rang in at $400.00 more. When I did some further analysis I found out that the overall performance did not equal the price increase.

Purely anecdotal. I could regale you with stories of buggy ASUS and Gigabyte boards, but that would be equally pointless.

By the way having 2 video cards make a tremendous difference in rendering. The amount of available GPU processors speed up all rendering just as the amount of cuda core does the same. Cuda cores = GPU processors. They are essentially the same thing under a different name.

First off, "CUDA cores" are Nvidia marketing-speak for shaders. I think everybody here understands that they are the same. Second, it is well known that the Adobe suite's GPU acceleration does not even scale up to the top-end single card, let alone two.

Corsair SSD drives are yesterday's news. The Neutrons are the slowest of the lot. For me now it's Samsung 840 Pro's
For Ram it's G.Skill or nothing. Many people tell me about Corsair Dominator Platinum. For dollar value G.Skill has the exact same timings for 1/2 the price. Corsair sucks in some departments. The ram is way too expensive just for having the name. Their SSD's need a makeover.

You have clearly not been paying attention to the SSD market. The Corsair Neutron series uses LAMD controllers which are highly-regarded for their performance consistency. You want consistency on a real work machine, not something built for synthetic benchmarks.

PowerColor is the lowest name in Graphics cards. Asus or Sapphire make much better products.

There is really very little variance among GPU AIB board manufacturers. They are building with the same raw materials on the same processes. You just pay more for the ASUS name.

Bought an H80i cooler. Quieter and less interference with the airflow over other components.

Quieter is debatable, and a huge weakness of AIO water coolers is that they provide no cooling of ancillary parts near the socket area. Do not try to spin that into a strength.

Not impressed with the case. I bought a Bitfenix case and put in beefier quiet running fans. Very stylish and has kid proofing lock up for the flash drive / eSata connectors so his kid can't run into a flash drive and break it off. It also locks away the on/off buttons so they can't shut down or reset the system accidentally while he's doing a large render. Nothing sticks out of the case and even the DVD drive locks away so they can't play with it as well. If I put your components in his system it would slow it down a lot.

OK, that's fine. Get whatever ~$100 case you like, but know that the R4 is a very nice case.

 

[mfenn]

Those are just my drives and I am not including any I've used in other builds. If I include them as well then it must be closer to 200 HDD's and I haven't ever heard from someone complaining from a failed one yet.

More anecdotal evidence with unreliable reporting and selection bias. Not convincing at all.

What I do know is that WD puts the exact date of when the drive was built on the drive itself. If it fails you don't need proof of receipt to replace them. I'm not sure what Seagate asks for because I don't use them.

Seagate (and Hitachi and Samsung) are all the same way.

 

[mfenn]

As for Intel's position on Ram you must have missed the fact that about 6 months ago they have finally relented and support higher ram speeds and also jumped onto the Pci Express Gen 3 support as well.

"Support" does not equal "get good value from". Sure, you can buy DDR3 2400, but is it twice as fast in actual applications (which it would have to be to justify the cost)? No, it is not. I am beginning to see how you spent over $10k on a desktop.

As for motherboards, I have built over 100 systems and the only M/B's that ever failed on me are 2- Gigabyte boards and 1- ASRock Board. I have recommended Asus M/B's ever since and never had to RMA a single one. Whenever I try a different M/B then it is 10x more likely to fail in my personal experience. As for higher RMA rates that is to be expected since they out sell the other top three put together. So they may have just as many returns but they sell 10x more motherboards.

More anecdotal evidence. Real statistics from actual retailers show that all 3 are about the same, with ASUS maybe being slightly higher.

As for the SSD's being faster than HDD's there is no argument but you are comparing Apples to Oranges. When I buy a SSD I compare them to other SSD's before buying them. The specs are

Samsung 840 Pros
Storage Capacity 256GB
Features
Sequential Read Speed Up to 540MB/s
Sequential Write Speed Up to 520MB/s
Random Read Speed Up to 100K IOPS
Random Write Speed Up to 90K IOPS
Warranty Product 5 Years

Corsair Neutron top of the line:Neutron Series™ GTX SSDs: 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD extreme-performance solid-state drives
SSD Capacity 240 GB
Max Sequential R/W (ATTO)550 MB/s sequential read
470 MB/s sequential write
Max Random 4k Write (IOMeter 08) 85k IOPS (4k aligned)
Warranty Five years

See my reply above. Synthetics are useful to get a first approximation of performance, but that's it. Actual demanding workloads far any away prefer the more consistent drive.

The whole purpose of building custom systems relies on the ability to O/C the components. If I never plan to O/C then why build custom in the first place. You can just pick up a mass produced system for much less.

Silly me, and here I thought the point of getting a custom system was so that you could get the exact parts you wanted and get spectacular deals. I've been doing it wrong this whole time!

But seriously, you are building a pro system here for real work. Overclocking should never even come into the picture.

I am including the exact same components within your build list. I add the different options to both lists and see the whole picture price-wise. Yours still comes out more expensive than mine when adding the extra options to your list as well. That is why I am saying that your build with mu components list is roughly $400.00 more for an equivalent system using your Intel board and CPU

Aha, the whole "I have secret knowledge that I don't want to share with you" tactic. Post your build we'll and see how it compares in the light of day.

 

[Twotenths]

Whoa!! I think I struck a few nerves here. Yes I am biased on certain things but they come from personal experiences over many years. I try to build the best system not the cheapest one for the best cost. PassMark is a source for many comparisons. If I look at CPU's in PassMark and then click on value on the searchable page so that the highest value is at the top the very first CPU's that rank the highest and have a high value rating are all AMD Processors. The FX-8350 ranks 39 overall but the dollar value is very good for the money. Everything else in the same ranking category is at least $90 or more for a similar ranking item. The build I was talking about was for my son's computer. I maxed out the ram with 32GB's worth. He is just starting his own company and has been doing 3D animations and artwork for several years now. I wanted a motherboard that can be O/C'd when necessary so I bought the Sabertooth 990FX/SB950 Gen 3 Pcie series. There are 15 embedded temperature sensors onboard for easy and safe O/Cing. I only had to put in a 128GB SSD seeing as I have the Adobe CS6 Master Collection installed along with 180 other medium to large programs and am only using 56GB of my SSD including Windows and everything else. The 1TB WD velociraptor is his scratch disk and runs at 100MB/s steady load. He had dual 6950's in his old system which I replaced with faster and better cards. I don't buy Asus vid cards but prefer Sapphire versions. They are cheaper and deliver the same speeds as Asus versions but they sell O/C'd versions that run faster for less money. He is the pro at using the software and when we changed out the video cards he noticed a much faster rendering speed right off the bat. So when you tell me that rendering is not even close to card saturation I beg to differ based on real time real world results. There are not a lot of people who can use every single program in the Adobe Suite let alone know how to use each one effectively and quickly. Different uses of the software require different skillsets. Being able to use all of them effectively depends on the knowledge level and the range of needs. These are the parameters that I used for his system. I asked him about creating a Ramdisk for his scratch disk and he told me that he uses all the ram he has when he is doing multiple renders at the same time. He can't spare any for a scratch disk. He knows a lot about the needs of his system for what he does with it. He knows the limitations and runs it at the edge all the time. That is why we went to O/C his system to leach out a little more performance from it. He has systems that are supposedly better where he was working but he finds that he can be much better and faster on the system that he has now and in actuality has found that AMD performs much better for his needs than Intel does based on the hardware difference between what he had access to and what his own system can do. I built it tailored to his needs and experience using the software that he has and uses. He actually knows how to tweak his system better than I do because I taught him how to build computers and he uses that knowledge constructively to increase the software's speed, reliability and functionality. His knowledge of systems and getting the best out of it for his purposes goes way beyond my level of knowledge. His is real world and mine is synthetic. The bulk of the cost of my own system lies in the fact that I am running 4 monitors which are included in the price tag. Each monitor runs around the $800 level not including taxes and shipping costs. They are pro monitors which I will give to my son in the future. They are professionally color corrected and I bought them with him in mind. Graphics Illustration is done best with high res color correct monitors. He is running three older monitors right now with different programs running on each one. While rendering he is creating new artwork for the next rendering and usually has three renders all running at once while creating more artwork at the same time. My system will be his in a while when his business takes off. All of the games he is creating are fully cross platform and will work on any system be it a Mac, PC, android or desktop /laptop/tablet. His games will work on all of them. That was the main beef he had where he was working. They build for a single platform only and he sees the potential of his games and being fully cross platform will draw in many more customers.

 

[Twotenths]

The computer I have now is the first time I went all out on a build just for the H*LL of it. I want to see what the best really is in performance with every test that I can throw at it. It is my coup des gras of computers just because I want to experience it. I have been using Cav/Blk drives for so long now that I don't even want to try anything else. This system will pass hands in a year or so after I have beat it to death. My 4 children have started their own company together and will be needing something spectacular when they are ready and need it. They may even turn this system into a small server for their own company. The case will house a dual CPU M/B easily.

 

[Sleepingforest]

For god's sake, don't let your son run a RAMdisk for a scratch disk. That's 100% redundant. Adobe hits the scratch disk after it runs out of RAM; using a RAMdisk for scratch only made sense when Adobe put artificial limits on how much RAM could be used, which was far below the amount the suite needed.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Dear lord...was it really necessary to wall-of-text that?

 

[Twotenths]

For god's sake, don't let your son run a RAMdisk for a scratch disk. That's 100% redundant. Adobe hits the scratch disk after it runs out of RAM; using a RAMdisk for scratch only made sense when Adobe put artificial limits on how much RAM could be used, which was far below the amount the suite needed.

Don't worry he knows what he's doing and nixed the idea drom the start

 

[Twotenths]

Dear lord...was it really necessary to wall-of-text that?

I do tend to get carried away when I'm talking about certain things. I felt it was necessary to clarify things before it got out of hand,

 

[mfenn]

Dear lord...was it really necessary to wall-of-text that?

Yeah. I would have to parse that into logical sections and cut out the irrelevant parts before even attempting to respond. This thread is not "let mfenn player the copy editor", so I'll just keep it to a few succinct points.

- Passmark is a purely synthetic benchmark which measures nothing relevant. The only thing it tells you is how well a computer runs Passmark (not too useful). When spec'ing out systems, you should always look for real-world benchmarks in the applications that you're interested in.
- I don't really understand the SSD argument because my build included a 256 GB one.
- You have linked no benchmarks for multiple GPUs improving Adobe performance (nor elucidated your workload so that I can find them), whereas I have linked actual data. The only "nerve" that you've touched is making broad generalizations based on anecdotal (at best) results.

 

[Twotenths]

Yeah. I would have to parse that into logical sections and cut out the irrelevant parts before even attempting to respond. This thread is not "let mfenn player the copy editor", so I'll just keep it to a few succinct points.

- Passmark is a purely synthetic benchmark which measures nothing relevant. The only thing it tells you is how well a computer runs Passmark (not too useful). When spec'ing out systems, you should always look for real-world benchmarks in the applications that you're interested in.
- I don't really understand the SSD argument because my build included a 256 GB one.
- You have linked no benchmarks for multiple GPUs improving Adobe performance (nor elucidated your workload so that I can find them), whereas I have linked actual data. The only "nerve" that you've touched is making broad generalizations based on anecdotal (at best) results.

I have asked him for that information but he just doesn't have the time to spare right now. My 4 kids have created a company building small 3D games and he is very busy working on the artwork right now. He created a few videos on his work and one has a discussion during it where he describes what he is doing. The recorded volume is too low and I have asked him to fix it. He doesn't even have the time for that. You can check it out here. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1241450511/the-great-zoo-escape?ref=live The video is the main picture.

 

[Twotenths]

I have asked him for that information but he just doesn't have the time to spare right now. My 4 kids have created a company building small 3D games and he is very busy working on the artwork right now. He created a few videos on his work and one has a discussion during it where he describes what he is doing. The recorded volume is too low and I have asked him to fix it. He doesn't even have the time for that. You can check it out here. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1241450511/the-great-zoo-escape?ref=live The video is the main picture.

The video I'm talking about is on one of these pages.
http://www.siblingrivalrygames.com
https://www.facebook.com/SiblingRivalryGames
http://siblingrivalrygames.blogspot.ca/