Advice on first render build (budget)

[ON_Res]

Hello,

I'm a first time builder who is also new to 3D rendering. As such, I don't require industry-leading parts, but I'm not experienced enough to affirm this is an optimal setup for rendering on a budget. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

1. 3D modelling and rendering, video editing, and digital audio work.
2. $700 preferable, $750 max
3. Canada
4. Newegg.ca, DirectCanada.com, Vuugo.com, etc
5. No brand preferences.
6. New monitor not required.
7. No current intention to overclock.
8. 1440 x 900
9. Intending to order before January.
X. New software not required.

Current Build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($206.50 @ Vuugo)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($64.75 @ Vuugo)
Memory: A-Data Premier Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($115.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($62.44 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 2GB Video Card ($131.50 @ Vuugo)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($47.74 @ DirectCanada)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Memory Express)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($18.00 @ Vuugo)
Keyboard: Rosewill RK-101 Wired Standard Keyboard ($5.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Mouse: Microsoft Optical Mouse 200 for Business Wired Optical Mouse ($4.89 @ DirectCanada)
Total: $692.79
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-23 17:23 EST-0500)


Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

[hackerballs]

The weak link there is your choice of GPU card. Everything else looks fine. Is there any possible way you could shop around and come up with extra cash for the 650 Ti BOOST? Also you could start saving for a SSD of 250gigs. (sweet spot)

gtx650 = 80.0 GB/s
gtx650 Ti = 86.4 GB/s

GTX650 Ti Boost = 144 GB/s

just a thought as rendering will hit your RAM hard (good to have 16gig minimum there). This card would be the difference between playing modern games like BF4 on high/Ultra or just playing old ones like checkers.

 

[Cerb]

I was thinking just the opposite: drop the GPU down to a GT 640, and use the budget headroom for a $220-250 Xeon E3. An FX-8350 is going to be much more to cool than a Haswell CPU, not be any faster (the differences are very small even for rendering and video encoding programs where it is faster, but in many, it is slower), and be categorically slower in interactive use. Oh, and the FX will cost more over time:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521-18.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/06/01/intel-core-i7-4770k-cpu-review/7

 

[Zodiark1593]

What software in particular do you plan on using? Anything that relies heavily on either OpenCL or CUDA, or is it primarily cpu-bound?

Without this info, I don't know where to spend more, and where you can skimp on.

 

[ON_Res]

I will primarily be using Autodesk 3D Studio Max and Adobe Premiere CC, both of which make use of CUDA/OpenCL. Gaming is not a priority.

Thank you for all the feedback so far.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The weak link there is your choice of GPU card. Everything else looks fine. Is there any possible way you could shop around and come up with extra cash for the 650 Ti BOOST? Also you could start saving for a SSD of 250gigs. (sweet spot)

gtx650 = 80.0 GB/s
gtx650 Ti = 86.4 GB/s

GTX650 Ti Boost = 144 GB/s

just a thought as rendering will hit your RAM hard (good to have 16gig minimum there). This card would be the difference between playing modern games like BF4 on high/Ultra or just playing old ones like checkers.

The focus of the rig is not gaming, so it may not really matter, but the gtx 650Ti will hardly limit one to "old games like checkers". I have a HD7770 and can play older games easily on high, and newer games like Metro LL on high to medium at 1080p. The gtx650ti is slightly faster than that.

 

[mfenn]

I will primarily be using Autodesk 3D Studio Max and Adobe Premiere CC, both of which make use of CUDA/OpenCL. Gaming is not a priority.

Thank you for all the feedback so far.

The scaling you get from GPU accelleration really plateaus around the level of the GTX 650, so I'd say you've made a good choice there.

I agree with Cerb that you should get an Intel CPU if possible. Right now you're paying $272 for your CPU and mobo. With a Hyper-Threading enabled Xeon, you'd be looking at:

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 $260
ASUS H81M-K $60

Total: $320

So you're looking at ~$50 to get a pretty significant increase in interactive performance and lower overall cost of operation.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I see only a few flaws in this build:
Like mfenn pointed out, you'll be getting a better bang for your buck with Intel Xeon. I think that an E3-1220 V2 is a better choice though, mostly because it's cheaper by a significant amount for a nearly negligible drop in clockspeed. It also allows for a slightly more feature rich and upgradeable motherboard.

The savings from the CPU can also carry into getting a slightly bigger HDD (1.5TB). You can get a slightly cheaper GTX 650 from Asus rather than Gigabyte. The Silverstone PS08B is an still excellent case while being a small step cheaper than the Cooler Master you chose. Here's the changes I would make:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V2 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.99 @ Memory Express)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($71.75 @ Vuugo)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card ($109.75 @ Vuugo)
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Memory Express)

 

[Torn Mind]

I see only a few flaws in this build:
Like mfenn pointed out, you'll be getting a better bang for your buck with Intel Xeon. I think that an E3-1220 V2 is a better choice though, mostly because it's cheaper by a significant amount for a nearly negligible drop in clockspeed. It also allows for a slightly more feature rich and upgradeable motherboard.

The savings from the CPU can also carry into getting a slightly bigger HDD (1.5TB). You can get a slightly cheaper GTX 650 from Asus rather than Gigabyte. The Silverstone PS08B is an still excellent case while being a small step cheaper than the Cooler Master you chose. Here's the changes I would make:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V2 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.99 @ Memory Express)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($71.75 @ Vuugo)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card ($109.75 @ Vuugo)
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Memory Express)

The 1220 V2 doesn't have Hyperthreading like the 1230 V2 does. Or, in other words, the 1220 is just like an i5-3350p, but with a higher Turbo frequency..

 

[Cerb]

Based on the conversation so far, I think the parts choice reasoning should be obvious. And yes, the 1230V3 is "the" Xeon to get, due to having HT.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($267.33 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($62.54 @ DirectCanada)
Memory: A-Data Premier Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($115.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($63.61 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GT 640 1GB Video Card ($90.00 @ Vuugo)
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Memory Express)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Memory Express)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($18.00 @ Vuugo)
Keyboard: Rosewill RK-101 Wired Standard Keyboard ($5.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Mouse: Microsoft Optical Mouse 200 for Business Wired Optical Mouse ($4.89 @ DirectCanada)
Total: $703.33
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-24 18:13 EST-0500)

With the max budget, there's room to either move back up to a 650 for a video card (BTW, I'm all for gaming AutoCAD with Radeons, but 3DS and Solidworks I know, and probably others I don't, are just happier w/ Geforces), or move up to a motherboard with 4 RAM slots, for 32GB potential, later on (like the ASRock B85M Pro4). Technically, both, but you usually end up spending a little more than stated, in practice, due to either PCPP not catching all taxes, picking up parts from fewer total vendors, last-minute price changes, or something else.

 

[Sleepingforest]

The 1220 V2 doesn't have Hyperthreading like the 1230 V2 does. Or, in other words, the 1220 is just like an i5-3350p, but with a higher Turbo frequency..

Merp. I've been away too long, it seems.

 

[ON_Res]

Thank you sincerely to everyone for all the input. It's been a great help and has been deeply appreciated.

With your advice and some further reading I've landed on the following build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($267.33 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: ASRock B85M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($82.50 @ Vuugo)
Memory: A-Data Premier Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($115.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($63.61 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card ($109.75 @ Vuugo)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($47.74 @ DirectCanada)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Memory Express)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($18.00 @ Vuugo)
Keyboard: Rosewill RK-101 Wired Standard Keyboard ($5.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Mouse: Microsoft Optical Mouse 200 for Business Wired Optical Mouse ($4.89 @ DirectCanada)
Total: $750.79
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-24 20:06 EST-0500)


It's alright if it ends up breaking the 750 mark by a bit as I believe the value is there. Unless there are any final criticisms I'm ready to order.

 

[Cerb]

Looks good to me.

The only caveat I have is the PSU, but not to worry for the build as it is. Other HECs like it have proven to be reliable supplies, and it performs well under lower loads (review). Just that if you were to find a use for GPU rendering, and get a 250-300W video card, or two, after the PC is a couple years old, I'd make a PSU upgrade part of something like that, because it gets close enough to specs that I'd worry a bit as it aged, under higher loads. For this ~150W build, though, it's a good deal, and even the pre-rebate price is good for what it is, at Memory Express, with the AMIR price putting it in the price range of, "meh," 300W units.