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Building a rig for Maya..looking for input

G

glockjs

Junior Member
So a buddy put me to the task of building a Maya rig for him. He animates for a living.

He initially gave me a budget of $1500-1800...which i have stretched to as of right now $1919. This seems to be the absolute ceiling for the budget. I've tried to push him $300 more for the intel 3930/X79 combo but no go.

USA, no overclock(stability is key), building this week, and OS is checked off(thank you staples for $40 win 8 pro)

This is what is currently in the cart...looking for any input:

Lite on burner $15.99
Corsair Carbide 300R $74.99
WD Black 1TB 64MB 6GB/s $109.99
Corsair 850w tx850m $139.99
Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB 1600 $154.99
Gigabyte GA Z77X UD5H $179.99
i7-3770k $319.99
FirePro W7000 $769.99
CM Hyper 212 $29.99
Samsung 830 128GB $108.99

Shipping $14.40 (Zip 97501)

Total $1919.30


Thanks in advance.
 
850w is probably more than you need, 650w would be fine. Might bring the final cost below 1900. Everything else looks reasonable.
 
yeah i thought about that. the reason behind the higher 850w is to give headroom. he games so possibly add a gaming card later on...thought the dx benchies on the new firepros look promising. also who knows how many hdd's he might add later etc. safer than sorry is my logic. thanks for the post 😀
 
Well, if you're not overclocking, then you don't need an overclocking motherboard. Why not get a nice H77 mobo?

You also don't need an overclocking processor. A decent, inexpensive choice would be a Xeon 1230 V2. The next step up is the non-K 3770. ($290AP)

You don't need an aftermarket heat sink if you're not overclocking.

And those professional video cards are just too darn expensive. D:
 
I guess its just that I'm an over clocker by default heh. My experience is though if its able to be overclocked usually its a more solid piece of hardware. Ill look into those though thanks for the tip.

The thing with the sink is usually the stock ones aren't the greatest and when Maya compiles that CPU is going to stress which will happen alot since he does this for a living. So over the long run the few degrees saved equals life. Maybe I'm just over thinking it though. I do that :/

edit: yeah again thanks for the input. it's got me looking into stuff i didnt even think about x.O i think i'll stick with that board. it gives 5 sata 3 ports and two pcie 3 (x16/x8). hdd's are upgrading gpu's are a pretty big deal for what he's doing i would think.

and that xeon....basically same chip with a lil lower clock just minus the onboard vid hence the savings. i think i will go that route. with the savings i can turn that 1tb black into a 600gb velociraptor or that 830's 128 into 256...thanks again 😀
 
Last edited:
yeah on the psu i was thinking down the road. what if he comes into some money and wants to add say a maximus setup...then thinking about that....if he has the money to get a maximus he can upgrade the psu lol. 650w should even hand a swap to a k5000.

so after your post and some others this is now where i'm at:

Lite on burner $15.99
Corsair Carbide 300R $74.99
WD Black 1TB 64MB 6GB/s $109.99 ---WD 600GB 10k Velociraptor $180
Corsair 850w tx850m $139.99----Coarsair 650tx $90
Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB 1600 $154.99
Gigabyte GA Z77X UD5H $179.99
i7-3770k $319.99
FirePro W7000 $769.99 ----valleyseek.com(they seem ok...dunno for sure) $730
CM Hyper 212 $29.99
Samsung 830 128GB $108.99----Samsung 830 256GB $170

Which puts me at around $1956 shipped. And if he wants to move closer I can move the corsair carbide to an antec three hundred....nothing like getting dialed in 😀 thanks again.
 
Maybe a reference 7970 card ?? Seems to play well with Maya , and supposedly matches up to upper end Firepros in OpenCL benchmarks .. and he won't need a second card for gaming 🙂 ... Only concern would be driver support , etc for Maya, and from your post , he is a pro versus hobbyist .. would save 2-300.00 ..
 
snoylekim said:
Maybe a reference 7970 card ?? Seems to play well with Maya , and supposedly matches up to upper end Firepros in OpenCL benchmarks .. and he won't need a second card for gaming 🙂 ... Only concern would be driver support , etc for Maya, and from your post , he is a pro versus hobbyist .. would save 2-300.00 ..
Click to expand...

Although I have little experience with Maya, I've found that pro cards are the way to go with Pro/E. Otherwise you're just asking for headaches; it pays to have a card on the "full compatibility" list. (although I've never tried a 7970 so who knows 😉)
 
For the life of me, I've never understood what makes a $400 "gaming GPU" magically turn into a $3,000 "professional graphics card." It's the exact same hardware with a FW flash. 😕

Nice build, BTW.
 
Yeah ..might be too much of a 'science project' to try with a build for a buddy .. There was an article someplace explaining the Pro versus Consumer Graphics pricing differentials ; besides funding the development and testing and certifying w/ the major software providers , and selected chips, more memory + some with ECC .. Companies will pay for the reassurance .. The market is niche, but it's there ..
 
MichaelD said:
For the life of me, I've never understood what makes a $400 "gaming GPU" magically turn into a $3,000 "professional graphics card." It's the exact same hardware with a FW flash. 😕

Nice build, BTW.
Click to expand...

Five reasons I can think of off the top of my head.

Drivers, drivers, drivers, drivers, and warranty.
 
Get an asrock Mobo. Cheaper yet better.

Get Samsung 30 nm 1.35v 4x4gb. Cheaper and better.

Get a 650 watts psu unless pro gpus need more.
 
glockjs said:
yeah on the psu i was thinking down the road. what if he comes into some money and wants to add say a maximus setup...then thinking about that....if he has the money to get a maximus he can upgrade the psu lol. 650w should even hand a swap to a k5000.

so after your post and some others this is now where i'm at:

Lite on burner $15.99
Corsair Carbide 300R $74.99
WD Black 1TB 64MB 6GB/s $109.99 ---WD 600GB 10k Velociraptor $180
Corsair 850w tx850m $139.99----Coarsair 650tx $90
Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB 1600 $154.99
Gigabyte GA Z77X UD5H $179.99
i7-3770k $319.99
FirePro W7000 $769.99 ----valleyseek.com(they seem ok...dunno for sure) $730
CM Hyper 212 $29.99
Samsung 830 128GB $108.99----Samsung 830 256GB $170

Which puts me at around $1956 shipped. And if he wants to move closer I can move the corsair carbide to an antec three hundred....nothing like getting dialed in 😀 thanks again.
Click to expand...

There's quite a lot of fat left in this build that can be trimmed out:

- ODD : Fine
- Case: Fine
- HDD : Pointless. The SSD is so much faster than an HDD that it makes the differences between the HDDs miniscule in comparison. Get a 7K1000.D for $80 and call it a day.
- PSU: Too expensive for 650W. The Antec Eartwatts 650 will handle the load with aplomb for $40 AR.
- RAM : Does your buddy really need 32GB? As in have you measured? Get 16 GB for $60.
- Mobo: Way too expensive for what your buddy is going to be doing. A good H77 board like the ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP for $80 is a better investment. I never much saw the point in wasting money on "maybes".
- CPU: Since you won't be overclocking. get the Xeon 1230 V2 for $245 like Ken mentioned.
- HSF: If the goal is quiet operation, check out the Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 for $40
- SSD : Good
 
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