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Help with $1700 - $2000 Workstation Build

J

j4rgon

Junior Member
I'm helping a friend with a new pc build. He's does a lot of rendering and also video editing. He's a heavy Revit, Autocad, 3DS Max, Adobe suite user.

Can anyone help me recommend some parts? He doesn't plan on overclocking.
I was thinking of something along the line of i7-4820K, Asus P9X79 PRO, G.Skill 16GB DDR3-2133 ram, 256GB SSD, Firepro w7000, Seasonic 850W PSU.

He has keyboard,mouse, optical drive, and monitors already. As for the case, we'll be having a friend laser cut one for us. We will be buying the parts mainly from Newegg/Microcenter.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
 
Designing an effective case requires a decent amount of engineering. I'm not trying to discourage you from building a completely custom one, but you're going to need to be willing to go through several iterations before you really get it right.

As for the parts, I don't really see the point of getting Socket 2011 when you're only getting a quad core and 16 GB of RAM. Either go all the way for a hexacore or stick with 1150.

What percentage of your friend's time does he spend waiting for things to render? That's really where a hexacore is going to help out, normal interactive use doesn't heavily load enough threads to make one worthwhile.

While you think that one over, I have a couple more general thoughts:
- NVidia is the king of workstation cards when it comes to compatibility and driver support. But, depending on your workload, a workstation card might not matter to you at all.
- RAM speed has a fairly minimal impact on most workloads. Best case, you'll get a 5% improvement on the fast analysis pass when doing a two-pass encode
- A high end motherboard is generally not worth it unless it has a specific feature that you need.
- An 850W PSU is way overkill for a single-GPU workstation. 450W is already roughly double what you'd actually use.
 
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Thanks so much mfenn. Currently, he's constantly waiting hours for rendering....it's an issue . he's an architect and is constantly desigining houses and buildings in 3d. He also does 3d animation sometimes. the budget at the moment is around 1500 to 2000. Base on this info, what kind of build would you recommend?
 
Has your friend considered pricing out options from the major sources (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)?

If he's going to be doing real livelihood/"time is money" work on the workstation, he might think it's also worth his time/money to get a really good full-service warranty.

If I were him, I would absolutely HATE to have to deal with an RMA of an important component that could stretch days->weeks when Dell could offer next-day service.
 
Essence_of_War said:
Has your friend considered pricing out options from the major sources (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)?

If he's going to be doing real livelihood/"time is money" work on the workstation, he might think it's also worth his time/money to get a really good full-service warranty.

If I were him, I would absolutely HATE to have to deal with an RMA of an important component that could stretch days->weeks when Dell could offer next-day service.
Click to expand...
it depends on how much downtime costs him and how much those services cost, and if he can just fire up his old computer if the new one doesn't work.
 
Not much better in everyday use. Asus pretty much only makes middle-to-upper tier motherboards with lots of niche features. That makes them more expensive when compared to other manufacturers, especially if you don't need those niche features (that would be most consumers).
 
j4rgon said:
Thanks for the advice.

What do you guys think of this?

4930K + GA-X79-UD3 bundle
CM 212 EVO
Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD
AMD Firepro w7000
G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB 4x4GB
plus case

Would a 500W PSU be enough for this?
Click to expand...

The CPU, mobo, and cooler all look fine to me. As for the rest:

- SSD: I don't really see a benefit to getting the Pro SSD over a normal one for this use case. You're likely to run out of room on a 128GB after installing a bunch of heavy software suites, so getting a ~256 GB drive also makes sense. I think the 840 EVO that lehtv originally recommended is good.
- GPU: Are you sure that you need a workstation card for your applications? Revit is the only one on your list that looks like it "requires" one. 3dsMax, AutoCAD, and the Adobe suite are all fine with consumer cards.
- RAM: The UD3 only has 4 DIMM slots, so I'd get a 2x8GB kit in order to leave the 32GB option open. This Team kit for $115 AP will also save you a little money.
 
mfenn,

What about the benefits of quad channel ram vs dual channel? Or will it not matter in his case?
 
Quad-channel will certainly give you higher theoretical performance, but it won't matter for these applications. Dual-channel will make your final render in Premiere ever so slightly slower, but that's about it.
 
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