Tips for new PC

[bigboym]

Hello,

I would like to ask some advice regarding a new PC. I will be buying a new desktop computer in England (need to look at english prices) at the beginning of september, this year. The computer will be used mostly for 3D professional work (Maya, 3DSMax, After Effects, ZBrush etc.) and a little bit for gaming..but that`s not my main priority. Rendering times are very important to me, so I was thinking of buying a Xeon or Opteron processor..although I`m not sure.

Could you help me out please? My budget is around 1000-1200 english pounds. For this money I`d like to buy a complete PC (processor + cooler ; mobo ; memory ; graphics card ; power supply ; HDD - i`d like to buy a very fast one. 500GB capacity is enough for me, although speed is essential ; case ; monitor).

Thank you!

 

[mfenn]

You're probably not going to be getting a workstation with pro-grade parts for 1200 pounds, especially not with monitor included. Your gaming requirement is also going to significantly cut into the budget.

From Scan (all prices incl. VAT):
Core i7 860 211
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 108
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 4GB 86
XFX 5770 1GB 130
Samsung F3 1TB 33
DVD Burner 14
Corsair 550VX 69
Antec Three Hundred 43
Windows 7 Pro 110
Dell P2310H 205
Logitech Keyboard 7
Logitech M500 27
Total 1043 + shipping

 

[beginner99]

The fastest CPU single and multi-threaded is the Core i7-980X, which will be too expensive for your budget.
However I would not exclude it (=expand budget) because if time is that critical that you get an actual financial benefit from faster rendering, the higher cost is almost irrelevant. like 500 -700$ is nothing if you generate 100$ more income per week.
The Core i7-980X is over 50% faster than the 860, so 100$ more per week seems a rather low figure .

Do the mentioned applications make alot of use of the GPU? There are specially workstation type gpu's which offer certain benefits (eg driver compatibility to these professional applications) at the price of higher cost.

 

[betasub]

For some of the components, you really need to define your requirements/standards better. Answering the questions listed in the sticky may help.

For example, some items could be very expensive or very cheap, entirely dependent on your personal need e.g. monitor, OS, gaming graphics.

 

[mfenn]

For some of the components, you really need to define your requirements/standards better. Answering the questions listed in the sticky may help.

For example, some items could be very expensive or very cheap, entirely dependent on your personal need e.g. monitor, OS, gaming graphics.

:thumbsup:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=80121

 

[heyheybooboo]

Phenom II 1055T Thuban: £155.75 Inc VAT

Asus M4A87TD USB3 SATA 6Gb/s: £79.67 Inc VAT

OS Apps --- 64GB Kingston SSD Now V: £104.11

Storage --- 500GB Samsung HD502HJ Spinpoint F3: 2 x £33.45 Inc VAT
(I'm thinking this is the fastest mechanical HD out there, especially in RAID, but stand to be corrected)

512MB XFX HD 4850 : £81.65 Inc VAT

6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800: £122.34

That's somewhere in the range of £600 Inc VAT so far ...

edit: I fergit ....

That's one heck of a render box so far, but if you wish to bump it into more 'workstation-status' IIRC Asus has qualified some ECC RAMs for that mobo




--

 

[bigboym]

Hey,

Thanks for the respones, really appriciate it.
Since I didn`t point out my exact needs, I`ll do it now: as I mentioned, I`ll be using the PC mostly for rendering, 3D work.
My price range is between £1000-£1200. I will be buying the PC in England. I`m not really a brand fanboy, although I do prefer nVIDIA over ATi/AMD (several bad experiences in the past with Radeons). I also prefer ASUS when it comes to mobos, but its not very important. From my current PC, I`ll be keeping my Logitech MX Revolution mouse and my keyboard, so none of these are requried for my new build.
I don`t plan on overclocking, so its not an important aspect.
I plan on playing at max 1680*1050, alhtough gaming isn`t very important.
I will be buying the new PC at the beginning of september, this year.

The processor is crucial, since it pretty much defines render times. As I`ve noticed, the 6 core CPU's are much faster than the ones with 4 cores when it comes to rendering. I`ll be needing some fast and a lot of memory also. Motherboard doesn`t need to be kick-ass, just a stable, decent one. Graphics Card is pretty important too, since some rendering engines benefit from the GPU. I need a fast HDD, or two. Capacity isn`t essential, I need it to be FAST and reliable. And lastly, the monitor: nothing very fancy, I`d like one with nice colors, low response time..LG, Samsung prefered.

Thanks again!

 

[mfenn]

Hey,

Thanks for the respones, really appriciate it.
Since I didn`t point out my exact needs, I`ll do it now: as I mentioned, I`ll be using the PC mostly for rendering, 3D work.
My price range is between £1000-£1200. I will be buying the PC in England. I`m not really a brand fanboy, although I do prefer nVIDIA over ATi/AMD (several bad experiences in the past with Radeons). I also prefer ASUS when it comes to mobos, but its not very important. From my current PC, I`ll be keeping my Logitech MX Revolution mouse and my keyboard, so none of these are requried for my new build.
I don`t plan on overclocking, so its not an important aspect.
I plan on playing at max 1680*1050, alhtough gaming isn`t very important.
I will be buying the new PC at the beginning of september, this year.

The processor is crucial, since it pretty much defines render times. As I`ve noticed, the 6 core CPU's are much faster than the ones with 4 cores when it comes to rendering. I`ll be needing some fast and a lot of memory also. Motherboard doesn`t need to be kick-ass, just a stable, decent one. Graphics Card is pretty important too, since some rendering engines benefit from the GPU. I need a fast HDD, or two. Capacity isn`t essential, I need it to be FAST and reliable. And lastly, the monitor: nothing very fancy, I`d like one with nice colors, low response time..LG, Samsung prefered.

Thanks again!

Depending on your app, a quad-core Nehalem can easily best a hexa-core Phenom II in rendering. The Nehalem will obviously be more expensive.

 

[bigboym]

I`ll be using Maya, 3DSMax, Zbrush, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Premier.. those Nehalems look pretty sweet.

 

[REC]

Your biggest concern part wise should be your video card. In order to enable hardware rendering in After Effects and Premier, which takes a HUGE amount of render time down, CS requires an nVidia Quadro FX 3800/4800/5800, Quadro CX, or Geforce GTX 285. I believe Autodesk software has similar requirements, and requires nVidia over ATI.

Since the other cards are well over 500 pounds, I'd recommend the Geforce GTX 285 @ ~200 pounds.

You're going to want a RAID 0+1, 10, or 5 setup for your Hard drives to break the ~110 MB/s transfer speed bottleneck a single HDD presents. Premier, After Effects, and Autodesk are very hard drive speed depended. You could go RAID 0 with 3 drives to come to the SATA II cap of 375 MB/s, but if that triples your chances of losing ALL your data so stick with the ones I mentioned.

I agree with HeyHeyBooBoo's comment about the F3 series Samsung HDD's, but I would suggest a Samsung Spinpoint 1TB HD103SJ because it's twice the size and ~5 MB/s faster. RAID 0+1 (4 or [6] drives) with these drives comes to ~200 [300] pounds. It offers redundancy, ~230 [345] MB/s transfer speeds, and 2 [3]TB storage space.

Be ABSOLUTELY SURE to get Win 7 64-bit. It is required for CS5 Premier and After Effects and you'll be shooting yourself in the foot later down the line if you dont. Might make gaming an issue, but work > play.

As with many of the other posters, CPU is important but not as critical if you're Hardware Rendering. You'll want Hyperthreading and Quad Core for your tasks, which means LGA 1366 or w/e AMD is doing nowadays. I'd recommend using an i7 because they usually outclass AMD processors, although at a slightly higher cost. You can get a Xeon but it's basically the same CPU as an i7/i5 (Like, identical). If you can in your budget, opt for a better Video Card over a CPU, again you'll be primarily Hardware Rendering.

And go DDR3 1333, or 1600/2000 if you want to Overclock. Risky business though. Most i7/5's are 1333 native and will downclock your memory to 1333 if it's higher, so you'll have to overclock even if the Mobo and RAM supports a higher speed.



To point out specific points: you gain the most efficient render time from Hardware Rendering on your GPU because it's instruction set is designed for polygons (not sure about nurbs instruction sets). Your primary bottleneck in video and poly rendering is on the 80-100 MB/s of using a single drive because their files are huge and cannot use memory efficiently; go RAID. Only 5 cards work for hardware rendering in Adobe, all of them nVidia. Solve these issues first, because they are the most important.

 

[mfenn]

With such a limited budget, I wouldn't worry too much about getting a GPU to try to accelerate rendering. The only program the OP listed that can be GPU-accelerated for the final render (i.e. what actually takes a long time) is the Mercury Playback Engine in CS5. The rest are CPU-only.

 

[REC]

Some features of 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2011 are enabled only when used with graphics hardware that supports Shader Model 3.0 (Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader 3.0). In addition, Quicksilver hardware rendering requires additional GPU resources to work effectively. A minimum of 512 MB of graphics memory should be used. A minimum of 1 GB is recommend for the most complex scenes, shaders, and lighting modes. Check with your manufacturer to determine if your hardware supports these requirements.

Have to go home (I'm at work atm) but I will pull up specs on older versions to confirm or dispute your statement once I get back.

Without supported cards CPU is critical. With supported cards, not so much. Also, 200 pounds isn't exactly a budget breaker.

I stand by the RAID config being more important than the processor in any case.

 

[mfenn]

Have to go home (I'm at work atm) but I will pull up specs on older versions to confirm or dispute your statement once I get back.

Without supported cards CPU is critical. With supported cards, not so much. Also, 200 pounds isn't exactly a budget breaker.

Yeah but Quicksilver is very limited. Also, SM 3.0 support isn't exactly cutting edge. Pretty much every card has that. Remember, when people are talking about GPU-acceleration they are not talking about accelerating the preview (which every half-decent card can do), they're talking about accelerating the final render (which requires CUDA or OpenCL and is not related to the preview at all).

200 pounds is quite a bit when the total budget is "1000-1200 pounds".

 

[REC]

As opposed to? A decent mainstream card is ~140 pounds. So +60 pounds is unaffordable?

 

[mfenn]

As opposed to? A decent mainstream card is ~140 pounds. So +60 pounds is unaffordable?

See edit. It's just pointless to spend the money when you could get a better CPU and accelerate everything.

EDIT: And actually more like +120 pounds because booboo found a much better deal on the GPU.

 

[mfenn]

I stand by the RAID config being more important than the processor in any case.

I agree that a fast storage subsystem is very important for video. It is less important for 3D rendering, but still quite important. The problem is that the OP has a VERY limited budget for this type of rig.

 

[beginner99]

I agree that a fast storage subsystem is very important for video. It is less important for 3D rendering, but still quite important. The problem is that the OP has a VERY limited budget for this type of rig.

yeah budget is just to small to go without at least 1 big compromise.

That's why I still suggest to increase the budget especially if this pc will be "mission-critical" = rendering leads to his income. OP please consider this.

 

[bigboym]

Thanks very much guys, appriciate your help!

First of all, GPU power is important, but not essential when it comes to rendering. Only one render engine benefits quite a lot from the GPU during rendering, which is Octane Render ( http://www.refractivesoftware.com/ ) . The GPU helps a lot when using hardware shading/rendering in the viewports, so a GTX285 sounds quite nice.

REC: thanks for the detailed suggestions, I`ll definetly take them into consideration.

My main issue is choosing the best price/performance CPU for this money..how much memory should I buy, mainboard etc. Since, I`m not quite in the loop with motherboards and memory's, I don`t know which one to choose.

 

[bigboym]

How does this sound?

CPU : Intel Core i7 930 D0 SLBKP Bloomfield

Mobo : Asus P6TD Deluxe

Memory : HX3X12G1333C9 - 12GB (6x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V

Graphics Card : Inno3D GTX 460, 1GB 3600MHz GDDR5, GPU 675MHz, Shader Clock 1350MHz

SSD : CSSD-F60GB2-BRKT - 60GB Corsair Force F100, MLC-Flash, 2.5" SSD, Read 285MB/s, Write 275MB/s, w/ 2.5" to 3.5" bracket

HDD : 2x 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM

PSU : Corsair 650TX

Monitor : 23" Dell Ultrasharp U2311H Widescreen

This PC costs £1502.66 inc. VAT.

What changes would you make, did I make a wrong choice somewhere?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[mfenn]

Erm, that storage subsystem seems atrocious. First, that SSD is USB, not what you want from your boot drive. Second, those drives are Green drives and will (a) drop out of any RAID config becuase of their slow response time and (b) will be horribly slow for any serious access.

You should drop the PSU down to the 650TX, which should be significantly cheaper in order to beef up the storage system with a SATA SSD and Samsung F3 (non-green!) or WD Black drives.

 

[bigboym]

Erm, that storage subsystem seems atrocious. First, that SSD is USB, not what you want from your boot drive. Second, those drives are Green drives and will (a) drop out of any RAID config becuase of their slow response time and (b) will be horribly slow for any serious access.

You should drop the PSU down to the 650TX, which should be significantly cheaper in order to beef up the storage system with a SATA SSD and Samsung F3 (non-green!) or WD Black drives.

I really lack experience and knowledge when it comes to HDD's..so thanks v much for providing me with the info. I`ve updated my previous post.

 

[mfenn]

I really lack experience and knowledge when it comes to HDD's..so thanks v much for providing me with the info. I`ve updated my previous post.

Much better! :thumbsup:

Are you OK with increasing the budget to 1500? If so, you've got a very solid rig there. If not, you can look at the LGA 1156 CPU, mobo, and RAM that I posted earlier in the thread as a way to cut costs.

 

[bigboym]

Much better! :thumbsup:

Are you OK with increasing the budget to 1500? If so, you've got a very solid rig there. If not, you can look at the LGA 1156 CPU, mobo, and RAM that I posted earlier in the thread as a way to cut costs.

I`ll make an extra effort to afford this rig..I think it will be worth the extra money for the cpu/mobo/memory.

Thanks very much for your help!

Btw: did I choose a decent SSD drive?

 

[mfenn]

I`ll make an extra effort to afford this rig..I think it will be worth the extra money for the cpu/mobo/memory.

Thanks very much for your help!

Btw: did I choose a decent SSD drive?

Yeah the Corsair Force drives use Sandforce controllers and are thus very good.

 

[bigboym]

Yeah the Corsair Force drives use Sandforce controllers and are thus very good.

Nice, I was thinking that maybe I should look for one that has SATA2.. but I guess it`s not such a big deal.