Need some guidance! (hardware purchase)

#1

I’ve got this list of components so far that I’m happy with, but I’m not sure what other components I have to buy to be able to build this thing. The idea is to get two 12-core Xeons and four GTX Titans, although for budget reasons I will start with getting one of each, then add later as I have more to spend:

  • = Only buy 1 first, then add additional ones later in the future as I get more dough.

1 x Corsair Obsidian Series 900D Case/Tower
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139019

1 x EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 1500W Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438009

1 x ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131817

*2 x Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 2.7GHz 12-Core CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116925

*4 x EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SuperClocked 6GB SLI Ready
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130899

*4 x Crucial 32GB Kit (16GBx2), DDR3 1600MHz ECC RAM
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=58C503D1A5CA7304

For starter I’m gonna use my current Vertex SSD, and later buy 2 x SAMSUNG 840 Pro 512GB SSD for RAID-0.

Any advice is much appreciated!

#2

Hi FantaBurky-
Personally I wouldn’t buy a pre-built rig. It’s fine and they work great I’m sure but it’s a very expensive way to go for a high end PC. For that $12K of a highend dual Xeon monster you could build it yourself for like $7K or so. Unless you’re not inclined to build one. That I can understand. If you haven’t built a lot of these it’s a little complicated. Nothing YouTube can’t help you out with though. Personally I’d rather keep the extra cash and do it myself.

Just my thought.
Alec

#3

Good point. The thought had crossed my mind, but I have very little knowledge in hardware stuff. Also I thought the cash saved would be like 1k max, not 4-5k+ :surprised That changes things he he. Thanks for the tip.

I’ll have to look into building it myself again. But I’m guessing using parts that I find included in a pre-built one will at least be compatible with each other, so it’s probably a good starting point, right?

I’d still like to know which CPU and GPU are the better for the uses posted above.

#4

Fair enough. Basically you want as many cores as possible for rendering. I would go with the dual xeons with 12 cores. You’ll have 48 threads on one computer. That’s like a little render farm a couple years ago. In ONE box. It’ll smoke through stuff. Expensive though.

The GPU is easy. Get the Titan. Hands down. WAY cheaper than those “Pro” boards and faster too. I know I have a lot of them in my studio. We pair them up with the Octane render. It’s crazy how fast these things are for rendering and just Open GL. You could buy four Titans for the price of ONE Quattro.

Alec

#5

Thanks for the info!

I noticed the dual 12core xeons alone cost $5,499 on newegg. Which is strange as MaingearPC lists them as $5,014 :surprised Maybe newegg is not the place to shop… In any case, perhaps I could just buy a single 12-core xeon to start with, and add the second one later when I earn more money?

Titan sounds good, I’ll probably go with it. And maybe add a second one later, instead of the K20. Although, I may be wrong, but I was under the impression the K20 was designed specifically to crunch through simulations and such.

I’ve been using a mobile workstation with a quad-core i7 930x and gtx 280m for like 3 years now, and I still consider it pretty strong. Not sure what kind of improvement we’re talking here, but I’m hoping it will be a noticable speed improvement with rendering and turbulencefd simulations.

#6

As this has been moved from the c4d forums and there doesn’t seem to answer another
c4d guy, here are two c4d specific things.

  1. Keep in mind that there are still parts in c4d which do only use a single core. So for a
    workstation you want a cpu with strong single core capabilities. As a render slave go for
    as many cores as possible. The only problem with that rule of thumb is that desktop CPU
    cannot have as much RAM as server CPU can have, but I would still go with an i7.

  2. About GPUs. Keep in mind that c4d has still its object caching bottle neck. A highend
    GPU is pretty much just idling in c4d and waiting for the CPU. If you just want to do c4d
    with the computer (and maybe some Adobe stuff) you will be fine with a 400€ GPU and
    won’t notice any difference to a 2000€ GPU. If you plan to do also some GPU rendering
    with for example OCTANE, I would go for TITAN , due to its massive amount of RAM.

#7

Thanks for the input littledevil. I’ll definitely go with Titan now, especially with the possibility of upgrading in the future by adding multiple Titans. I’m still curious if Titan is better suited for GPU simulations, rather than the Kepler K20? If anyone can shed some light on that…

Interesting about the single core usage in C4D. I’m not sure I’ll be buying render slaves, like ever. Will there be some major speed differences in important areas, if I should go with the Xeons instead of the i7? With my current config, I think the viewport speed in C4D is great, only the render speed is lacking. And I don’t sculpt in C4D.

Also are you suggesting the i7 cause it’s more value for the money? Cause I’m trying not to think of how much it all will cost ha ha. I know it will be more than I can pay for either way, which is why I’m trying to buy the minimum right now, while leaving it open for upgrading (without having to replace components, only adding).

#8

Updated first post with current list. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

#9

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.