Workstation recommendations

#1

So It’s that time again where i’m looking for a new workstation again…

As 3d is creeping in to my daily use (i’m a retoucher) and I kinda want to push this further than being a hobby I’m looking at stepping away from Macs and getting a decent PC…which is terrifying!
I’m looking at something around £5k and with a life of about 4 years…more if poss- Basically aside from the usual 15+ GB photoshop files or loads of images open when colour matching, I’d like something that doesn’t threaten to catch fire when rendering out 300dpi images that match camera resolutions. This can be up to 10k these days.

I’m looking at the Boxx website right now - any good?

#2

Aside from Photoshop, what other programs do you currently use or are interested in? With £5κ you could literally build a beast of a machine, but depending on the software you use, you could probably get something decent with far less money.

#3

Thanks, yeah I kind of want something futureproof. The latest macs seem a bit disappointing for the 5k price tag and that’s before you buy all the adapters aluthough th OS is pretty easy to maintain. Aside from photoshop and capture one I’m using maya, ZBrush, Nuke, adobe premier and random other creative cloud apps. Basically I’d like a graphics card with enough muscle for redshift or vray to take advantage of so my computer isn’t out of action for days. Whilst I guess this depends on the content itself, I’m looking to invest in a machine that is future proof and I can develop my skill base on without worrying about the machine’s capibilities standing in the way in a few years time.

#4

Taking into account all the info you shared about your workflow, I came up with this configuration:

1 Crucial MX300 2TB, SATA (CT2050MX300SSD1)
1 Intel Optane SSD 900P 480GB, PCIe 3.0 x4 (SSDPED1D480GASX/SSDPED1D480GAX1)
1 Intel Core i9-7900X, 10x 3.30GHz, boxed without cooler (BX80673I97900X)
1 G.Skill Trident Z silver/red DIMM kit 64GB, DDR4-3200, CL16-18-18-38 (F4-3200C16Q-64GTZ)
1 MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Armor 11G OC, 11GB GDDR5X, DVI, 2x HDMI, 2x DisplayPort (V360-010R)
1 MSI X299 XPower Gaming AC (7A91-001R)
1 Dell P4317Q, 42.5"
1 be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 silver, glass window, noise-insulated (BGW12)
1 NZXT Kraken X62 with AM4-Bracket (RL-KRX62-02)
1 Corsair HX Series HX1200 80PLUS Platinum 1200W ATX 2.4 (CP-9020140)GRAND TOTAL: 4865 £ (without shipping costs and assembling of course).

You didn’t mention something about a new monitor, so I included one anyway.
Some comments:

  1. The cpu choice was based upon your needs for good single-trheaded performance. The 7900X is a 10core/20thread processor which gives a single core turbo boost of 4.5GHz. This frequency will be great for Photoshop, modeling, editing, while the 10 cores will give you very decent render times when you need them. Premier Pro (as other video editing apps) doesn’t have a good scaling for more than 8 cores afaik. This means that you could pay 200-400£ more for a cpu with more cores but you wouldn’t get the corresponding performance boost. You can find some info about this subject here https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-143/Hardware-Recommendations.

  2. You mentioned gpu rendering (Octane, Redshift). So, I’ve picked a motherboard with a great pcie slot configuration (equal distances between slots and support for up to 4 gpus). The next good choice is the Asus Rampage VI Extreme but it’s insanely expensive.

  3. This 1200W platinum psu will be capable of handling up to 3 gpus for rendering. If 4 gpus is your target then a 1500W psu would be the best option.

  4. The 1080Ti is still the best gpu for rendering, with its 11gb of Vram and 3500 cuda cores at high clocks. The MSI Armor is quite good for its price (the cheapest 1080Ti in Europe with current prices).

  5. I think that 64gb of RAM will give you a good headroom for Photoshop etc. If you need more RAM in the future you can add 64gb more at any time.

  6. The Intel Optane 900P is currently one of the best ssds in the market. Its main advantage is the great random reads/writes speed which will make your everyday use more comfortable. The secondary 2TB ssd will be great for fast storage or file access of your active projects. You can add some hdds for long term storage if you want.

#5

This answer is insanely helpful! Thanks very much! It’s great that you included why you picked each component as I can apply the same logic to my own research. Yeah I’m sorted for a monitor, work requires that I use an insane costing high gamut EIZO or NEC ordeal with some calibration software to boot.

thanks very much again!