New Workstation Build

#1

I’m looking to build a new workstation for modeling (modo/zbrush) and animation (maya) work, and could use some help in choosing the components. My max budget is $20,000.

Currently I’m thinking of dual Xeons (Ivy Bridge), 256GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro 6000, and a Tesla. The OS will be on an SSD, but would the data drives be better suited in a RAID or not?

Also, for rendering, would you guys recommend having a separate node for that? If so, what specs should I aim for in it? It’s budget would be $10,000 max.

If anyone could give me any suggestions, or recommendations, that would be great. Thanks.

P.S. I’m sorry that my first post is a question. :expressionless:

Edit: I meant 64GB of RAM, oops. :rolleyes:

#2

In my opinion there are more effective ways to spend $30,000 on hardware than all in two machines. Especially if you’re rendering out animations. A small render farm of less expensive machines would give a lot more bang for the buck. Also why 256GB of memory? There are very few tasks out there that require that much memory in a single workstation, I wouldn’t consider modeling or animation one of them (this decade anyway). Also welcome to the forum! :thumbsup:

#3

Is it just me, and I mean no offence to the OP, but every time I see such an outlandish budget and spec listed, I just think the OP isnt in any way serious, and its just a kid trying to spec out the silliest computer they can muster?

256gigs of ram… really… a quarter of a terrabyte of ram…

Yes im a skeptical miserable git.

#4

agreed Matthew… 1st post and it was this?

I understand the intarweb is a hard thing to navigate, but seriously… do a little research on your own before posting such a question.

#5

I’d go for an overclocked 3930K, 64 gb of ram, a 580gtx and a used Boxter…

#6

I’ll build it.

Hardware: 5k
Build fee: 15k

#7

Well for 30K, you could probably get a bit more than a dual socket. They do make an 8 socket machine. :stuck_out_tongue:

http://www.hpcsystems.com/products/servers/5U/E5816

#8

Double post…

#9

“you didn’t build that” (Obama, '2012)

… where’s my share!

:beer:

#10

let’s say question is legit.

get best EVGA or similar board, 2 xeons there and 32gb ram is really more than enough.
normal card that works great in 3d applications for example 7970 radeon (I have reason why this if you need details I can get in more depth but there are a lot of forums out there for this).
couple SSD drives in raid for system and then another raid of standard HDDs in raid 0+1.
finish up main station with all it is needed and you will have more than enough $$$ left from that to build nice small i7 CPU render farm that will give best bang for bucks.

at least that is what I would make with that kind of budget :slight_smile:

#11

Thanks for the replies. And no, I’m not trolling, just looking for some advice from people who clearly know more than me. :slight_smile:

I didn’t mean that I want to spend $20,000, just that it was the highest that I could spend. Sorry for the confusion.

This computer is for business, not personal use, if that makes any difference.

I don’t know why I said 256GB of RAM, since I was only intending on getting 64GB, I guess I should have reread my post more carefully.

So I’ll probably just do what I was thinking, Dual Xeons, 64GB RAM, Boot SSD, RAID data drives, and graphics, probably a Quadro.

Again, thanks for the feedback, and sorry for apparently sounding like an idiot. :slight_smile:

#12

its’ ok… i sounded like a jackass, but i think we get 10 posts a week about the same topic.

#13

If youve got money to burn, give Boxx a call, they’ll sell you the fastest thing money can buy and even overclock it for shits and giggles. If budget werent an issue for me personally?

2x 6 core xeons, ramp them up to 5ghz
64 gigs ram, because I can
6x 756gig SSDs in a raid 10
geforce titan 6gig gfx card
3x 27" screens

and a dot matrix printer

But thats far above and beyond whats needed, or what makes any sort of financial sense. A realistic 3d workstation will run you somewhere between $1000 and $5000. Much more than that and you either have some special niche requirements, or the salesman has seen you coming a mile away.

Just dont fall into the common traps:

-Multiple gfx cards are a waste of time for most people

-More than 16/32 gigs ram wont make your machine faster, it will just sit there gathering dust, for most people

-Gfx cards which cost the same amount as the rest of the machine combined are a bad way to spend money

-SSDs wont really make that much of a difference to the speed of a system unless you get so much capacity that you can use them for the actual storage of the current project. If you have a boat load of ram, they wont get touched as scratch disks often. If you have a ton of ram, all your apps are cached and never launch off the ssd

-The only people who buy a space mouse are the people who have never tried to use one.

#14

yeah, the E7 xeons are slooooow though, maxing out at 2.4ghz and still using the last gen westmere architecture, all for $4600 per processor. They have lots of cache and 10 cores, but IMO they’d be flat out awful for an animation workstation, but could work out great for Bank servers.

#15

Okay, so I was way overestimating the cost.

I guess I’ll have some extra cash then, which is always good to hear. :slight_smile:

Again, thanks for the feedback. :slight_smile:

#16

… hence, the boxster.:applause:

#17

We recently built the following workstation.

2x Xeon E5-2687w
1x ASUS Z9PE-D8 motherboard
8x 16GB Kingston 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) ECC
1x nVidia Quadro K5000
2x nVidia Tesla K20X
1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD 512GB for system
8x Samsung 840 Pro SSD 128GB for projects
1x LSI SAS 9271-8iCC Raid Controller for the Samsung SSDs
4x Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drives for footage archive

#18

What are you cooking on that machine? 8K photoreal 3d hologramm feature films? :cool:
OK, seriously I’d love to see a vray/arnold session or some heavy houdini sims getting crunched on that setup on youtube.

#19

Primarily 5K and soon 6K Red footage color grading and compositing. Also rendering and fluid sims, so a bit of everything.

#20

man… how much did it cost? :open_mouth: