£3000 Rig, Lots of Questions, Need Help?

[3DAM]

Hello,

Following the announcements regarding the MP on Monday I found myself on this site, along with a flock of other Pro users I imagine.

So, I've been doing a significant amount of reading for the last three days on how feasible it would be for me to build one of these machines as a replacement to my current MP and of course have a load of Noob questions, so go easy, please.

99% of my usage is 3D modelling and rendering, my current £3000, 2009 8 CORE MP has a Geekbench Score of 12302 (in 32bit mode), don't laugh. I plan on spending about £2500 - £3000 on a new rig and would like it to get a 20000 plus Geekbench score, more would be nice of course, but the priority for me is that it is stable first and fast second (a close second), I will be working on it everyday and so won't have a lot of time to investigate hundreds of mystery issues, I already have grey hair and I don't want to go bald too.

One thing is that I'm currently using Snow Leopard as all of my plugins etc are fully compatible, so never had cause to upgrade, so am thinking a SL build at the moment, but this may change if I can get a significantly more powerful setup with a newer OS and take a risk with the plugins, please advise?

I'll break my questions down as best I can.

CPU / MOBO:
If I go down the dual xeon route I'll need a EVGA SR-X 2011 or SR-2 1366, but because of it's HPTX form factor, this limits my case choice, not a big problem but would like the final result to have some aesthetic appeal. I think the best I could afford for the SR-X would be 2 x E5-2630 6Cores 2.3GHZ and the SR-2, 2 x 4Core E5630.

If I go with Single CPU, I presume the Gigabyte MOBOs are the best, not bothered about price just want something with a solid build?

My choice for a Single CPU would be the 6 Core i7:
i7 990 x 3.47, is this viable? or some other 6 Core i7 I can't figure out which one would be best, especially if I want to overclock. What's the most powerful 6 Core i7 under a £1000 that is stable and overclockable?

or a single 8 Core Xeon
E5-2660 Processor - 2.20GHz is about the right price (UK prices, I have a question about this later)

Which MOBO socket is the best to go with 2011, 1366, 1155 or should I just match it with my CPU choice?
Which CPU / Motherboard combination would be the best for overclocking and remain stable?
If I want to overclock the CPU does it have to be sold as 'unlocked', i think certain processors may be built to be overclocked and so won't be sold as?

RAM:
Comes in various speeds:
DDR3 2400/2133/1866/1600/1333/1066 Don't know anything about this, so is 2400 best as long as its compatible with the MOBO?
Any particular manufacturer known for fault free RAM, Mushkin looks solid? (oops aesthetics again)

GPU:
Firstly is it best to go with the Gigabyte branded cards if I'm using a Gigabyte MOBO or buy from the originally manufacturer such as AMD?
Gigabyte AMD Radeon 6870
Sapphire 7970 (Would this work, are any 7 series working?)
Gigabyte GTX 680 ( I understand this is ML only?) or the best GTX that has been proven to work without problem?
Nvidia Quadro, can't find a reasonable price in the UK.

I need a MDP and DVI or two MDP (or I can buy convertors)

Power:
Can you have too high a Wattage , would it perform more economically with a higher Wattage?
1500 or 1000W too much? I think the Mac Pro uses 900W.
I like the NZXT HALE90 1000W (aesthetics once again, would match the White NZXT H2 case, nice)

Cooling:
Is liquid cooling best in the long run, again any solid manufacturers recommended, price not too much of an issue?
What about power consumption for liquid cooled vs additional/more powerful fans? Would my build be powerful enough to need additional cooling anyway?

--------

Should I ditch all this and wait for an Ivy bridge / Mountain Lion / GTX 680 Build? Would it kick ass compared to what I've outlined above? If so, how long would this be?

Last question.
Prices on the UK Amazon are double that of the US, would people in the UK recommend buying in the US and pay for shipping or are there some bargains to be had from somewhere reliable in the UK?

That's all folks, thanks for reading, it may seem like school boy stuff to some of you, but represents are large step in knowledge for me. I'm looking forward to building it, and am definitely going to do it, especially when I compare the prices and choices available to those that I have been fed over the last ten years.

Big question but, if you had £3000 to spend what would you build with both stability and speed in mind?

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Apologies if it comes across as jibberish, its the best my brain could do.

Props to PunkNugget on his beast btw.

Cheers Arthur.

 

[3DAM]

First:

Read, read, read...

I've been doing a significant amount of reading for the last three days

find out what you wanna do with your computer.

99% of my usage is 3D modelling and rendering

have a load of Noob questions, so go easy, please.

Thanks, really helpful.

 

[Gordo74]

If I were you, I would start off with a Socket 1155 system, as it may be all the power you need and ANYTHING over 1155 will cost you almost double for only a 10% performance gain in most applications (aside from the dual CPUs, but that is more than quadruple the price).

It is not worth getting 1366 anymore, as it is a dead platform and even the 1155 chips outperform anything on the socket. More cores don't necessarily mean more power nowadays.

So it's down to 2011 vs 1155. Personally, I would go 1155 because it is MUCH better supported and is what Apple uses directly. 2011 is not used in a Mac, so you don't get any power management such as downclocking when idle and forget about sleep.

I would also stick with a single CPU system, as they are better supported as well. If you're doing Adobe work, I would get a Nvidia 5xx card as they have CUDA processing cores, which will greatly speed up any processing in Adobe.

Hope this helps.

 

[heavyrain]

If you go for an i7, 3960X is way better than 990X, and the price is the same. If you want to overclock, you will want to buy one of those Z77. And no, although the brands mean something in terms of quality, using the same-brand parts isn't necessary, if not plain silly.

 

[Gordo74]

If you go for an i7, 3960X is way better than 990X, and the price is the same. If you want to overclock, you will want to buy one of those Z77. And no, although the brands mean something in terms of quality, using the same-brand parts isn't necessary, if not plain silly.

The 3960X is not compatible with the Z77 chipset. You want to match socket #'s. And there is very little difference between the 3960X and the 3930K

 

[heavyrain]

If you go for an i7, 3960X is way better than 990X, and the price is the same. If you want to overclock, you will want to buy one of those Z77. And no, although the brands mean something in terms of quality, using the same-brand parts isn't necessary, if not plain silly.

The 3960X is not compatible with the Z77 chipset. You want to match socket #'s. And there is very little difference between the 3960X and the 3930K

Oops, my bad.

 

[3DAM]

Thank you Gordo74 for your advice.

The 3960X is not compatible with the Z77 chipset. You want to match socket #'s. And there is very little difference between the 3960X and the 3930K

Isn't the 3930K also a 2011 Socket and therefore not compatible with the Z77 chipset?

Polobear

1. Do you use your computer professionally?
Stick to support...Buy a HP or Dell workstation

Yes I do, Mac OS for 18 years. Cinema 4D and Adobe 12 years.

-
So after further investigation I have a couple of quick questions. The only 1155 i7 socket CPU's are the:
Sandybridge i7 2700K 3.5 GhzQuad
Ivybridge i7 3770K 3.5 Ghz Quad

But the best Benchmarked i7 I could find is the
Sandybridge 3960X 3.3 Ghz 6 Core, which is the route I would like to take, but this uses an X79 motherboard, which some people have got to work but isn't really supported, no DSDT, is this correct, so would be a bad route to go?

Alternatively the 3770k uses the Z77 which doesn't need a DSDT file, and is better supported by Mac, would this be the best option? my only concern about this is that it has lower benchmark scores than the 3960X and fewer cores, which C4D would utilise.

3770k v 3960x benchmark

Any friendly help will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[shibirian]

Hello 3DAM,

A buddy of mine does a lot of 3d rendering with C4D, too, and this here is the machine I devised for him, and he is quite the happy bloke with it. (dunno about his benchmark score, I should ask him later)

Corei5-2500k @4.9Ghz (at stock voltage)

Scythe mugen 3 cooler

Gigabyte z77x-ud5h

16gb ddr1333 kingston value (4x4gb) [edit: 32gb advisable]

Gigabyte 6870 (three fan model)

120gb corsair sata3 ssd

2x2 tb western digital eco green (since you got the cash, go with 10 of these)

Case 19'' rackmount with 8x 120mm fans

460w silentstorm psu (maxes out at around 270w mostly)


The above runs Lion easily, with no dsdt needed as per Tony's guide for z77. If you got the cash, go with a Sandy bridge i7 with as many cores as possible. (the cooler is good enough to take a overclocked i7 easily) Oh, and the machine is rock solid, of course.

Important, Ivy bridge cpus are worse, cause their heat spreaders are not soldered togethers, as should, but glued, so Ivy runs about 10 degrees celsius hotter than Sandy, so avoid these when you wanna have maximum performance.

Hope that helps, should you have more questions, just feel free to ask, mate!