Rate my workstation spec.

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I am building a workstation for a friend who works in a decent size company. Their IT company was recommending a quad-core Xeon and a Quadro K620 with 16GB of RAM for a 3dsmax, Lumion, Sketchup build. I told him he could build something much better so here is the list of parts l sent him.

-Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D
-PSU: Corsair RM850x
-CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
-CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
-Mobo: MSI X399 SLI Plus
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB DDR4 3200MHz 4x16GB CL16
-OS & Apps drive: Samsung SSD 960 Pro M.2 512GB
-Secondary drive for asset loading: Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA3 1TB
-General storage drive: Toshiba X300 4TB
-GPU: Radeon Pro WX 5100

OS installation will be handled by their IT company.
 
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is it just design work or rendering ? having used 3ds max is GPU rendering .
4k textures and UV wrapping can take up lot of ram to- but depends on what the are doing and how the person works

if theres any simulation work then quadro but if not, might get away with gtx 1080ti
 
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It's 100% architectural work, design and rendering. He is using V-Ray as a renderer in 3dsmax. I was going to go for a non-pro GPU but Autodesk's website recommends a pro GPU for 3dsmax usage and l don't want to risk having drivers problems with a non-pro variant. If there wasn't a mining craze and l was building it for my friend and not his company l would have gone with either a Nvidia 1080/Ti or Vega 56/64.
 
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Spec looks good to me, that should fly along - only thing I would be cautious of is your motherboard choice, I've never had a good experience with MSI - though have not tried any of there TR boards.

If your going for the ultimate system - I would look at the Intel 900p drives as an alternative to the 960 Pro

Edit: I'd also consider swapping the PSU forward one of the high end seasonic units - some of the Corsair RM units have cheap caps rather than the premium variety - and I'm not sure how you can tell without looking at the batch / serial number
 
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Edit: I'd also consider swapping the PSU forward one of the high end seasonic units - some of the Corsair RM units have cheap caps rather than the premium variety - and I'm not sure how you can tell without looking at the batch / serial number

That was the older RM series which are now discontinued. The RMx is a much improved unit. No reason to swap it out.
 
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Thanks for all the replies guys.

Spec looks good to me, that should fly along - only thing I would be cautious of is your motherboard choice, I've never had a good experience with MSI - though have not tried any of there TR boards.

Yeah, had to replace my MSI Z77 board after it suddenly died. CPU and GPU will obviously run at stock frequencies so hopefully, the MSI will last.

If your going for the ultimate system - I would look at the Intel 900p drives as an alternative to the 960 Pro

Edit: I'd also consider swapping the PSU forward one of the high end seasonic units - some of the Corsair RM units have cheap caps rather than the premium variety - and I'm not sure how you can tell without looking at the batch / serial number

Doesn't it require Intel Optane to work that is unavailable on AMD platforms? As for the PSU, as lee32uk has mentioned it's a rather good unit. I own the 750W version which replaced a Corsair TX750w which was still going strong after 7 years.
 
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Doesn't it require Intel Optane to work that is unavailable on AMD platforms?

Optane memory is Intel only I think, but Optane storage works anywhere:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,330.46 (includes shipping: £10.50)
 
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It's 100% architectural work, design and rendering. He is using V-Ray as a renderer in 3dsmax. I was going to go for a non-pro GPU but Autodesk's website recommends a pro GPU for 3dsmax usage and l don't want to risk having drivers problems with a non-pro variant. If there wasn't a mining craze and l was building it for my friend and not his company l would have gone with either a Nvidia 1080/Ti or Vega 56/64.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...de-Combining-CPU-and-GPUs-for-Rendering-1051/

so depending on situation - CPU can render faster ! but that is £1500 CPU vs £850 card
hybrid mode is the best - and should get away with using consumer card

at the trend, when combining a strong GPU with CPU- the returns on CPU aren't as great as if its running by its self, so could get away with Thread Ripper 1920x 12 core instead to save cash
its weaker Cores that are helped most by using a GPU with rendering - heck Ryzen 2700 with 2x gtx 1080ti!!! for the same price as Thread Ripper 1950x + single gtx 1080ti

key is to find out is Intel i9 or Ripper runs Cuda code better !
also two cards run better then a single card - food for thought, Two GTX 1070ti would out perform gtx 1080ti on paper due to increased Cuda core count to price value, think 2x £440 vs 1x £850...

***********

further search , AMD Gains most performance from Cuda Code CPU only and CPU+GPU rendering - so you get your moneys worth!

Intel 8c/16t
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=43558

intel 18c/36t
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=43557

Ripper 16c/32t
]https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=43761

seems when pulling rendering - assets are pulled and sorted into ram so NVMe doesn't play to any advantage unlike in Video editing/3D Mapping - so went with basic 1TB SSD for drive - prob get away one 1TB driver for the whole thing and RAID HDD for storage ? but depends on how the person works .
Pumped down to 12 core Thread Ripper to put the cash towards dual gtx 1070ti which seems now is slightly more then gtx 1080ti as they have dropped price a little but has just over 1000 more cuda cores which should help rendering and enabling second card to display output (Secondary) which would increase rendering times as shown above ! should offset dropping from 16 cores to 12 cores and give extra performance via cuda count

done Gigabyte for full UK RMA and support as it aint cheap and bequiet for silence with Focus offering damn good warranty and parts for a PSU that would be pushed hard

BB CODE My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £2,894.57 (includes shipping: £14.70)
 
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Thanks for the valuable information "orbitalwalsh". Shame that VRay used CUDA instead of OpenCL, reminds me of the first days of GPU acceleration in Adobe's suite.
 
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Thanks for the valuable information "orbitalwalsh". Shame that VRay used CUDA instead of OpenCL, reminds me of the first days of GPU acceleration in Adobe's suite.

I believe it can :) theres a drop down selection for it, just CPU doesn't get as much of a boost from it :(

but least it allows both nvidia and amd gpus to be used along with CPU

***though CUDA has a bigger advantage performance wise - and cost to! with vega being expensive and hard to get
 
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nice mate, whats did you go for in the end ?

Here is the complete list:

-Case: NZXT H440 V2 black
-PSU: Corsair RM850x
-CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
-CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
-Mobo: MSI X399 SLI Plus
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB DDR4 3200MHz 4x16GB CL16
-OS & Apps drive: Samsung SSD 960 Evo M.2 512GB
-Secondary drive for asset loading: Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA3 1TB
-General storage drive: Toshiba X300 4TB
-GPU: Gigabyte GTX1080 Windforce OC

Hope you got a good price on the 960, 970 is incoming !

Read the reviews of the 970 Evo on the same night and the performance delta between the old and new drives is minuscule. Maybe with a few firmware updates it will increase though.
 
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Here is the complete list:

-Case: NZXT H440 V2 black
-PSU: Corsair RM850x
-CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
-CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
-Mobo: MSI X399 SLI Plus
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB DDR4 3200MHz 4x16GB CL16
-OS & Apps drive: Samsung SSD 960 Evo M.2 512GB
-Secondary drive for asset loading: Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA3 1TB
-General storage drive: Toshiba X300 4TB
-GPU: Gigabyte GTX1080 Windforce OC



Read the reviews of the 970 Evo on the same night and the performance delta between the old and new drives is minuscule. Maybe with a few firmware updates it will increase though.

Nice, get some pics up of that bad boy.
To be honest they won't see much of a difference between 960 or 970 or a standard SATA 3 SSD . Windows and apps might load 1-3 seconds quicker. Strength lies when running work loads that constantly pull data .
Though that rig should be a like a beast ! If they do over clock the CPU, keep an eye on the power draw , 1000w is standard with that CPU or Intel's equivalent (CPU uses something like 500w by its self )
 
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I will probably use the MSI OC knob on the motherboard. Setting 1, according to some research should enable all cores to go up to 3.75GHz and it lowers the voltages to 1.2v
 
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