£2500-3000 build for a game developer

RichyRo0

RichyRo0

RichyRo0

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Bournemouth
Hi all, im looking to build a new PC around the £2500 - £3000 including a new monitor, m and kb. I mainly use the PC for high end things as im a game developer and constantly rendering on the PC on a daily basis. I've had a good read up on both X99 and Skylake boards and in general it seems like the X99 has the edge but it is coming in more expensive.

I know that I would like a M.2 Drive and a large SSD to put both games and software on, Premier Pro, 3DS Max, Photoshop etc so it has to be at least 1TB also with 2 more HDD's for backups and storage around the 4TB mark.

After many years of being a die hard ATI fan I feel its probably better to go with an Nvidia card as ive heard its better for rendering, games and in general overall better performance coupled with an easier driver time. I also feel that more gamers have these cards so I feel it will better reflect what the majority of gamers are running.

Im looking for around 32 gig of ram and a motherboard that will be able to some day add another card to so I can SLI, ive done some homework so im pretty sure ill need enough PCIE lanes to support the M.2 and SLI so that it doesnt drop things down in speed. However have read that it wont particularly have a huge impact regardless.

I was looking at ultra wide screen monitors but they seem super expensive and i could be convinced to go 4k instead.

Not particularly interested in getting a sound card.

So yeah I'd been open to all suggestions and would love to hear what you all have to say.

Rich

PS, the cheaper the better. So, if you can that would be great!
 
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Im all good for speakers but ill need another keyboard OS and mouse. If you'd recommend some speakers in that budget id take a look, also a headset would be decent. Thanks!
 
Welcome.

I'm surprised you can't be more specific about your needs. Knowing what you currently use and its shortcomings would help. Do you at least have a rough idea how much VRAM you need?

From what you've written I'd have a stab that a 5820K and a Titan (not Z, not X) would be a good place to start.

Reason being 3ds Max (which I assume is your main usage, although you haven't said) doesn't seem to be that friendly to consumer cards, only certifying the Titan other than Quadro and FirePro cards. The Titan is a better balance of power, memory, and price than any of those.
 
I didn't want to bore everyone with a TLDR lol, At the moment I have an aging pc that i've built and entire video game on and basically, all the compiling and rendering has smashed her. It has a i7 930, pretty old, 8 gig of ram and a 7700 3gig AMD card with about 4/5TB of storage. Shortcomings are, slow to boot games on the HDD, taking me forever to render things.

Btw my main usage is actually environment design, sorry i was not more specific. So, Unreal 4 and Source Engine 3Ds max is a side thing along with PP and PS but they do get used a lot also.

Generally everythings becoming a shortcoming really, running out of C drive space, Running out of storage space. My current game is 12 gig so back ups take up space very quickly. Shes becoming and oldy now and ive built an entire video game on her so shes really just had enough.
 
RichyRo0 said:
I know that I would like a M.2 Drive and a large SSD to put both games and software on, Premier Pro, 3DS Max, Photoshop etc so it has to be at least 1TB also with 2 more HDD's for backups and storage around the 4TB mark.
Click to expand...

Conclusion: SSD 128+ GB as boot disk C: for OS & programs and page-file.

With all the reading and writing going on, on the boot disk, it is understandable you need a (number of) dedicated disk(s) for video editing, especially with the bandwidths required when the clip duration is short and the number of tracks exceeds one and uses a codec more complex than DV. The kind of files used during editing are, in order of their need for speed:

1. Media cache & Media cache database files, created on importing media into a project. They contain indexed, conformed audio and peak files for waveform display.
Typically small files, but lots of them, so in the end they still occupy lots of disk space.
2. Preview (rendered) files, created when the time-line is rendered for preview purposes, the red bar turned to green. Read all the time when previewing the time-line.
3. Project files, including project auto-save files, that are constantly being read and saved as auto-save files and written when saving your edits.
4. Media files, the original video material ingested from tape or card based cameras. Typically long files, only used for reading, since PR is a non-destructive editor.
5. Export files, created when the time-line is exported to its final delivery format. These files are typically only written once and often vary in size from several hundred KB to tens of GB.

When you are doubting which category of files to put on which kind of disk, especially when using both SSD's and HDD's, keep in mind that the speed advantage of SSD's over HDD's is most noteworthy with the Media cache & Media cache database. These files are frequently accessed, are small and there are many, so reducing latency and seek times and increasing transfer rates pays off by putting these on a SSD, rather than on a HDD, even if it is a raid0. Export files can go to the slowest volume on your system, since you only export once. To help you decide, I have added priority rank-numbers for speed, with 1 for the fastest volume and 5 for the least speed-demanding category.

http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page/84-disk-setup/95-disk-setup
Click to expand...


Well worth a read, so that you can optimize your drive setup. A number of people might assume the fastest M.2 drive should be the OS/Programs/Pagefile drive but this is not the case for Premiere Pro etc.

In theory, the best performance would be obtained through using five SSD drives alone for all the above, i.e. boot drive plus jobs 1-4 above. And then HDD's for job 5 and backup and storage.

It might not be possible for the budget, depending on what else you get (the quality/price of the monitor etc) but I'd make sure that plenty more drives could be added in future.
 
That is an interesting read, im probably going to consider ordering this PC for the end of the week as my current PC is failing rapidly.
 
RichyRo0 said:
snip
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

It sounds like it's worth putting quite a big chunk of the budget into storage. I think you'll have to decide for yourself on the split of M.2/SATA SSD/HDD though tbh. A big SSD and an array of HDD would be typical.*

The other thing is do you need 6 (or more) cores, or would 4 be acceptable? If: 4, get an i5 (skylake or devil's canyon); if 6, get a 5820K; if more, get a Xeon, (you could get ECC memory then too).

Then pick a GPU according to your needs. I would guess a 980 or Fury upwards would be a nice upgrade.

*If it were me I'd pick a big SSD for OS, programs, and scratch space, then get a load of big HDDs as a ZFS array.
 
OK I will have ago at this workstation of a PC... I would personally install the OS and applications to the Nvme drive then create a RAID 5 array for the game files across the HDD's

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £3,145.86
(includes shipping: £28.02)
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Hello,

I'm also a game developer within Unreal Engine 4. Reports state that going over 32GB Ram has diminishing returns.

I bought a few SSDs and highly recommend one for UE4 alone as the engine loads information faster, such as assets etc.

I personally would get 2 SSDs and some HDDs:
SSD for OS
SSD/NVME for Unreal Engine 4 installation and current project
HDD for Storing any other installations or Projects / Assets not currently in use.

2 Monitors is a MUST with Unreal Engine 4 as you're able to run the Engine and having Blueprints or other information displaying on a 2nd screen.

X99 is the way forward as you need them cores, so more the better but they also require a good clock. I wouldn't go with the Xeon as you will also be testing the game during development so a Higher clock speed 3GHz+ is a good starting point. I would go with I7 5930k or if possible 5960X.
 
Kuuwahi said:
Hello,

I'm also a game developer within Unreal Engine 4. Reports state that going over 32GB Ram has diminishing returns.

I bought a few SSDs and highly recommend one for UE4 alone as the engine loads information faster, such as assets etc.

I personally would get 2 SSDs and some HDDs:
SSD for OS
SSD/NVME for Unreal Engine 4 installation and current project
HDD for Storing any other installations or Projects / Assets not currently in use.

2 Monitors is a MUST with Unreal Engine 4 as you're able to run the Engine and having Blueprints or other information displaying on a 2nd screen.

X99 is the way forward as you need them cores, so more the better but they also require a good clock. I wouldn't go with the Xeon as you will also be testing the game during development so a Higher clock speed 3GHz+ is a good starting point. I would go with I7 5930k or if possible 5960X.
Click to expand...


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,555.59
(includes shipping: £28.02)
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How's that in your opinion?

The 5820K can overclock to 4.0+GHz too. As well as provide enough lanes for the OP's wishes to possibly SLI and use the x4 M.2. Unless I'm missing something, it could be better value for money here (compared to the 5930K).

Super-wide screen with plenty of real estate to help with productivity, cheap 22" for monitoring stats etc. Or would you recommend the main screen to be 4K instead?

Storage:

1. 1TB SSD for OS/Programs/Games/Source files.

2. 512GB M.2 for Unreal Engine/Scratch (Adobe Media Cache/Database/Preview etc)

3. 2TB HDD - with three partitions. Partition 1 (1TB size) clone of 1TB SSD, in case of 1TB SSD failure, boot order can be changed and work can continue uninterrupted (albeit slower for a few days till SSD is replaced). Partition 2 (500GB) back-up of 512GB M.2, again so as not to lose the current project assets etc and allow continuation of work in case of failure to the 512GB M.2. Partition 3 (500GB) spare, could be used to back-up any future 500GB SSD addition (such as to have one SSD totally dedicated to Unreal as you recommend).

4. X300 4TB for Storage (finished projects, retaining of any valuable Source files that may be useful for more projects, etc). Would be used for Exports, so went for one of the faster mechanical drives out there.

5. WD RED 4TB as back-up of the X300 4TB. As just for back-up, this one doesn't need to be fast, and the Reds have a very good reputation for reliability. Plus mixing up the brands/models in the storage solution can be a good thing (i.e. bad batches).

I mean, you could add more drives straightaway but cost is going up.

Corsair Obsidian 750D case stood out for me, due to having enough room for HDD/SSD storage upgrades, plus room for SLI'ing with the longest GPUs out there, plus excellent airflow for it.

Now I haven't specced a graphics card (and it does need one) because the Pascal Titan imminent rumours are now very hot and pretty safe to say more than rumours (May-June). The improvements for work applications are said to be way more than the improvements we'll see for gaming. And obviously the Titan would double up very nicely as workstation/gaming card. So if I were the OP I'd keep using whatever he's got currently, and wait for the new (Pascal) Titan. At worst, if the "improvements" end up being a damp squib, the price of the older Titans ought to come down. Yes, you can always keep waiting forever for newer, improved tech but there's a feeling among a lot of people that this time with Pascal it's the real McCoy, and anyone splashing a lot of money on older graphics tech just now will probably regret it. There's AMD Polaris too but I'm not sure of when it's expected or what they are releasing first.
 
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I have quickly whipped up a build. It will need some tweaking for cheaper / equivalent items.

I also added 12TB HDD Storage for either Raid 0 or 6TB Raid 10

Friend just bought the Corsair 750D and the build quality is poop, I wouldn't recommend.

No Keyboard or mouse as thats purely upto OP.

I also agree with the GPU. Wait until Pascal.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,677.22
(includes shipping: £33.54)
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The rig

Ok, so after some thought and deliberation, the pc is as follows:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £3,321.60
(includes shipping: £28.02)

Seeing as im going to finance this PC i decided to just go slightly over budget and just go for it really. This PC will be used to run my business and produce a second game so although its a mega price I do in all reality think its about the same as any tradesman spends on tools etc over the course of like 3/4 years, which I expect this to last me.

Any thoughts on the build?

Rich

P.S images are not showing correctly?
 
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Im not too fussed about Raid because I have 6TB of external HDDS's which I back up to regularly so I mainly just want it for space. I've never actually set up a Raid configuration. Would you highly recommend it?

Hmmm also just realized that case doesnt support an optical drive so ill have to get external, not too fussed about that though.
 
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Not judging as its your money but £750 on a monitor seems a little over-zealous for what is primarily a workstation and i'm not sure its really gonna add to your productivity.
 
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