3960X Rendering

[ripplysquirrel]

ok over the past few days i have been mmming and aaahhing over the 3960X for my new rig... as mentioned i do a lot of rendering in mental ray through maya and i was wondering if its sensible to have the CPU OC'ed to 4.7GHz and then stress it further with the insane renders i do... i would purchase an H100 cooler to sit ontop but i dont want to exceed 70-80 degrees as it would rapidly reduce the life of the CPU...

any advice welcome!

K

 

[Zuban]

I've gone for a 3930k for rendering, once overclocked, there seems to be little difference between it and the 3960x going by these benchmarks, certainly not enough to justify the extra cost.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/11/14/intel-sandy-bridge-e-review/4

 

[ripplysquirrel]

cheers for the link... its not the speed im to interested though.. its the heat

 

[mmj_uk]

If you keep the voltages low heat shouldn't be too much of a problem I would've thought, the best thing to do is to take it as far as it will go on slightly higher than default volts and then when you hit the wall that requires ridiculous voltage increases for very little in extra clockspeed back off. You might only get 4.5-4.6ghz but frankly that will still be amazingly fast.

Also like zuban says get the 3930K, far better value than 3960X.

 

[ripplysquirrel]

yer i may look into it... considering the benchmarks aswell... does seem like an extra £300 for nothing... cheers guys!