3D artist setup - £1100 or less.

[Cry-Scott]

Hello all,

ive lurked around here for quite some time and I figured id create a thread to ask for some advice before I go ahead with my new build.

Im an Environment Artist, working in the games industry, so I need something that when im working on my personal stuff at home is going to be able to handle 30+ million polies, texture baking, cryengine, games themselves and generally lots of different heavy applications running simultaneously.

I currently use (at home) a MSI GT740 laptop, which tbh is struggling to keep up with what I need it for.

My 'PC' (that im hoping to resurrect/salvage parts from. hold your breath..)
- Q6600
- P5n_e board
- 4gb of Corsair Ram
- 2x 1tb HDD's (cheapish ones)
- Nvidia 8800gtx
- Arctic 700 psu
- Coolermaster HAF 900 case, (newest thing in there tbh)

I bought it about 4/5 years ago and to be fair to it, it never missed a beat. I used it throughout uni and pretty much didn't turn it off for 3 years, often at full load. If possible id like to cut costs/maximise quality of purchased hardware buy reusing parts that are upto it.

I really need something that allows me to use Cryengine 3, 3dsmax, Photoshop, Xnormal, NDO that kinda thing, all running simultaneously at full quality/capacity. I really need DX11 to be able to take advantage of the full cryengine.

Currently im looking at:
Workstation PRO Z68 Intel Core i7 2600K 3.40GHz @ 4.50GHz Overclocked Bundle - 16GB £530.78

MSI HD 6970 OC Lightning 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Deus Ex PC Game
- Could ideally do with an Nvidia card of equal power as a lot of the tools I use work better with a Nvidia card.

OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (VTX3-25SAT3-120G)

+ A new screen (needs to be colour correct as best possible 20-24")
- I already own Win7 64bit. (so thats gunna save some cash)

Hopefully reusing my HDD's, PSU, Case and DVD drives from my old setup (aslong as this doesnt cause any serious bottlenecks.)

So yeah, im pretty much a total hardware noob these days (gone are the days when things did what they said on the tin..)

Any advice on what you guys would perhaps shell out for in my situation id be really grateful. Im abit stuck! Budget sits around £1100.

Cheers for your help!
Scott

 

[Cry-Scott]

The Dvd drive is IDE and the HDD's are both SATA

the 1tb drives are both Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM

That I bought a couple of years ago. I think you've pretty much said what everyone else ive asked has said. the PSU looks really really cheap (if the terrible box is anything to go by ahaha)

 

[Cry-Scott]

Ahhh okay, perfect. this sounds great.

I was quite keen on getting one of the pre-oc'ed bundles mainly because Im not looking to void my warranty as I oc it. Would you recommend going ahead and doing it myself (I have some experience over clocking, quite some time ago.) and saving almost £110 or just leaving the I7 stock and putting the bundle together myself?

(thanks for the help dude!)

 

[Cry-Scott]

Awesome, im pretty much happy with the build so far, almost ready to order. I was just curious if you were sure that 550w PSU will be enough, to run the system?

Also, the best way to set up the folder structure. OS + Program files on SSD, user data on storage SATA disks?

Thanks dude

 

[Cry-Scott]

Ahh okay, im trying to futureproof it as best possible, could you recommend a mobo that would be sli ready and a psu that would support 2 cards?

Chances are im gunna need them in the future and id rather buy it nice than buy it twice if you know what I mean