3D / Rendering workstation build help request

gEd

gEd

Associate
Joined
25 Jan 2003
Posts
552
Location
South London
Greetings!

A friend of mine has asked me to build him a workstation for running 3ds max, maya and Vue, and maybe Cinema 4d in the future. it will not be used for gaming. The budget is around £2000, up to 2500 if pushed.

I have started to put together the guts of the build to get some idea of pricing but I haven't yet checked the fine detail on the items for compatibility. I am up to £1100 atm so I have £1K to buy cpu, mobo and ram (ideally 32GB or if budget is too tight 16GB in 2 sticks so we can add 2 more later). However I am stumped when it comes to what CPU/mobo to get. I build an overclocked 2500K a couple of years back but I am totally out of the loop on the i7 range and also the xeon range.

This chart gives details on render times which is a useful reference.
http://www.cbscores.com/index.php?sort=rend&order=desc

I would appreciate some guidance on what cpu/combo to get for this task. Do I get a 6 pot i7 and clock the nuts out of it or get an affordable Xeon E5. I am thinking the i7 but which one and which mobo ram to pair it with that will enable me to get a good but 100% reliable clock.

This build needs to last a good few years. Funds are not expected to become available for a replacement for 6 years so i need to get the fastest I can get.

In the future, I am thinking of adding an 1 or 2 nvidia cards such as GTX580 3GB to run iray rendering using CUDA. Therefore I ideally need a mobo with 3 fast pci sockets (and also why I have spec'd a decent PSU)

cheers!

oh not sure how to post what in my basket like you guys all do.

Code:
AMD FirePro W5000 Professional Graphics Card - 2GB - GDDR5 SDRAM		£389.99
Seasonic 860w '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply				£169.99
Plextor M5S 256GB Solid State Drive - (PX-256M5S)				£139.99
Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower Case - Black (CC-9011035-WW)			£138.98
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit - OEM (FQC-08289)			£109.99
Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW)		£99.95
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD	£43.99
Total : 	£1,107.89
 
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