£500 build including monitor for VFX student

dacads · 22 Oct 2014 at 16:18

Hi all,

So I'd usually do this myself but been busy so thought I'd give you guys a job

Friend of friend is looking for a build for £500 including monitor, I know it's not an ideal budget but no can do. He is a VFX student so will be doing the usual animation and modelling using software such as Autodesk Maya.

Show me the goods, ladies.

Thanks

Doomedspeed · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:11

Thats a bit of a push Maya seems to be a very demanding piece of software if used to its potential.

Do you know what he'll be doing with it, modelling, rendering? and to what scale, small projects/med/big ect...

If he is doing a lot of rendering he may struggleas maya is MASSIVELY optimised for workstation cards, which may set you back £250-£400 alone..

Little*Freak · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:11

Hi,

Do you need an OS as well?

dacads · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:21

Doomedspeed said:
Thats a bit of a push Maya seems to be a very demanding piece of software if used to its potential.

Do you know what he'll be doing with it, modelling, rendering? and to what scale, small projects/med/big ect...

If he is doing a lot of rendering he may struggleas maya is MASSIVELY optimised for workstation cards, which may set you back £250-£400 alone..

Small to med projects including modelling and animation that'll need rendering. The friend uses Maya on laptop without issue it seems, of course not as quick as an i7 at rendering but most students can't afford a 2k rig.

Little*Freak said:
Hi,

Do you need an OS as well?

Nope

Little*Freak · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:26

I've been looking at the systems Maya recommends, the lowest spec card i think i saw, was an AMD FirePro V4900, with 480 stream processors and 1GB DDR5 with a 256 bit bus (that card is £140) but that system also had an i7 and 16 GB of Ram.

I see that Maya says it needs 4GB of Ram minimum* but most of the systems running it seem to be either 8GB or mostly 16GB systems with very expensive professional GPU's and i7's.

*doesn't minimum mean it Will run on your pc but actually will barely work.

Svyper1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:30

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £137.99
1 x Asus VS228DE 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £79.99
1 x MSI GeForce GT 740 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £71.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD38G1600HC9DC01) £65.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £39.95
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £37.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 300W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £31.99
1 x Zalman T4 Micro-ATX Case USB 3.0 - Black £22.99
Total : £509.40 (includes shipping : £17.10).

Little*Freak said:
I've been looking at the systems Maya recommends, the lowest spec card i think i saw, was an AMD FirePro V4900, with 480 stream processors and 1GB DDR5 with a 256 bit bus (that card is £140) but that system also had an i7 and 16 GB of Ram.

I see that Maya says it needs 4GB of Ram minimum* but most of the systems running it seem to be either 8GB or mostly 16GB systems with very expensive professional GPU's and i7's.

*doesn't minimum mean it Will run on your pc but actually will barely work.

if youre looking at autodesk website they will always over estimate what it is using and always recommend pro cards

in actual fact the CAD programs use 1 core.
only rendering uses multi core
and only maniuplation of objects uses gfx

mainly autodesk products use Direct X so really a gaming card will do fine

zakblood · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:34

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...stem-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya-2015.html
will work fine on the i5 and 8gb ram, but cards not on the approved list, that's the first link btw, will work, but will be slower than one off the approved list

Svyper1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:36

zakblood said:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...stem-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya-2015.html
will work fine on the i5 and 8gb ram, but cards not on the approved list, that's the first link btw, will work, but will be slower than one off the approved list

just to repeat:

autodesk will always recommend pro cards. regardless if gaming cards would "do better" depending.

its all to do with the support. only pro cards are supported by technical support not that it cant run with gaming cards.

drivers for CAD are optimised on pro cards, pro cards basically allow for more precise error correction and higher res. This matters for things like a movie Avatar but this makes no difference for a student learning to use CAD

Little*Freak · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:43

Hmm interesting, a friend recently bought an i7 system for an architecture course, i won't tell him that he spent £1500 more than he needed to

That is a very nice spec, add a slightly better card and it would be good to go for almost anything.

Doomedspeed · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:46

Svyper1 said:
just to repeat:

autodesk will always recommend pro cards. regardless if gaming cards would "do better" depending.

its all to do with the support. only pro cards are supported by technical support not that it cant run with gaming cards.

drivers for CAD are optimised on pro cards, pro cards basically allow for more precise error correction and higher res. This matters for things like a movie Avatar but this makes no difference for a student learning to use CAD

That is technical true, take a look at this:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/AutoDesk-Maya-2014-Professional-GPU-Acceleration-509/

The results section is interesting. The TITAN (£600) is beaten (hands down) by the K2000 (£340) and the W5000 (£370), the K2000 doubling the output of the TITAN...

That shows how inclinded it is towards professional cards. Even the £130 K600 outperforms it..

zakblood · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:54

most errors in CAD are caused by drivers and hardware used, not the software, so agree fully with dooms comments above

Little*Freak · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:54

Svyper1, would an AMD Quad core work, an Athlon II FM2?

Svyper1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:57

Doomedspeed said:
That is technical true, take a look at this:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/AutoDesk-Maya-2014-Professional-GPU-Acceleration-509/

The results section is interesting. The TITAN (£600) is beaten (hands down) by the K2000 (£340) and the W5000 (£370), the K2000 doubling the output of the TITAN...

That shows how inclinded it is towards professional cards. Even the £130 K600 outperforms it..

yeh... as I said the pro cards Drivers are optimised for CAD and gaming cards are optimized for entertainment. Yet it's all to do with best bang for buck for what you want to do.

a ~£150 pro card will beat a £150 gfx card for CAD in pure speed but there is no reason why you cant use a gaming card and have both worlds.

you would have to spend at least k2000 to do anything else other than CAD.

at least you can spend pennies compared to pro cards and still use CAD. And really so what if it takes a few minutes more. Its not going to impact a student

I would also recommend nvidia for this. AMD has more issues in general with drivers than nvidia.

btw at my work we have 3 CAD machines all:

i5 3k
8GB ram
gtx660

and it is all fine

Doomedspeed · 22 Oct 2014 at 20:59

Little*Freak said:
Svyper1, would an AMD Quad core work, an Athlon II FM2?

No, The CPU core strength is too weak... The Athlons aren't great (like they used to be).

This is what you're looking at intel wise:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £137.99
1 x AMD FirePro W4100 Professional Graphics Card - 2GB GDDR5 - 512 Shaders £134.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD316G2666HC11CDC01) £113.99
1 x AOC E2470SWDA 23.6" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £104.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 350W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £41.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £39.95
1 x BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black £29.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
Total : £701.28 (includes shipping : £17.85).

The GPU is comparible to the K600 in the table (it should actually perform better than the K600).

Though another option is the AMD 6300/8320...

Svyper1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:00

Little*Freak said:
Svyper1, would an AMD Quad core work, an Athlon II FM2?

Well AMD's unless you get an FX you'll struggle using the program due to the lower single core performance

proved by a collegue who is trying to run autocad on an athlon x2 5200 lol
barely runs

stulid · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:02

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel Core i5 DIY Micro ATX Motherboard, CPU & RAM Bundle £225.97
1 x Silverstone Redline RL01 Gaming Case - Black (SST-RL01B USB 3.0) £22.99
Total : £258.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Im sure you can do something with that.

Svyper1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:03

Doomedspeed said:
... snip

seriously doom it is not necessary to spend a lot on pro cards that are uselss for anything but CAD.

also the screen doesnt matter

we are talking about a student not a pro guy £500 is the budget

Doomedspeed · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:06

Svyper1 said:
yeh... as I said the pro cards Drivers are optimised for CAD and gaming cards are optimized for entertainment. Yet it's all to do with best bang for buck for what you want to do.

a ~£150 pro card will beat a £150 gfx card for CAD in pure speed but there is no reason why you cant use a gaming card and have both worlds.

you would have to spend at least k2000 to do anything else other than CAD.

at least you can spend pennies compared to pro cards and still use CAD. And really so what if it takes a few minutes more. Its not going to impact a student

I would also recommend nvidia for this. AMD has more issues in general with drivers than nvidia.

btw at my work we have 3 CAD machines all:

i5 3k
8GB ram
gtx660

and it is all fine

CAD is a silly broad term (i should know, i worked in the industry) with MANY MANY different programs with MANY MANY different requirements. Even the samepeice of software could have low end requirements (if you were modelling, even modelling a whole CITY) and high end requirements for Rendering/stress analysis Ect..

Its all dependant on the software itself and the uses you are performing.

I used solidworks for my course, it wasn'tvery GPU dependant in all tasks. It was more RAM focused (especially with rendering) but from the looks (and what people have told me) about Maya its VERY GPU focused and Less (though its still important) to do with CPU power..

Basically, if i used a rig that was happily capable of running olidworks/NX/inventor for Maya it would be TRUELY awful.. Due to the different requirements andhow the program is built.

That is why a lot of workstations come with Xeons/Dual Xeons and a host of Professional GPU's (and lots of RAM) to cover ALL their bases...

Svyper1 said:
seriously doom it is not necessary to spend a lot on pro cards that are uselss for anything but CAD.

also the screen doesnt matter

we are talking about a student not a pro guy £500 is the budget

Im sticking to my guns on this one, For Maya use you need a Pro GPU. They'll perofrm (in MAYA) atleast 2/3 times better than an equivalent priced gaming GPU.

Little*Freak · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:07

Doomedspeed, is that chart actually suggesting that if games were written properly i'd be better off with a Pro GPU rather than an overhyped, incredibly expensive, flamboyant heatsink?

Doomedspeed · 22 Oct 2014 at 21:11

Little*Freak said:
Doomedspeed, is that chart actually suggesting that if games were written properly i'd be better off with a Pro GPU rather than an overhyped, incredibly expensive, flamboyant heatsink?

No, Maya is completely different to any game, in its structure...

These GPU's won't handle games atall.