Any shoestring or scrapheap workstation fans?

[Rasseru]

I just recently built a cheap dell T3500 with xeon X5687, as a cheap base for my gaming build. then slapped a new 1080 in it, rendering it un-cheap

Its alright an' all, but my other passion is 3D rendering & memory intensive graphics, and the 4-core xeon & low memory of the 3500 wont cut it, so i've been thinking about a dual-cpu build with 96 gigs, but can also handle SLi so I can game on it.

Seems like a balancing act between getting a lower clocked CPU, and potentially losing single thread performance & cost.

Anyone else into this kind of thing? I'm finding it really fun

 

[Rasseru]

it was my only option at the time, and the card is future-proofed, I will upgrade when I have more money -

I fail to see how the thread title is relevant to the post content?

eh? its a pc-on-a-budget (well the base isnt even £200), I wondered if anyone else here does this, i think thats fairly relevant?

 

[Rasseru]

The base was £200 but you slapped a GTX1080 in it, and you are now considering a dual CPU 96GB RAM build. Nothing sounds 'shoestring' or 'scrapheap' about any of this to me.

I think for what it is, its pretty cheap. (minus the 1080) - yes i agree that part isnt cheap, but this isnt really what i'm asking, its more about if anyone buys seriously discounted parts from eBay to make pretty powerful PCs.

 

[Rasseru]

Fair enough, title threw me thats all!

I built a Socket 771 / DDR2 ECC based machine with two quad core Xeons, 24GB of RAM, 2TB storage, boot SSD and a GTX460 for £100 all in a couple of years ago. I thought that was pretty good! Not a powerhouse by any stretch though.

That kind of machine would be worth a fortune years ago, its amazing how tech progresses. I want to build my housemate something like this for music production