PC build for Animation use - Advice needed please

You're right that frame-by-frame rendering is the right way to limit damage in case of a crash, but I still think you're wrong about wanting to overclock this particular machine. My point is that this is a rig for his girlfriend (not him) to learn animation on while she's at college - correct me if I missed the post where he said his girlfriend was a megahertz mastah and was urging him to bring on the liquid nitrogen with zealous glee - but I really think that any amount of complications related to the overclocking are going to be unacceptable to her as the end user. Its not like the i7 isn't the most powerful chip ever put in the hands of animators at stock speeds anyway.

No skin off my nose; Lister, the OP, can do as he pleases, but I know that if the academic success of someone close to me rested on the reliability of a machine I was building for them, and they weren't an IT expert, and I wasn't going to be around 24/7 for support, I'd probably be leaving the clock speed alone.

Also:
Badas said:
...also wise practice to render a animation frame by freamy as jpegs............
Click to expand...

Yes but not JPEGs: You should always keep your workflow non-lossy right up until the final compression to target format. JPEG artifacts might not be immediately visible to you on the render output, but as soon as you bring that into an editing package and decide you want to brighten something up, they can become very apparent. PNG is an excellent output format which offers some of the best non-lossy image compression out there, as well as Alpha channel support which comes in useful when rendering an animation in several layers.
 
Last edited:
Darkmoon_UK said:
Yes but not JPEGs: You should always keep your workflow non-lossy right up until the final compression to target format. JPEG artifacts might not be immediately visible to you on the render output, but as soon as you bring that into an editing package and decide you want to brighten something up, they can become very apparent. PNG is an excellent output format which offers some of the best non-lossy image compression out there, as well as Alpha channel support which comes in useful when rendering an animation in several layers.
Click to expand...

i will have to remember that part

ty
 
Cheers for all the help fellas :)

I emailed him last night and recommended this setup:

CPU: i7 920 OEM
CPU Cooler: Corsair H50-1*
Motherboard: Asus P6T SE
Ram: 6GB 12800 Cas8 DDR3 (Viper/Corsair/G.Skill)
Graphics Card: Nvidia GTS 250 1GB (cheapest brand)
Hard Drive: Samsung F3 1Tb
PSU: Antec Truepower 550w Modular
DVD drive: Sony AD-7240S-0B
Case: Coolermaster CM-690 v2 Dominator
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster F2380

*However, if the majority of advice is to shy away from overclocking then I'll recommend a cheaper aftermarket cooler (such as the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2)
 
Looks like a good spec - wish it were mine! :-) If the budget could stretch, or if she has an old monitor spare, then I'd recommend a second one sitting off the side - doesn't have to be the same size, an extra bit of space can just work wonders as a place to chuck tool palettes, browse files for import etc.
 
2nd monitor works wonders with me, i can have my 3ds max on one monitor and have photoshop in the other allowing texture updating to be done a lot quicker :)

and i think that will be my next rig fingers crossed
 
Just out of interest are there any cheaper (but solid) 1366 motherboards you guys could recommend as I've told him that consensus was that overclocking probably wasn't wise given that it's coursework she'll be doing on it.

Thanks again
 
Anyone saying that overclocking makes your machine unstable isn't doing it right. There's a really strong correlation between people who say "it doesn't crash, so it's stable. I'm not wasting my time running prime for days" and those who later complain that overclocking caused crashes/data corruption.

Overclock it as far as you can without compromising stability. And yes, stability testing takes a long time, and you'll have to thrash the machine while testing it to make sure it's stable. I do a considerable amount of cad work on my computer for uni, and the only crashes I've encountered are from running out of ram, and the system thrashing when trying to write several gb to virtual memory then giving up. It does this at stock as well. Anyone who doesn't save their work every ten minutes or so and doesn't bother backing up has it coming to them, overclocked or not. Windows crashes on stock speed machines as well as on overclocked ones.

The difference in performance between 2.6ghz and 4ghz during cpu intensive tasks is obscene. Animating is one of very few tasks that is intensive enough to justify the overclock.
 
Don't think so, if its socket 1366 you're after (can see an upgrade to a 6 core in a couple of years to prolong the life of the system) the p6t se seems to be the best option, the gigabyte ud3r is also fine. Asus I know have already guaranteed their motherboards will take the 6 core chips with a bios update.

Mild overclocking on these chips should be fine as long as the overclocker knows what they're doing, and you could probably use the arctic cooler as a way to save some money.
 
I can help them with the overclocking side of things and from what he's saying it'll probably end up being me who builds it lol

I'll probably go for the AC7 Pro v2 and OC the chip to 3.6 or so to be on the safe side as the last thing I want is for her to have any chew with it related to my tinkering.

That being said I've never had one problem with my C2D e6300 overclock, I've had at 3.2Ghz (@1.25v) for the last 3 years on the original Freezer 7 Pro.
 
I was researching the p6t se as my next board - looks like it will be able to handle more memory than a ud3r as well, which could come in handy down the line. With that cooler 3.4 would prob be a safe 24/7 clock.
 
JonJ678 said:
Anyone saying that overclocking makes your machine unstable isn't doing it right. There's a really strong correlation between people who say "it doesn't crash, so it's stable. I'm not wasting my time running prime for days" and those who later complain that overclocking caused crashes/data corruption.

Overclock it as far as you can without compromising stability. And yes, stability testing takes a long time, and you'll have to thrash the machine while testing it to make sure it's stable. I do a considerable amount of cad work on my computer for uni, and the only crashes I've encountered are from running out of ram, and the system thrashing when trying to write several gb to virtual memory then giving up. It does this at stock as well. Anyone who doesn't save their work every ten minutes or so and doesn't bother backing up has it coming to them, overclocked or not. Windows crashes on stock speed machines as well as on overclocked ones.

The difference in performance between 2.6ghz and 4ghz during cpu intensive tasks is obscene. Animating is one of very few tasks that is intensive enough to justify the overclock.
Click to expand...

+1 Couldnt have put it better myself.

One of the tests I ran on my system to test stability was an 18hour render and another a fluid simulation in an attempt to make sure its happy playing with the software I use.

Do it right and you will have no issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom