Rate my workstation spec.

[theforce]

I am building a workstation for a friend who works in a decent size company. Their IT company was recommending a quad-core Xeon and a Quadro K620 with 16GB of RAM for a 3dsmax, Lumion, Sketchup build. I told him he could build something much better so here is the list of parts l sent him.

-Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D
-PSU: Corsair RM850x
-CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
-CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
-Mobo: MSI X399 SLI Plus
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB DDR4 3200MHz 4x16GB CL16
-OS & Apps drive: Samsung SSD 960 Pro M.2 512GB
-Secondary drive for asset loading: Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA3 1TB
-General storage drive: Toshiba X300 4TB
-GPU: Radeon Pro WX 5100

OS installation will be handled by their IT company.

 

[theforce]

It's 100% architectural work, design and rendering. He is using V-Ray as a renderer in 3dsmax. I was going to go for a non-pro GPU but Autodesk's website recommends a pro GPU for 3dsmax usage and l don't want to risk having drivers problems with a non-pro variant. If there wasn't a mining craze and l was building it for my friend and not his company l would have gone with either a Nvidia 1080/Ti or Vega 56/64.

 

[theforce]

Thanks for all the replies guys.

Spec looks good to me, that should fly along - only thing I would be cautious of is your motherboard choice, I've never had a good experience with MSI - though have not tried any of there TR boards.

Yeah, had to replace my MSI Z77 board after it suddenly died. CPU and GPU will obviously run at stock frequencies so hopefully, the MSI will last.

If your going for the ultimate system - I would look at the Intel 900p drives as an alternative to the 960 Pro

Edit: I'd also consider swapping the PSU forward one of the high end seasonic units - some of the Corsair RM units have cheap caps rather than the premium variety - and I'm not sure how you can tell without looking at the batch / serial number

Doesn't it require Intel Optane to work that is unavailable on AMD platforms? As for the PSU, as lee32uk has mentioned it's a rather good unit. I own the 750W version which replaced a Corsair TX750w which was still going strong after 7 years.

 

[theforce]

Thanks for the valuable information "orbitalwalsh". Shame that VRay used CUDA instead of OpenCL, reminds me of the first days of GPU acceleration in Adobe's suite.

 

[theforce]

Update: Finally, we have ordered the parts. Ordered a 960 Evo instead of a 960 Pro and a Nvidia 1080 instead of the WX5100.

 

[theforce]

nice mate, whats did you go for in the end ?

Here is the complete list:

-Case: NZXT H440 V2 black
-PSU: Corsair RM850x
-CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X
-CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
-Mobo: MSI X399 SLI Plus
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB DDR4 3200MHz 4x16GB CL16
-OS & Apps drive: Samsung SSD 960 Evo M.2 512GB
-Secondary drive for asset loading: Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA3 1TB
-General storage drive: Toshiba X300 4TB
-GPU: Gigabyte GTX1080 Windforce OC

Hope you got a good price on the 960, 970 is incoming !

Read the reviews of the 970 Evo on the same night and the performance delta between the old and new drives is minuscule. Maybe with a few firmware updates it will increase though.

 

[theforce]

I will probably use the MSI OC knob on the motherboard. Setting 1, according to some research should enable all cores to go up to 3.75GHz and it lowers the voltages to 1.2v

 

[theforce]

Parts have arrived :

img upload

 

[theforce]

It's alive.

That should be very satisfying to build! Have fun!

It was indeed. The H440 v2 was easy to work with, with ample space for cable management. I wish l had gone with a different board though since the latest bios for the MSI X399 SLI Plus is bad, to say the least. Managed to get 2800MHz out of the RAM, anything higher than that on a quad channel mode would throw a RAM error at boot. The weird thing is that the BIOS reset button doesn´t work or wouldn't work so l had to revert to a single RAM stick in order to get to BIOS. Shorting the BIOS switch didn't do the trick either. It´s the first time l have encountered such behaviour from a motherboad. Did some RAM testing with MemTest64 at 2800MHz and it was solid. I was hopping for at least 2933MHz though

The CPU is overlocked via the MSI OC knob(setting 1) on the motherboard which increases the base frequency for all cores from 3.4GHz to 3.75GHz and weirdly it reduced vcore to 1.2v from 1.24-1.28v at stock settings. I used MSI Kombustor for CPU & GPU stress testing with the CPU reaching 74C. Going to deliver the PC tomorrow