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Spec me a gaming/workstation PC

Varsh

Varsh

Varsh

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Joined
24 Oct 2008
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424
Location
W-s-M
With the new DDR4 release and my PC now starting to feel its age (especially after upgrading the monitor to UHD + 1920x1200), I'm wanting to now move my PC up another level from just gaming/light workstation to gaming with more demanding workstation capabilities.

As I have also had one of my dual channel kits die on me and GEIL no longer able to supply a replacement kit as the ECs are no longer manufactured, I have gone backwards from 8GB to 16GB which has really hurt my performance. Also as I only have a 2GB GTX680 I certainly know that it's not a workstation card though at the time it was fine with the amount of CUDA cores available (till the Titan trashed it. :D).

So all-in-all I have about £2k to spend with some of the money recouped from selling my current PC. The main thing I need it for is rendering speed for 3ds Max and MudBox/ZBrush, plus I will also be using Sony Vegas and Photoshop at times but not often.

I currently have:
Intel i7-3820K (not intel quick-sync compatible which is a problem)
GEIL 8GB DDR3 RAM
GTX680
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard
Antec P280
Seasonic X-650 PSU

I am wanting a silent system too but not wanting a full tower so a mid-tower, cube case, or something similar would be fine as long as I can make it as silent as possible. I am thinking of watercooling in the future though as an upgrade however I will not be overclocking anything.

This is my current idea but it's over budget, any other ideas that I could chop and change around?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus X99-E WS Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 EATX Workstation Motherboard £379.99
2 x Crucial 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C16 2133MHz Quad Channel Kit (CT4K8G4DFD8213) £299.99 (£599.98)
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £295.99
2 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 970 OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £275.99 (£551.98)
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-06949) £116.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £98.95
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £79.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 650W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £71.99
1 x Samsung SE-506CB/RSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) £58.99
Total : £2,344.84 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
I'd personally go for a single gtx 980 over the 970 sli and leave the 980 sli option open for the future.

You might need a slightly more powerful PSU as well, but let someone else confirm that, I'd probably go for 750w+, again this is just for future proofing.

Also - do you really need 64gb of ram???
 
I often have 2 3ds Max files open at once and a ZBrush or MudBox window open too. Most of the time it's at least 1 3ds Max, MudBox, and Photoshop open at the same time. When I have 2 Max windows open I am generally working on objects on one window and laying out the scene in the other, also using hundreds of textures ranging from 256x256 up to 8192x8192 textures in these sized scenes doesn't help things either. This can encroach on dozens of millions of poly's on screen at once and it quickly maxed out my 16GB RAM, almost in an instant.

Possibly could drop down to 32GB as I guess I might be going a little OTT on 64GB. That was mainly future proofing.
 
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The GTX780TI cards have crashed in price to less than £300 for a few of them - so has the OP considered these?? The GPUs in them are the basis of the Nvidia Quadro cards(but with DP performance depreciated and with consumer drivers). I would probably go and hunt out some benchmarks of these to see which do a better job in 3DS Max,although the GTX970 does have a extra 1GB of VRAM.
 
I have considered the 7 series however the benefits of the 9 series outdoes the extra CUDA cores in the 780Ti for me. Another option is to go with a single 970 and upgrade to a Titan like card in the future. The main reason for 2x 970's is to also split the workload for video and graphics rendering as to make up for the loss of CUDA cores compared to the 780Ti/Titan.

And yes VRAM is very important, especially as I work on such a large resolution.

Though if I am to upgrade to a 9 series Titan shortly down the line then I suppose a 780Ti would be fine.

Edit: Decided that two 970's would be far better then two 780Ti's mainly because of power consumption which is a massive difference yearly for me as I do run the PC at least ~17hrs/day

For the PSU I was actually looking at the Seasonic 660 Platinum though it has a 55A 12V rail so I'm not sure if that would support two 970's, perhaps a minimum of 60A is required?
 
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Varsh said:
I have considered the 7 series however the benefits of the 9 series outdoes the extra CUDA cores in the 780Ti for me. Another option is to go with a single 970 and upgrade to a Titan like card in the future. The main reason for 2x 970's is to also split the workload for video and graphics rendering as to make up for the loss of CUDA cores compared to the 780Ti/Titan.

And yes VRAM is very important, especially as I work on such a large resolution.

Though if I am to upgrade to a 9 series Titan shortly down the line then I suppose a 780Ti would be fine.

Edit: Decided that two 970's would be far better then two 780Ti's mainly because of power consumption which is a massive difference yearly for me as I do run the PC at least ~17hrs/day

For the PSU I was actually looking at the Seasonic 660 Platinum though it has a 55A 12V rail so I'm not sure if that would support two 970's, perhaps a minimum of 60A is required?
Click to expand...

A single GTX780TI appears to consume around 40W to 60W more than a single GTX970,under a average gaming load. If its something more intensive like Furmark,there is evidence that the GTX970 and GTX980 do have TDP containment measures(like throttling) which are more aggressive than the GTX780 series cards,so I cannot really say what it will be like for non-gaming loads.

So a quick calculation would at 18P a kWh would be around £89 to £134 a year,if you are running at load 17 hours a day,365 days a year,at least under an average gaming load.
 
I'm still concerned about the VRAM though. My 2GB is often topped out and I don't know what it would be like with 3GB so having an extra 2GB over my current 2GB will help things a lot. Plus I would want to have two 780Ti's at their current price anyway and that would double the cost of the bill per year.

As for the EVGA, I have never tried any of their PSUs before as generally I'm quite the Seasonic fan, had their PSUs for 9 odd builds (for family and friends) and they have always been rock solid. Expensive but worth it and they give 7 years as opposed to 10. I'll look into that later tonight. I do know that the Seasonic 760 Platinum supports 62A on the 12V too so I'm going to try and compare between the two.

As for cases, I know the Corsair 540 is great for watercooling and cable management however people do tend to say that sometimes the window cover rattles or doesn't sit properly, and also the window scratches too easily. As I'm not really one for windows anyway is there a case that would be a good replacement for my super silent P280 or should I get another one? It's not really one for watercooling though it seems.
 
stulid said:
I think the EVGA (which is 62A) with its 10yr warranty is unbeatable value for money.
Click to expand...

Is this the PSU you're talking about? If it is then all I can say is wow.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/SuperNOVA_G2_750/1.html

I'm taking another look at GPU's and seeing whether going for dual GTX980's might be the better choice but then I would need to save at least £300 from elsewhere in the build which I don't think is possible.

Edit: Current basket - any ideas on places I could cut down the cost and squeeze it under £2k? I do need the optical drive and I only have Windows 7 Home Premium so I'm limited to 16GB RAM, unless I do that and wait for Windows 10.
YOUR BASKET
2 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 "Herculez X3 Ultra" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98V-1SDN-M5DNX) £429.95 (£859.90)
1 x Crucial 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C16 2133MHz Quad Channel Kit (CT4K8G4DFD8213) £299.99
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £281.99
1 x Asus X99-A Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £193.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-06949) £116.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £98.95
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £85.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £79.99
1 x Samsung SE-506CB/RSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) £58.99
Total : £2,171.77 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
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The dual 970's are still a thought as it would save me ~£310 if I Went for the Inno3D or ~£238 if I went for that Gigabyte. Apparently the fans are always on on the Gigabyte and don't turn off so I would rather go for a different custom cooler brand that can have a profile to turn off the fan.

As for the Enthoo Pro, I really don't like the look of the case. I just wished that the P280 was still sold here. :(
 
Well I have added extra fans, added the white P280 though I will try and find the original black P280 elsewhere, increased the size of the SSD to 512GB, and I think that's it for the time being. I'm going to check with my boss to see if I'll be able to get VAT back so I could potentially go a little higher. Thoughts so far?:

YOUR BASKET
2 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 "Herculez X3 Ultra" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98V-1SDN-M5DNX) £429.95 (£859.90)
1 x Crucial 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C16 2133MHz Quad Channel Kit (CT4K8G4DFD8213) £299.99
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £281.99
1 x Asus X99-A Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £193.99
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £144.98
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-06949) £116.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £85.99
1 x Antec Performance Series P280 Midi-Tower - White £79.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £79.99
1 x Samsung SE-506CB/RSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) With free M Disk £58.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 Intel Cooler £32.99
5 x Arctic F12 Case Fan - 120mm £3.98 (£19.90)
Total : £2,265.31 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
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Varsh said:
The dual 970's are still a thought as it would save me ~£310 if I Went for the Inno3D or ~£238 if I went for that Gigabyte. Apparently the fans are always on on the Gigabyte and don't turn off so I would rather go for a different custom cooler brand that can have a profile to turn off the fan.

As for the Enthoo Pro, I really don't like the look of the case. I just wished that the P280 was still sold here. :(
Click to expand...

Get the Asus Strix then. The fans are off when you are not stressing the gpu.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Graphics_Cards/STRIXGTX970DC2OC4GD5/

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £307.99
Total : £317.59 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
Updated:

YOUR BASKET
2 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 "Herculez X3 Ultra" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98V-1SDN-M5DNX) £429.95 (£859.90)
1 x Crucial 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C16 2133MHz Quad Channel Kit (CT4K8G4DFD8213) £299.99
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £295.99
1 x Asus X99-A Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £193.99
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £144.98
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-06949) £116.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £85.99
1 x Antec Performance Series P280 Midi-Tower - White £79.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £79.99
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Black £69.98
1 x Samsung SE-506CB/RSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) With free M Disk £52.99
5 x Phanteks PH-F120S 120mm Fan - Black/White £13.99 (£69.95)
Total : £2,360.35 (includes shipping : £8.00).



lee32uk said:
Get the Asus Strix then. The fans are off when you are not stressing the gpu.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Graphics_Cards/STRIXGTX970DC2OC4GD5/

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £307.99
Total : £317.59 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Click to expand...

That would still cost ~£64 more than the Inno3D's of which that would give me the available money for an HSF. Of which I have looked at the Phantek's and they do look really nice. :)

If I can't get an VAT back then I'll definitely be going for the 970 build. I'll think about the Strix 970's seeing as I would be saving a lot more if I did go for 970's.
 
Well I am able to get my VAT back so I'll be using that for dual 980's for sure. Hopefully I can order this tomorrow, the Cooltek Jonsbo W2 I will be getting which is ~£120 so add that to the price below too, then remove 20% off. :D

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £505.98
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £442.99 (£885.98)
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £337.99
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £154.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-06949) £116.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £85.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £79.99
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14CS CPU Cooler - Black £65.99
1 x Samsung SE-506CB/RSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) With free M Disk £58.99
Total : £2,302.50 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Final thoughts? The case is this:
http://www.cooltek.de/en/powered-by-jonsbo/w2/131/w2?c=274

 
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