Spec me an Animators Workstation

When it comes to Maya and other modelling/animation software too the professional cards win, hands down. Personally I'd go with the AMD FirePro W7100 as in theory it should be better and benchmarks show AMD cards to be generally better for Maya anyway. Or the W8100 but for some reason it is double the price it is meant to be at OCUK.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD FirePro W7100 Professional Graphics Card - 8GB GDDR5 - 1792 Shaders £574.99
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £494.98
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2715H 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £389.99
1 x Samsung 1.0TB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E1T0B/EU) £281.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £169.99
1 x Fractal Design Define R5 Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl £84.95
1 x EVGA Supernova G2 650W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £74.99
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £2,176.07 (includes shipping : £16.85 Ex.VAT).

 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5930K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £644.98
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2715H 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £389.99
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £169.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Primo Full Tower - Black/White £169.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 750W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - Black £112.99
4 x Samsung 256GB SSD 850 PRO SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-7KE256BW) £107.99 (£431.96)
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i GTX 240mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060021-WW) £101.99
Total : £2,342.09 (includes shipping : £16.85 Ex.VAT).



No need for a Quadro card when a GTX will do more work for less money, the Quadro drivers may be more stable and work better in really high end workstations but for animation and video rendering you may as well save yourself some £.

Either use the SSDs as separate drives (OS, cache, media & output) or grab some more and get them in RAID5 (or RAID0 if you've got suitable backups)

There's plenty left in the budget for an upgraded cooling solution, decent graphic tablet, better monitor (the Dell's pretty damned good for the price though) or even a shed load of beer :p
 
dacads said:
When it comes to Maya and other modelling/animation software too the professional cards win, hands down. Personally I'd go with the AMD FirePro W7100 as in theory it should be better and benchmarks show AMD cards to be generally better for Maya anyway. Or the W8100 but for some reason it is double the price it is meant to be at OCUK.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD FirePro W7100 Professional Graphics Card - 8GB GDDR5 - 1792 Shaders £574.99
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £494.98
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2715H 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £389.99
1 x Samsung 1.0TB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E1T0B/EU) £281.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £169.99
1 x Fractal Design Define R5 Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl £84.95
1 x EVGA Supernova G2 650W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £74.99
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £2,176.07 (includes shipping : £16.85 Ex.VAT).

Click to expand...

Did you see the link I posted? When a CG supervisor from Animal Logic (lego movie etc) says don't bother with quadro for maya, its worth listening to! They test these cards head to head and if they're happy with gtx I certainly am. Been using 780s and gtx titans with softimage and maya for a few years with no problems at all.

I like the rest of your build though.
 
Cyanide said:
If you're not doing work with critical data (mostly science, engineering, medical etc) then a 'consumer' grade GTX card will get you much more power for your money. Something like a 970 would pair well with a 5960x - anything more than that and you're looking at dual xeons to take full advantage of it for your applications
Click to expand...

data is not critical

spoffle said:
Are you doing any renders? If so, what software you are using for the rendering?

What components in Maya are you using that use CUDA?

Adobe CS uses OpenCL and OpenGL for acceleration, which means any old GPU above a certain level is good enough.
Click to expand...


Doing a lot of renders, so rendering time being minimal is key, initially will be using Maya for the renders but next year will likely move to Keyshot

mattmos said:
It probably would be worth breaking down what tasks you do primarily.

I'd say if you're not rendering that much an 8 core would not be worthwhile, you could go with the 5820k and overclock it to get decent grunt for animation playback.

Maya's making a big push towards viewport 2 which is quite demanding on vram, and gtx gaming cards are perfectly capable of handling maya these days. If you're going to spend that kind of money I would go with the titan X instead of the quadro k4200, as the extra vram will help run multiple programs (maya, cuda-accelerated adobe stuff). Otherwise the 980ti would be a great alternative.

Some more info here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8025871&postcount=7
Click to expand...

Day to day Maya will be used to model, render and animate. initially quite a lot of animation will be done, 1-2minute videos at 24fps. Due to this size they will be likely left to render overnight

smogsy said:
if the work is critcal i would suggest looking at Xeon + ECC memory on stulid suggestion.
Click to expand...

Not critical
 
MrTomB said:
data is not critical

Doing a lot of renders, so rendering time being minimal is key, initially will be using Maya for the renders but next year will likely move to Keyshot
Click to expand...

Having the correct HDD setup is important then. You're best having several drives set up correctly rather than 1 really fast drive with everything on. Adobe recommend 1 drive for OS, 1 for cache, 1 for media and 1 for output - either as JBOD or in RAID - if data's not critical and you've got decent backups you could probably get away with a RAID1 array with SSDs for the cache/media/output drive which'll be pretty damned quick!
 
Cyanide said:
Having the correct HDD setup is important then. You're best having several drives set up correctly rather than 1 really fast drive with everything on. Adobe recommend 1 drive for OS, 1 for cache, 1 for media and 1 for output - either as JBOD or in RAID - if data's not critical and you've got decent backups you could probably get away with a RAID1 array with SSDs for the cache/media/output drive which'll be pretty damned quick!
Click to expand...

The only issue i have with splitting the drives is that we did a brief calculation that we would need 1TB of 'active' storage for working files. Due to doing a lot of animation this would take up a good portion of the 1TB. so it might mean i need 4 x 500gb SSDs with a RAID setup.

Just finding out what the back up situation is with IT but think it will only be for data stored on the network, could add in another HardDisk for dedicated back up?
 
FOr such a large budget I certainly go for the best CPU the 5960|X.

Also reliability will be a key factor so WD Red > Seagate barracuda all day long.

The Intel 750SSD have such massive IOPS that they do not get swamped down down when being hammered.
 
The 750ssd is just massive overkill though. Just needs to load a scene file now and again, and when rendering save an image file every new minutes, load a few textures/geometry cache files. For that money, could get 2 1Tb evo ssds, one for os/programs/cache and one for active project working files, with a WD Red for backup.

If cpu rendering is important then the 8 core could help.
 
stulid said:
FOr such a large budget I certainly go for the best CPU the 5960|X.

Also reliability will be a key factor so WD Red > Seagate barracuda all day long.

The Intel 750SSD have such massive IOPS that they do not get swamped down down when being hammered.
Click to expand...

WD Red is more suitable for NAS though.
 
dacads said:
WD Red is more suitable for NAS though.
Click to expand...

The differences are actually quite small - they are nearly identical. Red's support TLER which would be a good idea if in RAID and have an extra year of warranty. Given the choice I'd choose reds considering the OPs needs.
 
stulid said:
The Intel 750SSD have such massive IOPS that they do not get swamped down down when being hammered.
Click to expand...

If the price difference wasn't so massive I'd agree that the 750 is a good idea. Given that it costs £860!? I can't in good conscience recommend one.
 
Here is where I am at: (sorry it is not in your format, i don't know how you do it)

Corsair Carbide 330R Titanium, Steel/Plastic, 210x495x484 (WxHxD mm), 2x USB 3, Headphone & Mic
£82.00 inc VAT

Motherboards
Asus X99-S, 3-way SLI, 3-way CrossFireX, 8 SATA 6Gbps, 1 SATA Express, 1 PCI-E M.2, SATA RAID, ATX
£200.39 inc VAT

Intel CPUs & Overclocking
Intel Core i7 5960X Extreme Unlocked, Haswell-E, 8 Core, 3.0GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo, 40PCI-E Lanes, 20MB Cache, Retail [Overclocked up to 4.0GHz - Tuned for optimal performance while retaining stability.]
£799.40 inc VAT

CPU Cooler
3XS Customised Corsair Hydro H100 cooler with dual SP120 quiet edition fans
£79.80 inc VAT

DDR4 Memory
16GB Corsair DDR4 2666MHz - 3000MHz [16GB (4x4GB) Vengeance LPX Blue, 2800MHz, CAS 16, 1.2V]
£110.59 inc VAT

Pro Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA Quadro K4200, 1344 Cores, Supports 3 Displays (2 x DP, DVI)
£685.44 inc VAT
Power Supply

Corsair RM550W Modular Gold Silent PSU
£77.46 inc VAT

Storage - Solid State Drives
2 x 500GB Samsung 850 Evo - 540MB/s Read, 520MB/s Write, 97K IOPS (RAID TBC)
£279.96 inc VAT

Storage - Hard Disk Drives
2TB Seagate Barracuda, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache
£56.64 inc VAT

Optical Drives
Samsung SH-224FB - 24x DVD Reader & Writer
£11.98 inc VAT

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64bit, Supports 16GB RAM and above. Eligible for free upgrade to Windows 10.
£101.64 inc VAT

Peripherals
28" AOC U2868PQU, TN, 4K, 3840x2160, fully adjustable stand
£289.54 inc VAT

Total £2971.62 inc VAT
 
mattmos said:
It probably would be worth breaking down what tasks you do primarily.

I'd say if you're not rendering that much an 8 core would not be worthwhile, you could go with the 5820k and overclock it to get decent grunt for animation playback.

Maya's making a big push towards viewport 2 which is quite demanding on vram, and gtx gaming cards are perfectly capable of handling maya these days. If you're going to spend that kind of money I would go with the titan X instead of the quadro k4200, as the extra vram will help run multiple programs (maya, cuda-accelerated adobe stuff). Otherwise the 980ti would be a great alternative.

Some more info here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8025871&postcount=7
Click to expand...

This, a million times. Expensive Quadros really are a waste for the vast majority of people.

smogsy said:
if the work is critcal i would suggest looking at Xeon + ECC memory on stulid suggestion.
Click to expand...

A Xeon and ECC is not necessary for this sort of thing, critical or not.

dacads said:
Looks good amigo, only 16GB RAM as opposed to 32GB though?

Also I'd go with a better quality PSU ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, this. 32GB all the way. I've got 32GB in my workstation, and it's not difficult to use most of that.
 
dacads said:
Looks good amigo, only 16GB RAM as opposed to 32GB though?

Also I'd go with a better quality PSU ;)
Click to expand...

I knew i overlooked something as it looked cheaper than before, latest spec below.

ExRayTed said:
Agreed. CWT are an average / ok OEM. For something this expensive it pays to get a decent power supply.
Click to expand...


I will take both your advises and up the spec of the PSU to a 750W Corsair RMi, Modular, Silent, 80PLUS Gold

LATEST SPEC:

Corsair Carbide 330R Titanium, Steel/Plastic, 210x495x484 (WxHxD mm), 2x USB 3, Headphone & Mic
£82.00 inc VAT

Motherboards
Asus X99-S, 3-way SLI, 3-way CrossFireX, 8 SATA 6Gbps, 1 SATA Express, 1 PCI-E M.2, SATA RAID, ATX
£200.39 inc VAT

Intel CPUs & Overclocking
Intel Core i7 5960X Extreme Unlocked, Haswell-E, 8 Core, 3.0GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo, 40PCI-E Lanes, 20MB Cache, Retail [Overclocked up to 4.0GHz - Tuned for optimal performance while retaining stability.]
£799.40 inc VAT

CPU Cooler
3XS Customised Corsair Hydro H100 cooler with dual SP120 quiet edition fans
£79.80 inc VAT

DDR4 Memory
32GB Corsair DDR4 - 2666MHz - 3000MHz [32GB (4x8GB) Vengeance LPX, 2666MHz, CAS 16, 1.2V]
£214.36 inc VAT

Pro Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA Quadro K4200, 1344 Cores, Supports 3 Displays (2 x DP, DVI)
£685.44 inc VAT

Power Supply
750W Corsair RMi, Modular, Silent, 80PLUS Gold
£100.00 inc VAT

Storage - Solid State Drives
4 x 250GB Samsung 850 Evo - Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 97K IOPS (RAID TBC)
£319.92 inc VAT

Storage - Hard Disk Drives
2TB Western Digital Black, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache
£100.00 inc VAT

Optical Drives
Samsung SH-224FB - 24x DVD Reader & Writer
£11.98 inc VAT

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64bit, Supports 16GB RAM and above. Eligible for free upgrade to Windows 10.
£101.64 inc VAT

Peripherals
28" AOC U2868PQU, TN, 4K, 3840x2160, fully adjustable stand
£289.54 inc VAT

TOTAL £3181.24 inc VAT

Leaves some left for a Wacom Intros Pro
 
WD black is a good HDD, expensive but does have a long warranty.

With a noise dampened case wouldnt a known quiet air cooler be better? also is thta a base H100 and not a newer H100i or H100i GTX etc?
 
stulid said:
WD black is a good HDD, expensive but does have a long warranty.

With a noise dampened case wouldnt a known quiet air cooler be better? also is thta a base H100 and not a newer H100i or H100i GTX etc?
Click to expand...

We plan to use it to render overnight on occasion so feel that liquid cooling would give more piece of mind. Are you recommending the Newer H100 cases over the current one I have chosen?
 
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