Student Architecture Workstation £1000 (~$1500)

areksnumbr1sxylady · 17 Jul 2012 at 23:02

a.grieveson@gma said:
So correct me if I'm wrong, but buying the 1230v2 would save me ~£80 but leave me with a CPU I can't over clock (I only plan a small, stable over clock on the 3770k). Would the advantage of the Xeon architecture outweigh that limitation?

I know I don't need the 3rd party cooler temperature wise, the main reason I am going for it is for the reduced noise level it will provide me with over the stock cooler.

I have no idea if xeon architecture will outweigh it in your needs... Xeon`s are famous for being very reliable and very low power consuming... I know for sure that they enable use of ECC Ram but you need xeon mobo for that... If thats use to you.

Dont forget 1230v2 does not have IGP if thats any use to you... but for 80 quid you can buy radeon 6850 which is much more powerful than intel igp.

olivier renault · 17 Jul 2012 at 23:14

a.grieveson@gma said:
I have looked into the Xeon's and would be very happy to use them, but unfortunatly my student budget just does not stretch that far!

We're just pulling your leg. Of course it is unreasonable.

olivier renault · 17 Jul 2012 at 23:17

Lazder said:
I have no idea if xeon architecture will outweigh it in your needs... Xeon`s are famous for being very reliable and very low power consuming... I know for sure that they enable use of ECC Ram but you need xeon mobo for that... If thats use to you.

Dont forget 1230v2 does not have IGP if thats any use to you... but for 80 quid you can buy radeon 6850 which is much more powerful than intel igp.

I'd just go safe and get a 3770K. You have a budget, if everything fits, then ok. If it doesn't then fair enough. You don't need a massive, expensive cooler on the 3770K if you are not gonna go past 4.2-4.4GHz. And you can go pretty quiet too.

Doomedspeed · 17 Jul 2012 at 23:22

olivier renault said:
We're just pulling your leg. Of course it is unreasonable.

olivier renault said:
I'd just go safe and get a 3770K. You have a budget, if everything fits, then ok. If it doesn't then fair enough. You don't need a massive, expensive cooler on the 3770K if you are not gonna go past 4.2-4.4GHz. And you can go pretty quiet too.

That could have been a very costly joke.

Atleast you can see how far over a reasonable budget you go to get Xeon's and a massive GPU cluster. Many people don't have £12,000 for a PC.

The 3770k will be perfect.

Hodge_al · 17 Jul 2012 at 23:49

I just finished my architecture course, advice i would give is dont overclock unless you know it will be brutally stable. The last thing you want is be in the middle of a 12 hours render and it crashes!

Make sure you have great cooler and stress test it!

Lots of Ram!

Also quick note, i found a good mouse essential, being able to lower the DPI right down, allows for more accurate drawing in tricky parts. Worth noting.

You dont really need extreme hardware to run those programmes, i agree the 3770k would be perfect, alternatively look down the sandybridge-e route with a 3820. Its pretty much the same price and you get more upgradability in the future.

a.grieveson@gma · 18 Jul 2012 at 00:38

I do not really plan to overclock, so am starting to think that getting a Xeon E3-1230 V2 might be a sensible idea. It gives me a saving of £75, enough to get a full 32GB RAM set (G.Skill 32GB DDR3 1600MHz RipjawsZ) I think the advantages of the extra RAM would out way the ~6.5% performance loss of the E3-1230 V2 vs. i7 3770K. The Xeon is also marketed as a more reliable CPU with more efficient multithread processing (as opposed to 3770k), both of these would be an advantage to me. Any overclocking I would have done with the i7 would have been minimal in favor of stability, so I do not see this as a great loss.

Does this sound a sensible idea?

If I were to go with the Xeon, I don't see the ND14 as necessary anymore. What cooler would you suggest? (Silence is a priority over price). And would the decreased power draw of the Xeon mean I could get a smaller PSU? (A 650w instead of a 750w say).

Lazder said:
Dont forget 1230v2 does not have IGP if thats any use to you... but for 80 quid you can buy radeon 6850 which is much more powerful than intel igp.

I have just purchased (a very cheap) Quadro FX 4800, so have no need for IGP nor another graphics card. The £75 saving would be perfect for the upgrade to 32GB RAM though.

Hodge_al said:
Also quick note, i found a good mouse essential, being able to lower the DPI right down, allows for more accurate drawing in tricky parts. Worth noting.

I have a G700 that has served me well over the last year of heavy CAD work.

Hodge_al · 18 Jul 2012 at 01:15

Scene as you have gone down the quadro route then you wont be gaming the Xeon may be a good option. There is a decent thread going at the top of the CPU section discussing Xeon vs i7 at the moment id check that out.

Id say a 650watt would be fine, hell even a good quality 650w could run a 3770k with SLI. So for a Xeon with 1 graphics card should run quite happy.

I have heard good things about the BeQuiet CPU coolers.

a.grieveson@gma · 18 Jul 2012 at 01:22

Hodge_al said:
Scene as you have gone down the quadro route then you wont be gaming the Xeon may be a good option. There is a decent thread going at the top of the CPU section discussing Xeon vs i7 at the moment id check that out.

No, I have no intention of gaming. This workstation will be kept clean and not used for anything other than work (hmm that seems a bit obvious when I say it like that...). My current laptop will continue to be used for everything else.

I will have a look at that thread, thanks.

areksnumbr1sxylady · 18 Jul 2012 at 01:49

a.grieveson@gma said:
No, I have no intention of gaming. This workstation will be kept clean and not used for anything other than work (hmm that seems a bit obvious when I say it like that...). My current laptop will continue to be used for everything else.

I will have a look at that thread, thanks.

I made a suggestion to ocUK to get this CPU, they said they are currently trying to get hold of it.

So if you dont build now it might be available on ocUK

P.S

I think 500W like this one should be more than enough to power that system...

YOUR BASKET
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £29.99
Total : £39.89 (includes shipping : £8.25).

I never used intel stock heatsink but am pretty sure they are not that loud, xeons are made to run cool so maybe intel stock will be quiet enough for you?

Are you sure 32 gb of ram is not an overkill though? I`d add something like this

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire HD 7850 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £191.99
Total : £202.79 (includes shipping : £9.00).

On saved money

So you can game a little when bored...

Although I have no idea how 2 different video cards will run :/

honosuseri · 18 Jul 2012 at 05:04

Lazder suggests the 1155 Xeon in almost every spec me thread lol

It's a very niche CPU the Xeon E3-1230, which you do seem to fall into. It's priced roughly the same as the Ivybridge i5K, it has hyperthreading where the i5 doesn't. You can't overclock it and you lose the IGP as you have already been informed.

On the Z77 mobos you have the lucidMVP software. It can switch between the IGP and GPU as necessary to save power. It can also boost the GPUs performance with the IGP, wether this benefits your usage i don't know.

I like IGPs. If you have a problem with your dedicated GPU, it's easy to pinpoint when you have the IGP to fall back on as a video ouput. The IGP is not just used by lucidMVP but it allows quicksync as well. If you do video encoding or rip DVD movies it can greatly speed up the process providing the software you use supports quicksync.

If you were never going to overclock the i7 you didn't really need that expensive heatsink from Noctua (as good as it is). If you want to use more than 16GB of RAM then please make sure you have an OS that can use it (eg win7 professional/Ultimate)

a.grieveson@gma · 18 Jul 2012 at 11:56

Lazder said:
So you can game a little when bored...

As I said earlier, I have no intention of gaming one this machine, so a second, non workstation GPU is not necessary.

honosuseri said:
It's a very niche CPU the Xeon E3-1230, which you do seem to fall into. It's priced roughly the same as the Ivybridge i5K, it has hyperthreading where the i5 doesn't. You can't overclock it and you lose the IGP as you have already been informed.

On the Z77 mobos you have the lucidMVP software. It can switch between the IGP and GPU as necessary to save power. It can also boost the GPUs performance with the IGP, wether this benefits your usage i don't know.

I like IGPs. If you have a problem with your dedicated GPU, it's easy to pinpoint when you have the IGP to fall back on as a video ouput. The IGP is not just used by lucidMVP but it allows quicksync as well. If you do video encoding or rip DVD movies it can greatly speed up the process providing the software you use supports quicksync.

With the size of GPU I will be installing and the fact that it is a workstation GPU, I do not think that lucidMVPs GPU sharing will be of much benefit to me. None of the applications I use would take advantage of quicksync, so I do not see that as an issue. I have spare GUP's, so if my primary one fails, that is not a problem for me.

olivier renault · 18 Jul 2012 at 13:19

then xeon would be a good buy for your use.

areksnumbr1sxylady · 18 Jul 2012 at 16:44

honosuseri said:
Lazder suggests the 1155 Xeon in almost every spec me thread lol

I just thought its a niche CPU that no one knew on ocUK, so I advised people to look into it

a.grieveson I also had a "work only PC" that though soon changed once I realised how much quicker it was in gaming than laptop

Dont take it personally, I am just suggesting where you could put your money.

a.grieveson@gma · 18 Jul 2012 at 17:01

Lazder said:
a.grieveson I also had a "work only PC" that though soon changed once I realised how much quicker it was in gaming than laptop

Dont take it personally, I am just suggesting where you could put your money.

If I had any interest in gaming I probably would do as you suggested. But as it stands I don't, and I don't see that changing any time soon. My MacBook Pro is capable of handling any non work activities I could throw at it.

And no, I didn't take it personally, I totally understand where you are coming from, I just don't have the need for a gaming machine myself. It is good advice for anyone who does though.

Oh and can I point out how confusing it having two people with the same avatar posting in the same thread