PC For Rendering - Suggestions?

Scostumatu

Hi

Thanks for all the replies. I have got a quote for a PC and would like your thoughts:

**Intel Core i7 960 3.20Ghz LGA1366 CPU (is there much of a difference in performance with the 950?? There is a $300 price difference.

**Noctua NH-U12P-SE2 Performance CPU Cooler (Universal)

**ASUS P6X58D-PREMIUM X58 LGA1366 DDR3 Motherboard

**Patriot Viper-Sector7 12GB Kit(4Gx3) DDR3 1600 (For Intel 1366 Pin Only)

**Seagate 3.5" SATA 500GB HDD (to run OS and applications)

**WD SATA 2TB HDD (to store all my other stuff)

**ASUS 1280M GTX470 PCI-E VGA Card (Graphic Card - is this a good one? Its a bit expensive and would settle for soemthing less if there wasnt too much of a difference in speed)

**Antec Sonata III Case

**Antec TruePower TP-750Watt power supply

**Samsung 21.5" BX2240 5ms LED Monitor

**Windows 7 (does windows 7 work well with SU and Vray????)

What do you think? too much or too little?

I was quoted just under $3,000

Thanks again

brodie

I'd say it's not worth $2,000 more than Pete's setup. Or $1,750 since Pete didn't include a monitor.

The i7 950 is 3.06 ghz rather than the 960's 3.20 ghz. $300 is a good chunk of change and that's not a huge improvement but if you're going to spend money anywhere you should be spending it in the CPU so I don't think it would be a foolish move in my opinion if it's in your budget.

Performance CPU cooler? Glancing at a photo online it looks to be a mega big air cooler. I don't know how much they're charging you but unless you're planning to overclock your cpu it strikes me as possible overkill.

Good idea to do your OS and data on different drives. If you can fit another HD in there, you may consider doing 2 1tb drives for storage unless you know you're going to need the full 2tb. That way you could mirror the drives in case one goes out (careful though the drives have to match exactly so if one goes out you'll have to buy the exact same hd to replace it with). Just something to consider.

I'm a bit out of date on graphics cards but glancing at nvidias website the gtx470 looks to be the 2nd best you can get without going to a workstation card. Probably overkill in my opinion. That's a lot of card just for SU. It might help your modeling a bit but probably not noticeably over a card that's a couple steps down. I'd rather spend my money on a second monitor (foreshadowing ).

Monitor looks good but a $3,000 modeling/rendering computer with only 1 monitor is a good sign that some money is being wasted somewhere. You'll really appreciate having that second monitor and getting those SU menus out of your way.

I don't know about working w/ SU/Vray but Win 7 has been a vast improvement over Vista for me and anyone I've talked to. It's memory management is way better and has been working really well for me.

-Brodie

dsarchs

Are you willing to build this yourself or how much choice do you have in deciding which parts you get?

About the CPU, here is a comparison of the i7 965 extreme and the 950 (I couldn't find the 960 but assume the 965 should be better) and there isn't much of a gap between the two. If it's much of a price increase I'd say you'd get more for your money elsewhere.
Incidentally, that is a good place to compare different CPUs and GPUs.

For the case, there are better options. If you want a nice case (good looks, noise reduction, and good ventilation) the Antec P183 would be my choice. If you want something cheaper, but still pretty nice (good ventilation, slightly cheaper build) the Antec 300 illusion would be another way to go (personally, I would cut the wire to the blue lights as they look a little 'gamer' to me -- aside from that it's a pretty clean looking case). The Sonata seems a little generic with no real functional advantages.

For the graphics card, the 470 is a very good card, but also very loud and runs very hot. The 460 is not much of a drop in performance but does much better than the 470 for heat and noise. If you need more power down the road, add a second (just make sure you get a motherboard that supports this if you think you might want to do that at some point) and 2 460's beat a 480 by about 25% on average (see my previous post).

For storage the Samsung Spinpoint F3 seems to be the way to go (for speed, at least).

As far as CPU cooling -- I think this is a good idea. If you're investing thousands on a system spend 30 bucks and get a quality aftermarket cooler. If you ever want to overclock -- great! but even if you don't the 1366 chipset runs hot and it can only help the lifespan of the system to get one. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus seems to be the best for price/performance (at $30) but most any cooler should be better than the stock cooler. Here's a list comparing various coolers -- this is based around the 1156 chipset but most of these (the 212, specifically) will work for 1366 as well.

In case someone's not familiar with them:
1366 = i7 9xx family of processors
1156 = i5 7/8xx family

I hope I'm not overwhelming you with information but this is something I've been researching for a while for when I can afford a system.