New Rig - Maximum Budget 60K (Rendering, 3D, Motion Graphics & VFX)

[rebolt]

What Should I Buy - Maximum Budget 60K (Usage - Rendering, 3D, Motion Graphics & VFX)

Hey guys, I am a VFX guy who works mainly on 3D, Rendering, Motion Graphics & Heavy particle stuff. My work is heavily based on RAM and processor. I would like to build a new rig as the current is quite old now. So i need your help.

I did some research and thinking of buying Intel Core i7 Processor i7-970 3.20GHz 12MB LGA1366 or Intel 2nd Generation Core i7 2600K 3.40G Processor now as far as price is concern it seems the 6core is double the price of the 4core one. But some say that the i7-2600K gives full competition to i7-970. is it true ?

Also at one point iam thinking that i should incorporate two i7-2600K processors which makes it a deadly machine with 8 cores and 16 threads. Can we combine two processors ? If yes then what should be the configuration for the rest of the stuff like motherboard and graphics card. Also i would like to have more RAM (12) and 2TB Harddisk.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

 

[Hades.]

I did some research and thinking of buying Intel Core i7 Processor i7-970 3.20GHz 12MB LGA1366 or Intel 2nd Generation Core i7 2600K 3.40G Processor now as far as price is concern it seems the 6core is double the price of the 4core one. But some say that the i7-2600K gives full competition to i7-970. is it true ?

Yes when overclocked i7 2600k gives i7 990X (which performs better than i7 970) a run for its money...

Checkout this benchmark : http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_11.html#sect1

Also at one point iam thinking that i should incorporate two i7-2600K processors which makes it a deadly machine with 8 cores and 16 threads.

No, You can't do this as this option is only available on Server Boards...

Plus it would be better if you would edit your post and use this template : http://www.techenclave.com/pc-buying-advice/template-what-should-i-buy-use-143714.html

 

[rebolt]

Plus it would be better if you would edit your post and use this template : http://www.techenclave.com/pc-buying-advice/template-what-should-i-buy-use-143714.html[/QUOTE]

Did the changes, Thanks for the advice hades , Can you please also tell me regarding which graphics card should be better & the motherboard. I am not thinking of spending too much money on grafix card (Max 8-10k).

 

[Sub]

One way to look at it costs twice as much. Another way would be think of it as 25% extension in your overall budget. And that gets you a 35% better performance in Cinebench and thus Cinema 4D. So from this point of view it makes a lot of sense. (Again, if you use software like Cinema 4D which uses all 12 threads. For stuff like gaming, i7 2600 is a much better option)

Of course, I would personally wait for 8 cores of Bulldozer.

 

[Hades.]

^^
for gaming i5 2500k is enough but for rendering and stuff i7 2600k is better...

 

[Sub]

Sorry, I should have clarified my comparison was between Core i7 980 and Core i7 2600. Core i5 2500's lack of HT mean a bit hit for stuff like rendering. BTW, Core i7 970 is EOL, replaced by i7 980.

 

[rebolt]

One way to look at it costs twice as much. Another way would be think of it as 25% extension in your overall budget. And that gets you a 35% better performance in Cinebench and thus Cinema 4D. So from this point of view it makes a lot of sense. (Again, if you use software like Cinema 4D which uses all 12 threads. For stuff like gaming, i7 2600 is a much better option)

Of course, I would personally wait for 8 cores of Bulldozer.

Yes that's true, the main application which i use is 3D's Max, Maya and After Effects also which hugely depend upon RAM and processor. When is the Bulldozer coming in ?

 

[Sub]

Yes that's true, the main application which i use is 3D's Max, Maya and After Effects also which hugely depend upon RAM and processor. When is the Bulldozer coming in ?

Apparently it's already shipping for revenue so it should release in September. If the leaked benchmarks are anything to go by it should be way faster than the i7 2600 for rendering and maybe even faster than i7 990X. Best part is it shouldn't cost much and should fit within your budget.

 

[Zloyd]

Yes in your case you need all the cores you can get. 980 with all the ram you can afford would be ideal but 980 is pretty expensive. In the applications you have 2600k wouldn't stand a chance by default because it just doesn't have the cores. Now its up to you if the increased investment which will lead to increased productivity will be worth it. It all depends on how often you will tap that power. For people who render all day the increased cost is totally justified and a necessary investment for them.

If you dont have an immediate requirement or are prepared to wait 3 months or so you can look at bulldozer, its going to have 8 cores and should be perfect for your requirements. Its unlikely to be as fast as 980 in your applications while costing less but it will definitely be faster than 2600k for you.

 

[rebolt]

Yes in your case you need all the cores you can get. 980 with all the ram you can afford would be ideal but 980 is pretty expensive. In the applications you have 2600k wouldn't stand a chance by default because it just doesn't have the cores. Now its up to you if the increased investment which will lead to increased productivity will be worth it. It all depends on how often you will tap that power. For people who render all day the increased cost is totally justified and a necessary investment for them.

If you dont have an immediate requirement or are prepared to wait 3 months or so you can look at bulldozer, its going to have 8 cores and should be perfect for your requirements. Its unlikely to be as fast as 980 in your applications while costing less but it will definitely be faster than 2600k for you.

Thanks Zloyd for the reply. But i cannot wait until 3 months as the requirement is urgent. Secondly as you mentioned i think the i7-970 (6Cores) would be better than the i7-2600k in my case. For a moment of thought if you compare the i7-970 with Phenom II X6, which one would be more preferable based on performance ?

Also please specify which motherboard and grafix card would be suitable for the i7-970 ?

Cheers.

 

[Hades.]

^^

More cores doesn't always mean more performance... AMD Phenom II x6 1100T which is a hexacore doesn't even come close to 2600k and gets pwned by i5 2500k (a true quadcore) in every task... And old nehalem x6 processors is really not advisable as Sandybridge-E hexacore processors are soon going to launch... Waiting for bulldozer is another option but i dont feel optimistic about its performance...
I would once again say that an intel 1000$ hexacore is really not required for rendering as i7 2600k is also enough for that... Many people here on TE have build rendering rigs using core i7 2600k... If you want to burn your money buy intel hexa...

 

[Sub]

We are suggesting a $600 i7 980. It's 35% faster than i7 2600 in Cinebench and once you account for the total system cost then 25% more expensive. Seems like a good deal to me. As Zloyd said, if you are going to be doing a lot of rendering, the 35% extra speed can save you hours. If you are doing it professionally those saved hours could means lakhs of rupees saved.

The extra threads makes a big deal for apps that can use the extra threads. Even the ancient Phenom II X6 1100T is actually faster than i5 2500K in x264 rendering.

Having said all of this, yes, a i7 2600 is a pretty good CPU for rendering, but it's not the best option.

 

[rebolt]

So you mean to say that i can go for either i7-970 or i7-980 ? Which is not having so much of difference in price i guess. It would be suitable for rendering, heavy particle and fluids stuff. Also please guide me for the suitable grafix card for it as well as motherboard.

My other config is:

16GB RAM 4x4

2TB SATA HD

Cooler Master Chasis Elite 334

Cooler Master PSU SMPS Extreme Power Series 700

Cooler Master RR-920-N520-GP Hyper N520 CPU Cooler Or Cooler Master CPU Fan - V6 GT Or Cooler Master CPU Cooler Hyper 212 Plus

Cooler Master Chasis Fan - 120mm 90 CFM

Let me know if this is good configuration worth making a CPU out of it.

Thanks

 

[Zloyd]

Is there going to be any gaming on the gpu or you need just display ? You should research if any of the applications you are using have cuda support. If this is the case we can recommend an appropriate nvidia card to help speed up your work. Otherwise any cheap card just to give you display will be ok and save you money to spend on other options.

We are recommending the intel 6 core over the amd because the intel actually has 12 logical cores your system can use and this will help your productivity greatly.

For PC cabinet I would suggest getting something a little better the CM Gladiator 600 is an excellent chassis at a decent price but im sure there are even better options , I have installed stuff on the CM Gladiator 600 and found it a very good case to work with , good quality and vfm pricing while not loosing out on any major feature air cooling wise.

PSU I would recommend a corsair TX650/750 unit depending on what gpu you pair it with not recommending a VX550 in your case because your usage will be for very long periods of time and the bigger psu will work more efficiently probably saving you a little on the power bill and all psu's degrade a little over time and usage this is a little insurance. Corsair units come with 5 year warranty. Stay away from coolermaster extreme series the only thing extreme about them is their failure rate.

Cooler I would recommend V6 among the ones you have mentioned you will want to OC as much as you can to get the most productivity out of your machine and for this investing in a good cooler is worthwhile maybe someone has a better suggestion because i7 970 will be hot chip to cool.

Chassis fans I would recommend you keep the noise aspect in mind. 90cfm fan wont be quiet and a few of those in the same chassis may not be tolerable for you and it wouldn't be for most people. Off the bat many cases come with enough fans installed and in your case unless there is a hot gpu in there I dont think this is absolutely critical. You can get a good chassis which will come with some fans (well 2 at the most probably but sufficient) and after assembling the system you can take a call if you want to add more fans to the setup. If its not required it will just add noise.

Im curious as to what config you are running at the moment. The config you are getting is an absolute beast and you should see an incredible difference in application performance. 12gb kits (3x4gb) have become cheap( I am looking at newegg) you can get 2 and run 24gb ram. Pretty sure we have some decent and affordable 12 gb options here. I think a 4 gb ddr3 stick goes for around 1.7k ~ so 6 of those and you are good to go.

I will do a little more research and make recommendations on board ( most likely will say asus sabertooth or Gigabyte ud3r) ram will probably be gskill 4 gb sticks , but because you are going to oc the machine it needs to be atleast 1600mhz.

But basically this is what you are looking at

i7 970/980

Asus sabertooth/ Giga UD3R

Gskill 4gb x 6

Corsair TX650

Coolermaster Gladiator 600 chassis

 

[Hades.]

We are suggesting a $600 i7 980. It's 35% faster than i7 2600 in Cinebench and once you account for the total system cost then 25% more expensive.

First of all its not 35% faster than 2600k its 24% faster (980x scores 8.98 in cinebench whereas i7 2600k scores 6.82) and it costs almost twice than 2600k... It must be selling for 30 to 35k here in India... Whereas an i7 2600k can be had for Rs. 15900... If i were OP i would have bought i7 2600k along with 2k hyper 212+ cooler and i would have overclocked it to 4.7GHz and bang i would have had a 1000$ performing like CPU by spending mere 18k...

Even the ancient Phenom II X6 1100T is actually faster than i5 2500K in x264 rendering.

First of all x264 is not a rendering software its an encoder just like Xvid and in encoding i5 2500k outperforms x6 1100T in firstpass by a huge margin in 2nd pass 1100t just gives 1.5fps more... So overall i5 2500k performs better in that benchmark

a i7 2600 is a pretty good CPU for rendering, but it's not the best option.

I thought that here on TE people suggest rigs after watching ppl's budget but i was so wrong... Ofcourse i7 2600k is not the best processor out there but to buy the best processor one should have best budget... If OP had 2lakh budget i would have suggested him a 990x or Xeon processor but unfortunately OP has 60k budget and in that i7 2600k is the best processor...

 

[rebolt]

Is there going to be any gaming on the gpu or you need just display ? You should research if any of the applications you are using have cuda support. If this is the case we can recommend an appropriate nvidia card to help speed up your work. Otherwise any cheap card just to give you display will be ok and save you money to spend on other options.

We are recommending the intel 6 core over the amd because the intel actually has 12 logical cores your system can use and this will help your productivity greatly.

For PC cabinet I would suggest getting something a little better the CM Gladiator 600 is an excellent chassis at a decent price but im sure there are even better options , I have installed stuff on the CM Gladiator 600 and found it a very good case to work with , good quality and vfm pricing while not loosing out on any major feature air cooling wise.

PSU I would recommend a corsair TX650/750 unit depending on what gpu you pair it with not recommending a VX550 in your case because your usage will be for very long periods of time and the bigger psu will work more efficiently probably saving you a little on the power bill and all psu's degrade a little over time and usage this is a little insurance. Corsair units come with 5 year warranty. Stay away from coolermaster extreme series the only thing extreme about them is their failure rate.

Cooler I would recommend V6 among the ones you have mentioned you will want to OC as much as you can to get the most productivity out of your machine and for this investing in a good cooler is worthwhile maybe someone has a better suggestion because i7 970 will be hot chip to cool.

Chassis fans I would recommend you keep the noise aspect in mind. 90cfm fan wont be quiet and a few of those in the same chassis may not be tolerable for you and it wouldn't be for most people. Off the bat many cases come with enough fans installed and in your case unless there is a hot gpu in there I dont think this is absolutely critical. You can get a good chassis which will come with some fans (well 2 at the most probably but sufficient) and after assembling the system you can take a call if you want to add more fans to the setup. If its not required it will just add noise.

Im curious as to what config you are running at the moment. The config you are getting is an absolute beast and you should see an incredible difference in application performance. 12gb kits (3x4gb) have become cheap( I am looking at newegg) you can get 2 and run 24gb ram. Pretty sure we have some decent and affordable 12 gb options here. I think a 4 gb ddr3 stick goes for around 1.7k ~ so 6 of those and you are good to go.

I will do a little more research and make recommendations on board ( most likely will say asus sabertooth or Gigabyte ud3r) ram will probably be gskill 4 gb sticks , but because you are going to oc the machine it needs to be atleast 1600mhz.

But basically this is what you are looking at

i7 970/980
Asus sabertooth/ Giga UD3R
Gskill 4gb x 6
Corsair TX650
Coolermaster Gladiator 600 chassis

Thanks for the information Zloyd. I would just be needing a good display, I don't play games at all. So a simple graphics card would be suffice. Also i think 16GB RAM would be enough for handling the work i do. As suggested by you the total budget would become more than 80K (20K extra), which i think will be too much for me. I can maximum extend my budget till 70K not more than this.

Please suggest a cheaper but suitable option for Grafix card & Motherboard which should come within this budget considering the rest of the things mentioned above. As mainly i would want to spend on RAM, processor and Cooling of the CPU.

Cheers.

 

[Hades.]

@rebolt

I think you still didn't get what i pointed out in the previous post... i7 970/980 would cost 30 to 35k almost twice than 2600k and would only perform 25% better for 100% more money...

Here is what i would recommend

Processor Intel Core i7 2600k 15900

Motherboard Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3R-B3 / Gigabyte Z68X-UD3R 9800 / 10500

RAM G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600MHz CL9 2 x 4GB 3350

GPU MSI GTX560 Twin Frozr II 13750

HDD Seagate 7200.12 1TB 2700

Cabinet NZXT Gamma 2100

Monitor Dell U2311H 14000

PSU Corsair VX550 4600

Keyboard Logitech K&M Combo 700

Mouse

DVD Writer Samsung 950

CPU Cooler CM Hyper 212+ 1950

Total 69800 / 70500

 

[Zloyd]

Hades config is pretty good then and you can even save on the graphics card. 970 costs 40k locally .... its a tad too much. The 2600k will still be a mean rig.

 

[Sub]

First of all its not 35% faster than 2600k its 24% faster (980x scores 8.98 in cinebench whereas i7 2600k scores 6.82) and it costs almost twice than 2600k... It must be selling for 30 to 35k here in India... Whereas an i7 2600k can be had for Rs. 15900... If i were OP i would have bought i7 2600k along with 2k hyper 212+ cooler and i would have overclocked it to 4.7GHz and bang i would have had a 1000$ performing like CPU by spending mere 18k...
First of all x264 is not a rendering software its an encoder just like Xvid and in encoding i5 2500k outperforms x6 1100T in firstpass by a huge margin in 2nd pass 1100t just gives 1.5fps more... So overall i5 2500k performs better in that benchmark

I thought that here on TE people suggest rigs after watching ppl's budget but i was so wrong... Ofcourse i7 2600k is not the best processor out there but to buy the best processor one should have best budget... If OP had 2lakh budget i would have suggested him a 990x or Xeon processor but unfortunately OP has 60k budget and in that i7 2600k is the best processor...

That is still 32%, not 24%.

No need to argue on semantics! X264 does "render" images. If you want to call it an encoder, cool, but do note we video/film professionals refer to the process as "rendering". Also Pass 2 is 90% of the process, especially using Very Slow or Placebo presets.

Fair point about the budget. I got the impression that the monitor was not needed though. Hence it would be possible to fit it Gulftown within 60k, assuming it would be 25-30k. But if it is 40k, then there's no point.

To the OP - are you going to use a GPU renderer like Vray RT? If not, GTX 560 Ti is a total waste.

Also, 8GB is too low. For After Effects, 2GB per thread is recommended - that comes out to 16GB. 16GB is a fair minimum. Some renderers like Mental Ray are even more of memory hogs. 8GB will be a huge bottleneck - might as well go for Core i3 2100 then. But then again, it depends on your usage. If you are going to create simple stuff even 4GB will be enough. So, we can't really help you as much - you have to decide based on your actual application.

 

[Hades.]

That is still 32%, not 24%.

Time for some calculation... 8.98 * 76% = 6.8248

6.8 is the score which i7 2600k scores in Cinebench benchmark... So i stand corrected its just 24% slower than i7 980X

If you want to call it an encoder, cool,

I am not the only person on this planet who calls it an encoder.... whole world calls it an encoder... Because it is an encoder...

are you going to use a GPU renderer like Vray RT? If not, GTX 560 Ti is a total waste.

GTX560 would come in handly if he would use applications which supports CUDA in the future...

Also, 8GB is too low. For After Effects, 2GB per thread is recommended - that comes out to 16GB. 16GB is a fair minimum. Some renderers like Mental Ray are even more of memory hogs.

8GB might be low but he can add another 8GB RAM later as he is on low budget now...