morthlock,
In my view, it's difficult to have a great workstation that is also very good for gaming, but the healthier the price limit, the greater the possibilities.
Given the demands of rendering, animation, and 3D modeling, the best platform is LGA2011, which has double the memory bandwidth of LGA1150, almost double the PCIe lanes, and can use 4,6,8,10,and 12- core CPU's which also often have more cache than LGA1150. The Xeon E5-1650 v2 has I think an extraordinarily good cost/ performance ratio. It's not strictly necessary, but for long slogs in rendering and effects processing, I'm inclined towards liquid CPU cooling.
ECC RAM - and a great pile of it is essential for artifact-free rendering and textures. The E5-1650 V2 supports 1866 speed and having 32GB is useful to run several big applications at once.
Many applications that are industry standards by Autodesk and Adobe are best run on NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards. The workstation cards, on the whole are not brilliant at gaming, as the drivers are configured for image quality instead of frame rates, but the Quadro K4000 (3GB) has quite high 3D scores in Passmark Performance Test- in the 2800+ range- and that test I believe is slightly weighted to gaming performance. Plus, with a workstation card there is the viewport support, 10 bit color (with the approriate monitor), multiple lighting sources, and x64 and even x128 anti-aliasing that I think is essential in rendering textures properly.A lot of rendering is changing from CPU to GPU- and autodesk and Adobe both use CUDA accleration. In that realm, the Quadro K5000 (4GB) is, in my view, the best all-rounder available with 3D scores similar to GTX 770 and can run a pair of 2560 X 1440 27" monitors effectively. And, 1,534 CUDA cores is an advantage good number. The K4000 has 768. Expensive, but I think a K5000 could be useful for years and years and ought to run games however you like. Only a future with multiple 4K monitors would necessitate changing. If you're a bit adventurous, consider buying a lightly used Quadro K5000. I've had eight used Quadros since 2003 and never a failure even after years of use. I've sold most, but, a 2004 Quadro FX 580 (512MB) is still being used and runs AutoCad 2007, Adobe CS3, and Solidworks 2010 perfectly well. In about a year, when used K5000's are $900 or so in the US, I'm having one!
There is no dedicated soundcard listed. I've had very good results with M-Audio cards with MIDI capabilities.
Anyway, here is a system idea:
BambiBoom PixelCannon Modagraphanimatarific Blazomatic iWorkarama TurboScream 9000 ™££££#©™_6.14.14
[Prices are from Amazon.UK]
1. CPU > INTEL Xeon E5-1650v2 6-core 3.5 / 3.9GHz LGA2011-0 12MB Cache Tray CPU > £594.18
2. CPU Cooler > Hydro Series; High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler; 120mm fan; 2000RPM; 54CFM; 2.36mmH20; 30.85dB (CW-9060007-WW) > £67.96
3. Motherboard> Asus Z9PA-U8 Server Board (Socket 2011, C602-A PCH, 8x DDR3, S-ATA 600, 2x USB 3.0) > £222.59
4. RAM > Kingston ValueRam 32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC REG Single Rank x4 DIMM Memory Kit (4 x 8 GB) > £266.83 )
5. GPU > NVIDIA PNY Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB Kepler Graphics Card > £575.00
5 ALT. > PNY Nvidia Quadro K5000 Kepler Graphics Card > £1,509.42
6. HD 1 > SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) > £89
7. HD 2> Western Digital Black WD2003FZEX 2TB 7200RPM SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive (3.5 inch) ) > £100 56
8. PSU> Corsair CP-9020054-UK RM Series RM650 80 Plus Gold 650W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit > £83.98
9. Case > Lian Li PC-6B Midi Tower Chassis > £79.99
10. Optical Dr > LG BH16NS40.AUAR10B 16x SATA Internal BD-RW Retail Kit > £64
11. OS > Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (Full Version) - OEM > £100
TOTAL = £2,245 with Quadro K4000 , £3,160 with Quadro K5000
Cheers,
BambiBoom
HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3923, 2D= 839 / 3D=2048]
Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit >[Passmark system rating = 1859, 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]
2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects