New PC for 3dsMax. Any help please

The 1st build is covered in so much marketing that I can barely read it, 2nd one is more legible.
In a nutshell their both the same, with the only real difference being the graphics card on offer (a Quadro K4000 vs K2000) which explains the difference in price.

I'm guessing based on that last statement that your budget is along the lines of 1600 pounds?
I suggest building your own.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£279.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£79.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£155.94 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£193.88 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£83.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£48.68 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£48.68 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: PNY Quadro K2000 2GB Video Card (£355.45 @ More Computers)
Case: Corsair 450D ATX Mid Tower Case (£89.99 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: XFX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£58.99 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£82.45 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1478.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-10 12:21 BST+0100

This is a fair bit stronger (CPU has a fair bit more grunt to it) while coming in cheaper. The GPU in this is weaker than the first build, however upgrading to the K4000 on this rig actually puts you pretty close it price (1712 pounds or so).

I'd be tempted to go with a Haswell Xeon on a H97 mobo with no need for a custom cooler. Then use the savings to get a K4000

3dice,

In my view, a system for large, complex modeling and animations employing large files is best when based on an LGA2011 which has double the memory bandwidth and double the PCIe lanes of LGA1150 (Xeon E3). Importantly, with LGA2011-3, you may upgrade the CPU to have 6,8,10,12, 14, or 18! cores. At the moment, if you choose LGA1150,Xeon E3 you are limited to only 4 cores. For ray tracing rendering that relies on the CPU core count this is important. I have a separate system with two 4-core CPU's only for this kind of rendering and the bandwidth and extra cores reduces rendering and processing time substantially.

As well, for Maya and 3ds Max, a workstation GPU is essential, and for Autodesk and Adobe applications, a Quadro is useful as those can take advantage of CUDA acceleration. The CUDA cores act as co-processors.

There have been recent new hardware that is important for workstations: Only yesterday (9.9.14), the new Xeon E5 Haswell EP "v3" CPU's were released and these, while having somewhat lower core clock speeds than v2, some models have two additional cores, improved memory controllers, better hyperthreading, lower power use per core, and use DDR4 RAM at a native 2133 speed. A lot of technical terms, but suffice to say that a test of a workstation using 2X E5-2687w v3 (10-core) was 41% faster than a system with a pair of the v2 (8-core) CPU's.

Also, in June(?), there a whole new line (except for Quadro K6000) of Quadro workstation GPU's was released, the Kx200 series. In general these have much more memory, higher clock speeds, and many more CUDA cores such that the K2200 (4GB, 640 CUDA) in some benchmarks is faster than the previous generation K4000. I was going to buy a used K5000 when the price dropped sufficiently, but a new K4200 at $890 in the US with possibly equal or better performance is about the minimum price for a used K5000.

Here's an idea for a Xeon E5 v3, DDR4 system. Prices are from Scan and Amazon UK, except I couldn't find the motherboard at the moment in the UK so I took the US price and made it in £'s near the US $ price:

BambiBoom PixelDozer Mayamaxirendagrapharific Blazomatic iWorkarama TurboScream 9000 £™£©™_9.10.14

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1620V3 3.5 /3.8GHz SKT2011-3 10MB Cache £224.30
_____ http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-xeon-e5-1620-v3-s2011-3-quad-core-35ghz-10mb-140w-retail

CPU cooler: Corsair H55 Hydro CPU Cooler for Intel and AMD Processors CPU Cooler >£49.86
____ http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsair-h55-hydro-series-cpu-cooler-lga-115x-1366-and-2011-and-am2-am3-and-fm1

Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X10SRL-F-O Server Motherboard LGA 2011 > about £250.

RAM: 16GB DDR4 2133 (4 X4GB) > £173.28

GPU: PNY NVIDIA Quadro K2200 4GB Graphics Card - VCQK2200-PB £378.26
____ http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-pny-nvidia-quadro-k2200-640-cores-13-teflops-pcie-20-%28x16%29-dp-dvi

GPU ALT: PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4GB K4200 Graphics Card - VCQK4200-PB > £721.70
____ http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-pny-nvidia-quadro-k4200-1344-cores-21-teflops-pcie-20-%28x16%29-dp-dvi

HD 1: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5 inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive > £83.99

HD2: WD 1TB 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive - Caviar Blue > £39.99

Optical Dr: ASUS Blu-Ray Combo BC-12D2HT/BLK/G/AS 12x BD-R Reader 16x DVDRW 48x CD-R Black Retail Drive >£46.94

PSU: Seasonic SS-650RM 650W Modular Power Supply DC-DC PSU 80Plus Gold 5 Year Warranty
>£89.58

Case: Lian Li PC-6B Midi Tower Chassis - Black £79.99

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64bit > £108.00

___________________________________________

£1450. or £1792 with Quadro K4200

The price becomes a bit expensive with the Quadro K4200, but if you will be doing large animation sequences, heavy video processing, you might consider it. The performance should be about equal to the previous K5000- which I thought was the best all-rounder for serious workstations.

Sorry, perhaps a bit more expensive than you'd like, but I feel that stretching a bit to have a faster and highly upgradable system may save having to change the system another two or more years. This is less expensive over time, plus saves the fuss of doing it all again.

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, CPU = 8528 / 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text

I'm also aiming for that general kind of career, that massive mash-up of digital design and filmmaking.

Your right on the naming schemes, Quadro (and Tesla) are Nvidias workstation offerings while the GTX or GeForce are their gaming cards, with the only overlap between the two being the Titan series (which are still primarily gaming cards).
There are two sets of Xeons available, what you can find on the mainstream (LGA1150) socket and what you can find on the enthusiast socket (LGA2011). LGA1150 Xeons can really just be summed up as i7's without integrated graphics, their good if your after cheap performance but otherwise there is nothing special about them. The Xeons you find on LGA2011 are a fairly different to the typical chip. Typically they have a high number of low speed cores and consume less power. The slow cores make them unsuitable for gaming (heavily single threaded programs typically) but great for number crunching (since more cores is better than faster cores here).

What their mainly used for is server or render farm usage, where the primary concern is having lots of cores rather than fast ones, and the heat output is a concern because you have hundreds of these in a rack.

3dice,

That's a different situation. Our friend manofchalk is correct in saying that today, building is not too difficult, but there is quite a bit of specialized nomenclature and corresponding fussy settings. Embarrassingly, I would say that it took me a full day to simply add an SSD to my HP z420 align sectors, drivers, settings, optimize to avoid future defragmentation, migration time. In all, I would allow 6 full days to research, order, assemble, configure, load OS and and programs, test, and fix problems. There are of course many companies that will do this for you, it only depends on the costs involved and whether you may expect support if there's troubles.

An alternative might be to consider something like this :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Z420-CMT-Xeon-E5-3-5GHz-8GB-1TB-SATA-Windows-7-Pro-64-Desktop-PC-WM641ET-/251582584318?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item3a937d95fe

> which is an HP z420 with the 6-core Xeon E5-1650 V2,8GB ECC 1600, Quadro 2000, 240GB SSD and 2TB mech'l drive for £1169. It appears that Win7 is +£115. The E5-1650 v2 is one of the best value Xeons ever. The first two cores- everything you do except rendering- will be running at 3.9GHz, and that's about as high as any Xeon ever went- there was one CPU at 4.0.

The Quadro 2000 is not my favorite- sorry "favourite"- but perhaps the company can change it when ordering. If the seller would put a Quadro K2200 for a hundred or so Cameronbucks,and add +8GB RAM, it could be a great system for your use for a long while- and fuss free - you don't have to build it and there's a warranty. And, what is the 4 or 5 days time to build worth?

This way, within your £1600 you'd have a complete, fast 6-core system with a full warranty by a major company and all ready to go. I've used an HP z420 (4-core E5-1620 3.6/3.8, 24GB 1600 ECC, Quadro 4000)) for eight months and it's been perfect. It actually runs renderings almost twice as fast as my 8-core 2008 Dell Precision.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

I'm also aiming for that general kind of career, that massive mash-up of digital design and filmmaking.

Your right on the naming schemes, Quadro (and Tesla) are Nvidias workstation offerings while the GTX or GeForce are their gaming cards, with the only overlap between the two being the Titan series (which are still primarily gaming cards).
There are two sets of Xeons available, what you can find on the mainstream (LGA1150) socket and what you can find on the enthusiast socket (LGA2011). LGA1150 Xeons can really just be summed up as i7's without integrated graphics, their good if your after cheap performance but otherwise there is nothing special about them. The Xeons you find on LGA2011 are a fairly different to the typical chip. Typically they have a high number of low speed cores and consume less power. The slow cores make them unsuitable for gaming (heavily single threaded programs typically) but great for number crunching (since more cores is better than faster cores here).

What their mainly used for is server or render farm usage, where the primary concern is having lots of cores rather than fast ones, and the heat output is a concern because you have hundreds of these in a rack.