Building a new Rendering Workstation, need advice.(Intel xeon?)

DaPancakeanator · Sep 25, 2015

Hi everyone.

My dual core isn't cutting it anymore for rendering.
I primarily do 3D animation which is very hard on my current machine, especially photo real renderings.
My budget for a new CPU, Mobo, and Cooler is around $500(on ebay).

I've been looking into a Xeon build but I don't know if my DDR3(btw what is ECC compatible ram?) ram will be compatible with say a xeon server board.

I'd like a minimum of 6 cores (intel only.) I was thinking maybe an i7 3930k or 4930k but I can't find any cheap motherboard combos or even CPUs for under $500.
Ebay has some good prices; they seem almost too cheap for a hexacore so I have come here for advice.

And when I say $500 budget it means that I'd be buying primarily off Ebay.
I really don't care which motherboard as long as its compatible with DDR3 and has a 16x PCI slot.

Any help is help.

Godspeed, and thank you in advance.

Current build

GTX 760
I3 3220 lga 1155
12gb Ram
2Tb HDD
More details at your request.

Geekwad · Sep 25, 2015

Depending on the kind of RAM you have, you may find that it won't work in the Xeon combos you're looking at. Just carefully check if you have non-ecc, and if your Xeon build needs ECC only or not (some do).

That aside, an overclocked i7 Haswell would still give you a MAJOR improvement over an i3 Ivy.

4790K combos start here at about $400:

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

If you happen to be somewhat close to a store (processor is in-store only).

Add in a great cooler, and you're there.

jldevoy · Sep 25, 2015

A more realistic upgrade would be to a Haswell 4770k or something, you would still be looking at rendering being at least twice as fast.

drtweak · Sep 25, 2015

What motherboard do you have? You have a 3rd Gen i3 so finding a 3rd gen i7 shouldn't be that hard even if it is used. and also to have 6 or more Physical cores you need either a AMD or a socket 2011 board for the 6/8 core i7/Xeons and for those i doubt you fill find parts for 500 or less. Most 2011 boards alone cost 250+ and the CPU's started at like 450-500 new. A i73770 has 4 physical and 8 logical cores.

And ECC ram is Error Correcting Ram. Not all server motherboards require it (At least built your own ones. OEM's like Dell, HP, IBM usually require ECC ram)

You would probably be better getting a 3770k, over clocking it for now if money is an issue.

That or get a AMD build if you really need the multithreading task. I know my 8320 OCed to 4.5 converts video and renders out at a decent speed.

DaPancakeanator · Sep 25, 2015

Thank you all for your answers.
A quad core would be nice but slicing my render times in half is just not enough.
I think I'll keep saving up and work over the winter break.

I just really want a 6 core, hopefully Broadwell prices will drop significantly by then (I know they probably won't)

I've calculated that I'll have $1,370 dollars by the beginning of December.

Geekwad · Sep 25, 2015

Totally agree. With that $$, you'll be able to look at the 5930k and may have enough left over for getting a sweet PCIe work drive.

DaPancakeanator · Sep 26, 2015

On microcenter there is a deal for a 5820k and Mobo.

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

I'll just have to invest more in DDR4, at least I'll be sort of futureproofed for X-99

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