Help building a workstation for 3D animation/sculpting

Do you need monitors, keyboard, mouse and playback devices? I will list a few builds as examples of what you could do and how i would addres them you are free to change some parts or all of it.

The following builds are just examples and are some options you could look at for guidance that said none will come with monitors, mouse, keyboard and sound system/headphones, as those are a matter of personal taste)

This i7 is a versatile gaming/workstation machine, it would be faster than anything at gaming and viewport previews, modelling and animation inside Maya, it would be somehow slower at rendering than the next build. Used a GTX gpu but you can swap it for a AMD Fire pro or a Nvidia Quadro from the recomended hardware for Maya in autodesk site.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($327.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-Z270X-Gaming K5 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($126.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($127.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($174.58 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($66.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB WINDFORCE OC 8G Video Card ($499.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($88.49 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($89.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1767.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-20 16:06 EDT-0400

This Ryzen build is also a versatile workstation/gaming, it will outperform the i7 7700k at rendering and you can save a few bucks by staying with the stock cpu cooler, in terms of gaming and particles systems it will be a bit slower than the i7 (since these prefer faster single cores than multiple cores) but will still do the job at a great value.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($296.71 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X370-PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard ($151.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($135.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($127.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($174.58 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($66.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB WINDFORCE OC 8G Video Card ($499.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($88.49 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($89.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1692.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-20 16:59 EDT-0400

the next would be to swap the 1700 for a 1800X in the ryzen build to get a more powerfull cpu it will fasten the render times but at a 200+ more Usd and a cpu cooler (i recomend air coolers since they are most of the time trouble free and cheaper than Aio liquid loops)

or you can wait Skylake-X and get an i9 7900X it will blow in render times all of the above solutions but at a much higher price tag only the cpu would be at 1000 usd and the mobo wuould be around or over 200 usd.

Used SSD to boost performance of OS and installed Apps like Maya and another for the proyects you might work on as it will make loading and saving times shorter and put a 7200 RPM high capacity (low cost) drive for storage.

Feel free to swap the GTX card with anything that you like or go "pro" with AMD Fire Pro or Nvidia Quadro, here is a list of recomended hardware (GPU) from Autodesk Site for the Maya software: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?siteID=123112&id=18844534&results=1&stype=graphic&product_group=19&release=2015&os=131072&manuf=all&opt=1


After looking at all this i would go with ryzen for value, if your budget includes monitors and other peripherals i would look into the ryzen 1600/1600X as the come with 6c/12t and will outperform i7 7700k in render times. (most of the time depending on render engine)

Hope this helps.

Cheers