3500$ Rendering/Gaming Rig.

[torqueguru]

Hi folks,

I am a photographer/ Visual effects Artist/Programmer/ Designer. And I am looking to put together a workstation/Gaming Rig. I am looking at fast render times, smooth particle simulation work flow, HD Video editing and compositing and high resolution image editing. Also, I do not want to compromise on HD gaming as well.

I have put together a First build for this purpose as slated below. Now, my main concern here is, will the GTX 295 + Tesla C1060 co-exist?

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE:
in one month’s time

BUDGET : $3500

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT :
Intense 3D computing, Visual effects involving particle simulation, fluid Dynamics and Compositing, A lot of Photoshop work, software used includes 3Dx-Max, May, Houdini and Nuke. Also I want to use the system for serious gaming.

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS : Any website with decent review and good deals.

PARTS PREFERENCES:
Tower Cases Without Power Supply:

COOLER MASTER, Cosmos 1000 (RC-1000-KSN1-GP) - $169
Link

Power Supply:
SILVERSTONE, Strider ST1200 Modular Power Supply, 1200W - $270
Link

Motherboard:
Asus P6T Deluxe - $290
Link

Processor:
INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz - $280
Link

CPU Cooler:
Not Decided ( I really need help here since I do plan to overclock the cpu)

Memory:
KINGSTON, 12GB (6 x 2GB) ValueRAM PC3-8500 DDR3 1066MHz - $235
Link

PCI Express x16 Video Card:
PNY NVIDIA GTX 295 - $478
Link

HPC Processor Unit:
NVIDIA, Tesla™ C1060 Computing Processor - S1246
Link

Hard Drive:
Not decided.( Looking for a good 1Tb deal, with emphasis on speed)

Drives:
Thinking Bluray ROM, Need suggestions

OVERCLOCKING : Yes

SLI OR CROSSFIRE : No

MONITOR : I already own a Hansspree 28 inch Monitor with 3ms response time, pretty happy with it.


Looking forward to the suggestions and invaluable input from you guys.

Thanks in advance.
Mukul.

 

[kufan64]

HDD - WD Caviar Black, though if you want to speed up your read/write times, your going to want several of them in RAID 0. The 750GB versions are the best deal for the money. You might also like a single SSD for your OS. There's a bunch to choose from, and I don't know enough about them to recommend one over another.

Optical Drive - BlueRay isn't quite there yet. They're still quite expensive and not many people own them. Give it a couple more years unless you really need the ability to hold a lot of data on one disk. CD/DVD burner/readers are only $25. Make sure it's SATA though.

Mobo - Drop it to a P6T deluxe V2, save yourself ~$20, and lose the SAS ports which you won't use.

Video - PNY isn't the most reliable company in the world, and seeing as how your spending a ton of money on these cards, you should spend a bit extra for EVGA hardware if you have the option. EVGA is a bigger, more respected company and they tend to offer lifetime warranties on their cards.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[obsidian86]

best value ssd at the moment the ocz vertex if money is no object get the fastest the patriot torqx

 

[obsidian86]

evega also make excellent i7 boards

 

[jonsy2k]

I feel like if your going to do a lot of things with photographs that a monitor with better color accuracy is going to be beneficial?

The hanspree is not bad for gaming, but i think an ips one would be more beneficial for work? I mean your budget is humongous, you could probably spare a bit for a nice panel, even after the tesla.

 

[torqueguru]

Well I am quite happy with the monitor as of now, no issues with color representations since when it comes to print, RGB becomes CMYK and there i go by the actual color values rather than only what it looks to my eye. Thanks for your input though.

 

[jonsy2k]

Regarding the cpu cooler, you could probably check out a prolimatech megalahems, again it doesnt seem like budget is a concern and the cooler is a top performer. A more budget friendly one would be the core contact freezer, which gets great reviews as well.

 

[torqueguru]

HDD - WD Caviar Black, though if you want to speed up your read/write times, your going to want several of them in RAID 0. The 750GB versions are the best deal for the money. You might also like a single SSD for your OS. There's a bunch to choose from, and I don't know enough about them to recommend one over another.

Optical Drive - BlueRay isn't quite there yet. They're still quite expensive and not many people own them. Give it a couple more years unless you really need the ability to hold a lot of data on one disk. CD/DVD burner/readers are only $25. Make sure it's SATA though.

Mobo - Drop it to a P6T deluxe V2, save yourself ~$20, and lose the SAS ports which you won't use.

Video - PNY isn't the most reliable company in the world, and seeing as how your spending a ton of money on these cards, you should spend a bit extra for EVGA hardware if you have the option. EVGA is a bigger, more respected company and they tend to offer lifetime warranties on their cards.

Just my 2 cents.

What you said about EVGA makes perfect sense. I am considering it. And yeah considering the money I am spending on this, I really want maximum throughput. Well to justify my selection of the TESLA c1060, I did some research on finding out if the applications i use are CUDA apps. Only Photoshop looks like it is, Maya and Houdini are mostly CPU intensive. So to get better render times I suppose I must increase CPU throughput which means I might even go dual cpu. Which implies that The TESLA will be overkill and i am doing away with it. In any case I might as well stick on to the GTX 295 as my GPU since I want to use this system to game as well. And I am not considering Quadro since I want game as well as work

 

[torqueguru]

Regarding the cpu cooler, you could probably check out a prolimatech megalahems, again it doesnt seem like budget is a concern and the cooler is a top performer. A more budget friendly one would be the core contact freezer, which gets great reviews as well.

Ok, well i have not yet finalized if I should go for a single CPU or Dual CPU set up, so yeah will keep the megalahem in mind, but right now more importantly i must freeze on what kind of cpu set up i shud go for. Any takes on that?

 

[jonsy2k]

Hmmm I can't give much input on the dual vs single cpu thing, though I would imagine it would be a good choice given the limited support of cuda due to the programs you are using.

Better wait until someone smarter and more knowledgeable than me comes along heh

 

[torqueguru]

Hmmm I can't give much input on the dual vs single cpu thing, though I would imagine it would be a good choice given the limited support of cuda due to the programs you are using.

Better wait until someone smarter and more knowledgeable than me comes along heh

Good idea. But hey, thanks man.

 

[kufan64]

Courtesy Bump

Btw, if you think your programs will take full advantage of a dual CPU setup, then you might as well spring for it. You'll probably want to do a good bit of research on it though, because those motherboards alone can run ~$500.

Good luck.

 

[obsidian86]

What you said about EVGA makes perfect sense. I am considering it. And yeah considering the money I am spending on this, I really want maximum throughput. Well to justify my selection of the TESLA c1060, I did some research on finding out if the applications i use are CUDA apps. Only Photoshop looks like it is, Maya and Houdini are mostly CPU intensive. So to get better render times I suppose I must increase CPU throughput which means I might even go dual cpu. Which implies that The TESLA will be overkill and i am doing away with it. In any case I might as well stick on to the GTX 295 as my GPU since I want to use this system to game as well. And I am not considering Quadro since I want game as well as work

wel considering dual cpu it would be a bit of a waste for the extreme cpu choice get something like the i7 965 0r 975 with liquid cooling an overclock it to 4.5 or higher bechmarks show its within 20% of the skulltrail dual socket at a much better price an as for graphics get dual or tri sli gtx 285 on the evga 760 board