Wanted: Your Advice for New "3D Work Station"

[3dfloorplans]

Hi All,

I'm sure many of you have built powerful work stations over the years. You've seen what works, what doesn't and what you wish you had added. I'm looking for advice from your experiences and knowledge building work stations. Thanks for your tips!

Purpose:

Build a 3d work station capable of:
1. Handling large scenes with many polygons, objects, materials, and xpresso tags. Station should be capable of working with very large files with minimal slowdown.
2. Very fast test rendering and night time render farming(multi processor systems were also considered.)
3. Provides backup of existing data in the case of a hard drive crash. Zero down time when a hard drive inevitably spins its last rotation.

Budget:
$2,000-$3,000

Proposed System Build:

Case | CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Mid-Tower Gaming Case
Motherboard | Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58
Processor | Intel® Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz OC to 4GHz
Cooling | Ultra ChillTec Thermo Electric CPU Cooler
Memory | Corsair 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory
Video Card | ATI FirePro V5800 1GB
Power Supply | 750 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-750TX 80 Plus Power Supply
Hard Drives | 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
CD/DVD | 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW
Sound Absorption | Sound Absorbing Foam on Side, Top & Bottom panels
Cost of Proposed System | $2785

Existing Questions:
How much better is liquid cooling? Are there additional risk/life span/maintenance problems?
Is there a practical reason to use a case temperature display?
Would a multi processor system be a better build?
Do you think I need more watts in the power supply? Will a more higher wattage power supply use more power even with the same build?
Would faster memory increase the display graphics speed?
Will sound protection cause heating issues?

Thanks!

 

[COLGeek]

Here is one geek's opinion:

How much better is liquid cooling? Are there additional risk/life span/maintenance problems? Unless OCing heavily, not worth the expense. Modern components are quite efficient as-is with air cooling.


Is there a practical reason to use a case temperature display? Other than "bling value", not really.


Would a multi processor system be a better build? It would provide more horsepower, certainly, but the cost/benefit ratio can get very skewed, VERY quickly. One multi-core CPU should be fine.


Do you think I need more watts in the power supply? Will a more higher wattage power supply use more power even with the same build? Your selected PSU is probably ok, I really don't see the need for more than 850w if you wanted a slightly larger one. Keep in mind that your PSU will only pull what it needs to power the components. Having a larger PSU may help with producing less heat (won't be working as hard), but a 750w pulling 700w versus a 1000w PSU pulling 700w will impact your power bill the same.


Would faster memory increase the display graphics speed? Faster memory on the mobo, the answer is NO, not really. Faster memory on the GPU (GDDR5 vs. GDDR3, for example), the answer is YES.

Will sound protection cause heating issues? Not really. Cooling is more of a matter of efficient airflow than how much the case's insulation retains heat. If you have good airflow, you will be good to go.

Good luck!!!

 

[3dfloorplans]

Thanks for reply COLGeek - and replying to each of the questions! Great help!

 

[mosox]

Are you buying a prebuilt system and from what site? If you go 2 CPUs way you may consider something like that

EVGA Classified SR-2 270-WS-W555-A2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188070
2xIntel Xeon W3520
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117213


RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145235

Wait for more replies.

 

[3dfloorplans]

I'm purchasing a custom built system through CyberPowerPC.com. All of the specs included are options with their CyberPower X58 Configurator. The only item that isn't included is the graphics cards, which I will purchase from Newegg.com. Thanks for the links.

 

[mosox]

Here's some alternative sites:

http://www.titanuscomputers.com/default.asp

http://www.maingear.com/solutions/quadro-adobecs5.php

http://workstations.avadirect.com/Workstations

Study those and get back.