~$5500-$6000 Workstation/gaming case, power, and cooling

[unarmed13]

Hello everyone, I am planning on building a new system coming this spring season. I currently have some parts in mind for my workstation/gaming furniture I do like to game, I used to play a lot of games until I swapped to a MacBook and the list has shrunken to Pong on High settings with 16x AA and 3-4 year old games, not including Crysis.

Purchase Date: Spring 2012

Use: Editing, rendering, gaming.

Preferred Websites for Parts: None.

Country: USA

Parts Preference: Intel, Nvidia, Corsair, Evga.

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI: Yes in the future

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

Additional Comments:

CPU: 2x Xeon E5-2650 (2ghz) might be going up to the 2.6 ghz option
Motherboard: Evga SR-X
RAM: Corsair Dominator 32GB
GPU(s):Nvidia Quadro 4000 and SLI some GTX 6xx series later
Monitor: 2x Samsung 24 inch
PSU: Corsair AX1200 or EVGA 1500 Watt
Storage: Corsair Force GT 120GB, 1TB Seagate
Case: Caselabs MH10

I haven't built a computer for a long while (4 years) and I currently stuck with a 17 inch MacBook Pro (2009) so this is a slight upgrade

I absolutely love the look of this case, professional looking, a lot of ventilation and mounting two power supplies for the future.

Since I am not going with water cooling these two questions would probably be combined into one:

There's a lot of space for the computer components, it is an expensive case, but I do like the two mounting ports for the PSU(s) which I am no sure if it would be enough for the configuration I have planned. I do like the Lian Li PC-V2120, but I do plan on upgrading in the future.

Another question is about the cooling. I intend to leave the computer rendering for hours, and months. It will be left unattended for the most part, but I heard some good things about the Corsair H100 All-In-One liquid cooler. I do have doubts about water cooling and I am unsure if it will be the right choice as I also heard that leaking was a problem, but rare one to occur.

I am still deciding whether I should go with the Corsair cooling, or stick with the air cooling for safe measures. If anyone could suggest an air cooler that would be great. I would like to stick with the black and red color theme of the build.

I have been waiting many months to upgrade from more Core 2 Duo laptop as the renders would take a sleep cycle to finish.

 

[serialkiller]

lol is this thread even live and is op there so that i would give an answer

 

[unarmed13]

I'm still here, just got an email notification, thanks for taking interest in this thread!

There's a couple of changes that I want to add and I'll put it in the first post.

 

[serialkiller]

he op so u are there

i saw ur build and i like it but there were a tonne of overkill products.

What softwares do u use?
Do u use solidworks or maya or max ?
If yes, then what render do u use eg mental ray ,v ray ,i ray etc

i still dout that these software utilise more than 6-8 cores

i wanted to point out a few components.

The case

caselabs case is a monster
i dout u will use it well . That case is u to house a sr 2 and the water colling equipments for 2 cpu and 4 gpu. That case can fit 2 cpus 4 gpus 2 raid cards 1 sound card more than 10tb of raid velocirapters 3 resovier 3 pumps and around 12 120 raids also 2x1.5k psu and enough place to house another raid array of ssd:O

i sure that u would hardly use it.
It will be better to look at the lan li one or even a obsadin 800 will be enough

i am going to build 2 pc choose that u think is good and viable

 

[serialkiller]

are u going to oc and at what level?

 

[serialkiller]

build 1

CPU: 2x Xeon E5-2650
mobo : evga sr-x
ram : 2x 4x4gb corsair vengence 1600mhz (32gb)
gpu: pny quadro 4000
evga gtx 680 classified ftw
psu : silverstone 1500w 80+silver
case : lan li PC-V2120
cpu coolers :2x cm hyper 212 evo
ssd : intel 520 180gb
hdd: wd carvier black 1 tb 7.2k
od : asus bd burner
os : windows 7 professinal x64 oem
this is similar to ur build

 

[Tavo_Nova]

everything else is actually great but for this i might recommend some

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z 32GB 1600mhz or higher
PSU: Corsair AX1200W 80PLUS Gold or Seasonic X-1250 1250W 80PLUS Gold..
these are 2 psu i have on different system, but i used my seasonic one on my work station it's awesome..
in GPU for gaming get the 680gtx or whatever it will be named, and 2 of them in SLI for awesome game play,

and yes for liquid cooling its not rare but close to rare for leaking to occur on cooling like h100, but most of them at custom cooling, just that with such a beast workstation i wouldn't suggest water cooling....

we have almost the same system except i use x79 3960x as my workstation but everything is quite the same also different in chassis but overall that quadro is good

i got same ssd as yours and it's awesome, and i like seagate too, although many would prefer the western digital caviar black for good performance imo since its storage no need for that much epeen a great seagate barracuda 1tb 7200rpm 64mb cache storage is as good as it gets....

oh and i only tried liquid cooling using h100 on my other system which shouldn't affect me much just in case they leak which so far haven't yet but either way since for me i won't take chances on the system which i use for work so if you use your system for work and earn money with it i suggest you to think first before trowing a water cooling there specially custom water cooling

 

[serialkiller]

build 2

intel i7 3960x
asus p8x79ws
corsair h100 or noctua NH-D14
gskill ripjaws x 4x8 gb 1600mhz
pny quadro 4000
2x evga gtx 680 classified ftw
seasonic x 1250w 80+gold or x1050w 80+ platinum
intel 520 240gb ssd
2x wd velociraptors 600gb in raid 1
cooler master cosmos ii
asus blue ray burner
asus 24x dvd burner
and also u can buy a 30 inch 2560x1600 ips monitor or 3x dell 3d monitors and money to buy a gaming headphones and bose speakers and omega halo gt sound card :O

 

[serialkiller]

if this was my build then i would probably go for

intel i7 3930k
asus rampage iv extreme
corsair dominator 4x8gb 2133mhz
pny quadro 4000
2xevga gtx 680 hydro copper 2 classified
omega halo gt sound card
seasonic x 1250w 80+ gold
cm cosmos ii
2x intel 60 gb slc raid 0
4x seagate 3tb 7200
1x ocz pci e 480 gb ssd:O

and i would wc cpu with ek block and a gtx 360 rad on top and a gtx 240 rad in front


Razer BlackWidow
Ultimate Stealth Edition
cyborg rat 9 mouse
bose 5.1 surround sound speakers
beats audio headphones
dell 27'' ips 2560x1600 monitor:O

which would fit in ur budget

 

[Tavo_Nova]

actually i agree with serial killer, with 2000$ you can already build a i7 3930K system with msi x79 658d, with dual gtx570 so with that much cash you should go extreme ^_^

 

[unarmed13]

I like those builds, but this computer will be mainly used for rendering and editing. Gaming is secondary.

I will probably overclock, not too much, maybe ~500 mhz or so. Stability is also a factor and I may or may not overclock at all.

I use 3Ds Max, Maya, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere.

I do like the sound of the Caviar black HDD, I've heard some great reviews.

Watercooling will no longer be an option for me unfortunately, a lot of maintenance and I do not want to risk a leak.

I wanted to get the caselabs case because of the airflow. Although a Lian Li PC-V2120 looks great and fits the SR-X, I do not feel that there is not enough airflow. Plus, the cost difference would only be a few dollars between the two as I would have it shipped in California.

I love the last build you posted, serialkiller, there's so much you can get with this kind of budget, but I do intend to keep this computer for 4+ years.