I'm not a gamer, but I'm recognizing that my 3 1/2 year old Q6600-based Dell (32bit XP Pro) just isn't enough to be all that viable with Adobe apps like Photoshop (I'm circa CS3; upgrading is out of the question with my current machine), and I get very bogged down when I want a good quality 3D render.

So I'm starting to investigate buying from people who will allow me to pick and choose from a wide variety of hardware options in assembling a computer for me (yes, I could put together my own, but I'd rather rely on someone who has the knowhow to recognize parts that are compatible or not).

I've researched enough to know I want an i7 processor (2600 series or 950/970 etc), and lots of RAM (hopefully 16GB), but I'd like words of expertise/experience with some of the other stuff.

I want to stress that money is indeed a factor. I don't want a $400 budget machine, but I'd like to keep things in the $1100-1300 range if I can.

Some specific questions include:

1. With a reasonably-high-powered machine, what power supply would you recommend (I'm thinking I'd want at least 600W)?

2. What would you recommend for a "mid-range" (not too much more than $200) video card? (For this, someone who is doing GPU assisted rendering is preferred, as I expect to be doing that at some point, even though Poser itself cannot.) One option I'm looking at right now is a Radeon HD 6950 2GB.

3. How much difference can I expect between "standard" 1333 MHz DDR3 memory and something like Patriot Gamer 2 Series @ 1600 MHz? (E.g. is it worth spending an extra $50 on 16GB of the former rather than 16GB of the latter?)

4. Is overclocking a good idea for the graphics/3D sorts of applications I would be wanting the machine for?

5. Any related thoughts on CPU coolers would be appreciated. E.g. brands/models to gravitate toward; basic necessities etc.

I know the hardware discussion does come up periodically, so I apologize for redundancy, but in my defense things change so fast it hardly seems sensible to read through stuff more than a couple months old.

I should also add that long-term I would likely also use this machine for music recording/mixing/mastering (primarily in Sonar). I do have a dedicated music computer, but it's older. I have to stick with it for the time being because my soundcard is kind of legacy so drivers past XP are unavailable, and I can't upgrade that for the foreseeable future.

But I'm not really expecting many here will have experience with both 3D and audio....

1. 750W Corsair should be enough. Get only Corsair (or similar reputed) brand though.

2. Note that many GPU renderers right now only do CUDA, which is nVIDIA,

3. Not much at all. The main reason people buy those kinds of RAM is that when you overclock, it gives you more headroom to work with. But RAM is not really the bottleneck these days.

4. Yes. There is some risk involved but the benefits are more then worth it. There is a dramatic difference in performance between a stock 3GHz CPU and one OC to (say) 4GHz.

5. Thermalright is pretty much the gold standard here. Don't bother with water cooling unless you live in a really really hot area though.

Thanks, ghonna. The sort of info I'm looking for. Too bad about that CUDA thing, since overall the ATI cards seem to be getting better bang for the buck. But this is exactly why I asked these questions to 3D folk as opposed to gamers.

Any recommendations on a mid-range card? Say, $190-230? What about the variety of companies delivering them (Gigabyte, Asus etc) - how much difference does that really make?

Re (1) - my problem is I don't really have much sense of who the reputed brands are. Cooler Master (edit: or Thermaltake) is not good?

Any thoughts on a six core i7 vs a quad core? I'm trying to figure out where the tipping point is between upping the RAM or upgrading the processor.

Well I have personal experience with Corsair and I can say that they are very high quality. Cooler master i've heard good things about and thermaltake I dunno. Generally though, any 750W PSU > $60 is usually not a bad buy though of course performance may not be amazing. Corsair is expensive cause it will give you at least 650 of those 750W while cheaper ones may only give you 500W or less.

As for mid range, if you mean nVIDIA then the GTX560 TI isn't bad. Companies make a difference in what kind of warranty and support you get, quality is not very different. At most some may have a nicer fan or something.

EDIT: There is no tipping point... more cores is always the most important thing for render performance. RAM above 8Gb makes little difference unless you're actually doing scenes that need more.

Looking at pure processor benchmarking, it looks like the i5-2500K gives you the most bang for the buck right now...

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

ghonna: Thanks for that. I'm leaning a bit toward the i7 970, although it doesn't overclock as much as some of the other processors.

WandW: yeah, although the 2600k is really close and a bit higher end, which is why I was looking that way. But the 970 is coming down fast in price, so the bang for buck scale is maybe not really that accurate for it.

Also forgot to ask about motherboards... obviously needs to be compatible with the CPU, but that still leaves a bit of a bewildering variety of options that to the uninitiated don't look all that different.

Quote - WandW: yeah, although the 2600k is really close and a bit higher end, which is why I was looking that way. But the 970 is coming down fast in price, so the bang for buck scale is maybe not really that accurate for it.

The i7 970 has been discontinued, so you may be able to score a deal soon if you can find one...

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2086875/intel-discontinues-core-i7-970-lack-demand

Thanks. That may explain how some builders are offering prices not much different from quad cores. According to the article, though, it will be shipping for a good while yet.

Quote - I should also add that long-term I would likely also use this machine for music recording/mixing/mastering (primarily in Sonar). I do have a dedicated music computer, but it's older. I have to stick with it for the time being because my soundcard is kind of legacy so drivers past XP are unavailable, and I can't upgrade that for the foreseeable future.

But I'm not really expecting many here will have experience with both 3D and audio....

Not a whole lot yet, but getting there.....can't make short movies without audio, after all..... :D  

What's your sound solution? If it's an E-mu card, be ready to experiment. You have to set up the dsp applet just right for Sonar to make or take any signals (and if you have the breakout box, that adds to the fun).

 My currently new CG box is an AMD Phenom II X6 1075 on a Gigabyte 890XA-UD3 mobo (AMD fanboy, I fear; plus I prefer to have 6 actual processing cores, as opposed to 4 cores with partial pipelines to allow 8 threads....maybe). 16 gigs of Gskill ripjaw DDR-3 (and so far no issues with stability or overheating; and I've thrown a couple of day long Vue Infinite renders at it just for that purpose). I haven't bothered with more than an Nvidia Geforce 240 video card, as the CUDA technology just isn't worth it yet; the support for it is pretty spotty atm. When it's there, then the upgrade choices start. An E-mu-1616m and breakout box. The boot drive is a 1 terabyte RAID 10 array (I've used RAID 0 on a couple of render nodes, and the speed increase was =so= worth it. Don't even think about mission critical stuff on RAID 0, as there is exactly =NO= fault tolerance to that array, but for single use nodes that are quick to reload an OS and a couple of remote renderers on, it is so worth it), plus another 1.5 tbyte spanning 2 drives for apps and scratch space. An LG blu-ray burner and separate CD-DVD/Lightscribe burner. I caught a deal and dropped a Rosewill 800 watt Lightning power supply in there (modular power supplies are so worth it; adding only the power taps you need helps keep the interior clean, and the air flow good), which adds a good layer of bullet proofing against the increasing demands of video cards for external power taps.

 That beast currently has taken whatever Vue Infinite 9.5, P Pro 2010, Modo 401, SonicFire Pro 5, Audition 3, and the CS4 versions of Premiere Pro, After Effects, & Encore and toss at it and eaten it whole (still have to get Photoshop, though; PSP just won't cut it anymore). The Sonar I just got is X1 essential, and minus the dsp interface which I haven't doped out yet, seems to function smoothly. I also snagged a dual channel M-audio Mobile PRE, and only found out after that the software runs on everything but Vista....which is what is on my laptop. So I have to get a new laptop for the remote recording functions. And hopefully as the mocap controller. Currently scoping out MIDI keyboards (and need to learn that instrument) and a Dbox for my guitar. One low cost mic and a couple of stands, waiting until I can test out everything before getting a proper stereo set.

 Audition has performed perfectly on this rig, with no stutters or pauses, no apparent issues with the dsp applet E-mu uses, either. And I probably put a total of around $800 into this box (oh, toss in a Lian Li mid tower case). I luv Pricewatch....

Thanks, Dale B. I've got a lot of experience with Sonar, but haven't done anything in a couple years. As I said I've got a legacy soundcard (Lynx One) which has not been and will not be updated past XP. So I'm sticking with my old music computer for recording until I can upgrade that.

AMD is good bang for the buck, but I don't anticipate going that route. Even if six cores is superior for 3D, I still have the i7 970 option to accomplish that.

I know virtually nothing about RAID; had always assumed it was a backup solution and I've been content to do that on portable hard drives, manually. Had no clue I could render to it and have a performance gain....

Is there a GPU renderer you've got in mind?

Well, the gain you get depends on which kind of RAID array you use. RAID 0 is called data striping; instead of writing to one drive, the data is split and you write to two drives that are synced at the same time. This effectively -doubles- your hard drive read/write bandwidth. The down side is RAID 0 has no fault tolerance whatsoever; if one drive fails or the data gets corrupted, there is no recovering. Replace, recreate the array and reload is the only option.

RAID 1 is data mirroring; you write the data to two drives simutaneously. Instant backup, so one drive can crash and the other will pick up the load with no noticeable delay. So long as one drive is intact, it is just replace the bad drive and recreate the array, copying the data on the still good drive over. This is the version that many use for data safety, and you get no speed increase out of it.

 RAID 5 uses 3 drives; two data drives and a parity drive. You get some of the speed increase, and if you have a replacement drive at the ready, you can lose a drive and rebuild it from the data on the remaining two drives. Not really used much outside of server application.

RAID 10 is a combination of mirroring and striping. You get both the speed and data redundancy, but you have to have 4 identical drives in the array. One drive can fail with no problem, so long as you replace it before another drive goes. 

 There are many, many other kinds and numbers, but those are the basic kinds, and the others are all built on these (mainly done so the maker can claim propietary rights to their RAID 26 uber array with coffee holder built in!).

When you get ready to upgrade, be prepared to hunt. Most of the audio cards out there are more gaming cards than audiophile, and a lot that boast a breakout box either prove unavailable, or are like the Creative X-Fi Titanium, where the box only has a couple of RCA jacks (no MIDI, no optical, no preamp controls, etc). The bloody audio codecs on the motherboard are good enough for the masses (despite the hit the CPU takes doing the audio processing), so =good= sound cards are getting harder to find.... 

I would recommend going to www.magicmicro.com and configuring a machine. I got my last two rigs from there and am very happy. Good prices, too.

Instead of messing with RAID, i'd just get a nice SSD. They are insanely fast (you'd have to get something like dual velociraptors to match the speed) and you wont be doubling your risk for data loss as you would with RAID0.

Errrhm...

 Actually, most SSD's are configured -internally- as RAID 0. That's how they get the speed out of state changing switching transistor gates. You aren't -quite- as vulnerable to synchronization errors, as chips have fixed address 'spaces' as opposed to moving a read/write head, but if one bit goes on a chip, you lose that entire stripe at a minimum, no reformat possible. How well your system handles that event depends on the SMART tech they are integrating into OS and HDD currently.

 And I wouldn't neccesarily recommend RAID to a novice either. OTOH, those who come from the era of constant Windows reloading would have far less to fear from using an array than some others would. RAID takes less attention than a lot of overclocking schemes I've seen. And you can't beat RAID 1 for data safety (assuming your controller doesn't blow out, of course. Nothing is catastrophic failure proof).

Quote - Is there a GPU renderer you've got in mind?

Probably Lux, whenever it's ready for the purpose. Maybe Octane down the road. For now I'll mostly be using the CPU.

Quote - Well, the gain you get depends on which kind of RAID array you use. RAID 0 is called data striping; instead of writing to one drive, the data is split and you write to two drives that are synced at the same time. This effectively -doubles- your hard drive read/write bandwidth. The down side is RAID 0 has no fault tolerance whatsoever; if one drive fails or the data gets corrupted, there is no recovering. Replace, recreate the array and reload is the only option.

 

Could you clarify this? Does this mean I would just lose the whole render, or everything on the drive?

Hm, the more I look at the realities, the more I lean toward the 2600k, since it's next generation and beastly powerful (sounds like even moderate overclocking can get it up in the 4.5-4.6 GHZ range). But it's only 4 core... I suspect when the 6 core Sandy Bridge units come out this fall/winter, they'll be frightfully expensive.

Yeah Intel love to overprice their cutting edge stuff cause they basically have no competition anymore. AMD are going for the budget market and don't compete in the high end. And what's worse the new 6 cores will again be on a different socket AFAIK so you can't even get a 2600K now and upgrade later.

Wish AMD would get back in the game cause otherwise things are only gonna get worse...

6 Core Intel i7s are also triple channel memory, with a maximum of 24 GB. Intel limits ram to 2 GB per thread (12 x 2 = 24). LGA 1156 is Dual channel, with a maximum of 16 GB (I just put one of these together Sunday) for the Core i7. Mine is the i7 860 @ 2.8 Ghz.

Quote - > Quote - Well, the gain you get depends on which kind of RAID array you use. RAID 0 is called data striping; instead of writing to one drive, the data is split and you write to two drives that are synced at the same time. This effectively -doubles- your hard drive read/write bandwidth. The down side is RAID 0 has no fault tolerance whatsoever; if one drive fails or the data gets corrupted, there is no recovering. Replace, recreate the array and reload is the only option.

 

Could you clarify this? Does this mean I would just lose the whole render, or everything on the drive?

You would lose -everything- on the RAID 0 array; there would be no way to recover anything, as the data is spanned across two physical drives, and the controller handles synching on the fly. So obviously it isn't fit for perishable data storage (unless you have a backup scheme that can handle the load and are religious about using it daily....and the cost of that pretty much makes it unfeasible) About the only ones who really use RAID 0 are power gamers (double the hard drive bandwidth, you're less likely to get killed because of a pause due to hard drive access), a few scientific endeavors where speed is needed (although those have gotten fewer and fewer in recent years), and non critical systems. I use RAID 0 in a couple of my render boxes; they were an experiment to see how it worked and what the effects were. I get a boot of XP-64 from power on to desktop in 12-15 seconds. All I have on those units besides the OS are the rendercows for Vue to use, and the remote nodes for After Effects. While there isn't a doubling of speed on those particular nodes, they -do- return scenes faster (particularly in Vue scenes, where a huge amount of data gets placed in the swapfile). I do know of a few tech weenies who created a RAID 0 array strictly for -use- as the swapfile. Extra complexity, but man, does the OS smoke!

That said, you could easily copy the data to an external drive (and the array doesn't do anything funky to the data; all of that is contained in the array/controller loop. What comes out of there is exactly like the data from a single hard drive. Just lots faster), so backing up is quite possible. You could also set up the array as your boot drive, and install =nothing= on it save the OS and whatever codecs and drivers have to live there. Install your apps on separate drive, and the array could fail and you wouldn't lose anything (of course, that gets into the issue of beating said modern app over the head until it gets the idea that you do not =WANT= to install it into the Windows directory tree, thankyouverymuch, never mind placing perishable data there.....).

Oh. One thing you would want to do, if you ever did use any form of RAID, is to use one of the commercially available array frames. Just a box that fits into the full sized bay openings on a case, that gives you instant access to the array drives. And you keep an extra drive handy, usually left sealed in the anti static plastic bag, until needed. THere are some true horror stories about people using RAID and losing things, but relatively few are Act of God type things. Most are people ignoring problems; one good example is not replacing a failed drive. In every other type save RAID 0, if a drive fails you can keep going....but if you built the thing with new drives at the same time, then they are the same age, and have been subjected to the same stresses and knocks. Like the RAID 10 I'm using; one drive can go tango uniform and I'll get an error message, but I can continue to work just fine (maybe a little slowdown). But if I lose a second drive in the other part of the array, I lose everything; OS, apps, perishable data, all of it. Most of the horror stories come from people in that situation who think they can wait to replace the bad drive.....which is akin to donning a full suit of armor, finding a 6' claymore, running to the top of a hill in a thunderstorm and waving the sword in the air, screaming 'All The Gods Are Bastards!'. 

ghonna: I believe the Q4 2011 releases are supposed to be Sandy Bridge... so I would have thought they'd be compatible. But from what I'm reading now, it will require a different motherboard. Hm.

Sarissi: the second generation series is supposed to be usable for up to 32GB. (Of course, with only 4 DIMMs, that presupposes 8GB sticks, which are hard to find and prohibitively expensive at this point.)

Quote - ghonna: I believe the Q4 2011 releases are supposed to be Sandy Bridge... so I would have thought they'd be compatible. But from what I'm reading now, it will require a different motherboard. Hm.

Sarissi: the second generation series is supposed to be usable for up to 32GB. (Of course, with only 4 DIMMs, that presupposes 8GB sticks, which are hard to find and prohibitively expensive at this point.)

Well, I made my choice back on August 30, 2010, built my box this past Sunday, and and am happy with the choices I made. My i7 is not a Sandy Bridge and it cost me $283 at the time of purchase. Contrast that with the Q6600 which was $535 when I ended up building my AMD dual core box.