2x Workstation build or wait?

H

Henri108

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 6, 2013
Messages
465
Hi everyone,
I would like to build 2 workstations to replace our current Dell Precision's that are already 5 years old with fairly low Xeon clock speeds, older Quadro cards and warranty expired last month. But with all the rumors about the Haswell-E and Nvidea Maxwell, I think I should wait and see what they bring to the table. If you think I should wait, please tell and why I should wait.
If no-one of you thinks they will offer big improvement (like ivy-bridge -> Haswell), I'll build them by the end of the month.


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
One will be used for heavy video-editing and 3D stuff with some photoshop. (After effects, but mainly Premiere Pro) Gaming will also be done on this machine, but this is secondary.
Other one will be used for mainly photoshop, illustrator and other graphics programs (no motiongraphics on this one).
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Budget is around 2500-3000€ for the editing rig and less than 2000€ for the photoshop rig.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Belgium
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
Case, CPU, RAM, PS, SSD, GPU, Mobo, optical drive, cooling,…
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Some 13000 rpm harddrives maybe, but got enough storage on our servers. Otherwise nothing.
6) Will you be overclocking?
CPU on the editing and gaming rig will be OC'ed
No or just a little OC'ing on the photoshop rig.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Currently both have 2x Dell 27" 1400p (or was it 1600p?). Will be upgrading both to 4K screen next year.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
I was going to do it this month, but after seeing rumors I am not sure if I should wait or not…
Certainly because they will have to be working 5 years without maintenance about 6 days a week 10 hours a day.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
Mobo has to have Raid controler, very good soundcard build in, usb 3, … But most importantly reliability!
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes already got multiple Windows 8.1 licenses from our current machines. (will drill holes in harddrives and smash them to pieces when we get the new ones in and sell the old workstations)


Here is what I was thinking of if I would build it now for the editing rig:

GTX 780 (maybe Ti)
I7-4930K
Fractal design Arc Midi R2
Asus rampage IV Extreme or P9X79 WS
Samsung 840 EVO 500gb or Intel 530 series (not sure which ones are more reliable)
Don't know about ram, will see what is cheapest (any series that are worth looking at?) Certainly 32gb quadchannel for both.
Fractal design Newton R3 800W
CPU cooling will be H100i because I read it won't need any maintenance. (is this true?)
Don't know about fans, I wanted to go with Gentle typhoon's AP-15's, but noticed they are discontinued and computershop I go to only go the AP-11 and AP-12 in stock. (are they as good as the AP-15's?)
Suggestions for normal airflow optimised fans for the case? I think the Arc Midi can fit multiple 140mm's, so that might be an option (suggestions on these?)

Second rig will be the same as the first but without a good GPU (just one that can output 4K, any suggestions?).

I am not a fanboy of any make, so if you know parts that work better than the ones listed or are more reliable, please tell.
And yes, silence is desirable, but not a priority.

We might be using a 4k camera by the end of the year (might play a big factor here).

Many thanks for suggestions in advance!
 
If these are heavy use machines that make money and run constantly, you would be better off buying a new precision with a onsite 4 hour contract. Seriously, if it needs to be up all the time crunching and making money, you don't want to mess around spending hours/days getting replacement parts. Dell or HP will be onsite in less than 4 hours to replace parts. How much will it cost you in lost profit and wages if the machine goes down?

It may be smarter to look at putting your rendering into the server arena and rack it. Build some much cheaper desktops that interface with the rendering instances and can game away. I have a friend over in LA Arts district that has done just this. Moved the rendering into server/workstations and some storage provisioning via iscsi. He builds a sweet desktop every year for gaming, and runs remote sessions to virtual and physical editing workspaces. Just a thought.

That being said:

For local storage/scratch space use SAS6 10/15k drives. Very fast in raid, much cheaper per GB than ssd and crazy reliable. Boot/application drive should be SSD.
 
Thanks for the comment!
Well I was configuring a new Dell Precision and looked up all the parts and their specs and ratings. Just came to the conclusion that Xeon's are just overpriced, Quadro's are low-end gpu's (I would only want a K5000 or K6000, but those are out of this world expensive and offer little to none over a GTX780 and Titan). The price I came up to for a similar system as the one above was 3x the price of the one I mentioned above and would probably perform identically. Yes I LOVE Dell support and when a Quadro FX 3800 went bad, we had a brand new one installed a few hours later. But it just isn't looking viable for the very few times we will ever need that support (servers , xps laptops and normal working pc's are still Dell's).

You are a bit overreacting on the 'making money every day' part... It will never cost thousands to have a person do something else for a few days, it will do them good. I want a stable system, but if something might fail, it's a 15 minute drive to get a new part (or do a speed delivery for a few €) and still save enough to build an entirely new workstation.
We bought a 6-core maxed out Mac Pro a few weeks ago and returned it a few days later btw because they didn't work at all and didn't get any useful support from Apple with the huge amounts of issues. So now our only hardcore applefan wants a Windows 8.1 system :D. (that's the photoshop rig)

Remote running a pc is just a pita for fast paced stuff like editing. And why would we do that anyway?
Yes, it might be viable if we had 3 or more editors, but editing is 1 person and occupies less than 10% of his total work. The gaming and editing part is mostly for my personal pleasure in the weekends.

We have a local server which gives us super fast read and writes already, automatic backup, file storage, ... SSD is just for getting the projects that are worked on currently on the pc.
Now our workstation has like 200gb of 15k rpm drives in raid 0 and we had 1 fail last year, all backed up, but I still think a single ssd is more reliable than any HDD. They have 'enough' with 200 gb, so 500gb of SSD will be able to cover all the needs without needing any spinning disk in the system itself.

I recently switched to 36mp files for my photography and coming from a mere 18mp 1Dx, the initial batch on the raw files in photoshop for judging has been extended significantly with these old workstations (clocked at something like 2.5ghz, which was pretty high-end back then).
So we just need faster machines, Xeon's won't offer a decent price/performance ratio imo.

Would you wait and see what Maxwell and Haswell-E bring or just build now?
 
Thanks, if Maxwell/Haswell-E will be released before September, I will wait.
If only Haswell-E will be there, I can still use my Quadro FX3800 as a GPU.

Is there anyone that knows what Geforce GTX card can push 10-bit displays? Or if the Maxwell's will be able to do that? Or will I still have to buy a cheap quadro to do that? If yes, what quadro will push 10-bit and is cheap (maybe an old second hand one)?
 
With regard to the video card, will you need 10+ bit colour? If so, you'll need a Quadro.
 
I would wait if you can.

I am waiting for Maxwell to get a new video card.

Rumored Haswell-E 8 core 3 ghz for release Q3. If you are not considering Xeons this is probably worth waiting for.

If you need 10 bit color you need a Quadro. Even Titans do not support 10 bit color.

Xeons can be worth it if your application can use all the extra threads that a Xeon would give you but they don't overclock unless your talking about older EVGA SR2 era Xeons and are expensive.

I am not sure Asus is what you want to be getting for the motherboard. I been reading some bad experiences with Asus RMA on various forums including this one that gives me pause to buy Asus.

Rack servers tend to be loud. I picked up one of those dual opteron 24 bay servers off a hot ebay deal and well its really loud which is problem for my home office.
 
Files we are working with are 14 bit (sometimes 16 bit), only seeing 8 bit is a huge waste. Certainly because our displays can display 10 bit and our current machines can display 10 bit. Going back to 8 bit is a huge step back imo. So yes, need 10 bit. Does anyone know a cheap card that outputs 10 bit to 2x full 4K resolution (futureproof), preferably with DP 1.3 (for 60fps displaying).

Kirika, thanks, but why do you bring up rack servers? (we got 2 and they are near silent btw)

I personally don't think a 8-core will be a good option for the budget (rumored at 1000$+), I would be looking at the new 6-core and maybe upgrade to 8-core a few years down the road (when they are a viable option).

Are EVGA parts better than ASUS? I saw a lot op people use ASUS parts for workstations and thought it would be a reliable option. I personally thought that any workstation-grade board will be very reliable and gets excellent support?
I also think that we cannot compare very well because I live in Europe and support will differ a lot (don't know if it will be positively of negatively).
 
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