£3000 PC build

[Mikeadamwood]

Hi,

I've posted on a several forums now and received zero help, my username must be cursed or something...

Anyway need some advice/suggestions as I've had a mac for 2 years, which has been in and out of repair the past few weeks. So I'm jumping ship back to PC for my 3D and motion graphics work. It's a 5k iMac so I should get at least £1800 for it.

I have a £3000 tower budget but I have room, I just want the best system for the money really, it needs room for 4 potential graphics cards to be used with Octane GPU rendering.

Here's my current list (not sure if part picker is allowed here)..

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1600W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Case: Corsair 900D ATX Full Tower Case
CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core
CPU Cooler: Corsair H80i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X99-SLI ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: Kingston SSDNow KC400 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
GPU: 4x EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB HYBRID Video Card (4-Way SLI)

I may have to go for the Evga 1080 Hybrids cause availability of hybrid 980tis are hard to get hold of now especially in the U.K.. Only thing is they have less Cuda cores, which is important when GPU rendering in a Octane render.

This is pretty much my first PC build so please, any advice will be great! Like I said I've not received ANY responses on other forums where others are getting step by step help, I don't understand it..

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Isokolon]

The Kingston SSDNow is a lower grade SSD. I suggest a Crucial instead.
also if you're going with liquid cooling, I'd get a better cooler than the H80i.

 

[coozie7]

@ Mikeadamwood: Yes, you can post PC partpicker links here, whatever your location.
A few points: Get dual hard drives and run them in a mirrored array, some extra automatic data backup could save you some serious headaches later on, it's just an irritation for most of us to lose a HDD/SSD, but I'd advise you to add that extra security to your work and portfolio, no matter how rigorously you practise backing up.

I'd also suggest a better, and possibly larger SSD so you can run off that, using the HDDs exclusively as long term storage.

Cooling 4 cards is going to be a problem, even in that huge case, it may pay you to go for dual custom liquid loops or just go all air for them, or even go hybrid with two cards and the CPU under liquid with two cards under air.

Not sure about other suppliers but Overclockers do provide custom cards with full coverage waterblocks applied-for a price- 😉 with the benefit of a warranty (I think it's two years with them), something you may find useful, particularly given the huge cost involved.

 

[Mikeadamwood]

@ Mikeadamwood: Yes, you can post PC partpicker links here, whatever your location.
A few points: Get dual hard drives and run them in a mirrored array, some extra automatic data backup could save you some serious headaches later on, it's just an irritation for most of us to lose a HDD/SSD, but I'd advise you to add that extra security to your work and portfolio, no matter how rigorously you practise backing up.

I'd also suggest a better, and possibly larger SSD so you can run off that, using the HDDs exclusively as long term storage.

Cooling 4 cards is going to be a problem, even in that huge case, it may pay you to go for dual custom liquid loops or just go all air for them, or even go hybrid with two cards and the CPU under liquid with two cards under air.

Not sure about other suppliers but Overclockers do provide custom cards with full coverage waterblocks applied-for a price- 😉 with the benefit of a warranty (I think it's two years with them), something you may find useful, particularly given the huge cost involved.

Cool thanks for info I'll look into that.

Anybody know a motherboard which will accept a 4ghz processor and 4 way SLI, seem to be capped at 3.5ghz with this mobo..

 

[g-unit1111]

The Kingston SSDNow is a lower grade SSD. I suggest a Crucial instead.
also if you're going with liquid cooling, I'd get a better cooler than the H80i.

If you have that kind of budget, why not go with a 950 Pro?

Anybody know a motherboard which will accept a 4ghz processor and 4 way SLI, seem to be capped at 3.5ghz with this mobo..

Why would you want 4-way SLI? For that price one you're buying outdated cards. Two, the Titan X Pascal performs just as well, if not better, for less money. NVIDIA did away with 3 and 4 way SLI on the current generation 10XX for a reason and it would better to have two stronger cards than 4 weaker ones. A pair of Titan X Pascal cards would be a far better investment than quad 980TIs. Less power and less money required.

This is what I would suggest if I had your kind of budget:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6800K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor (£407.99 @ Novatech)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GTX 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£105.46 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: MSI X99A GAMING PRO CARBON ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£280.98 @ YoYoTech)
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£199.99 @ Novatech)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£287.99 @ Novatech)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£109.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: NVIDIA Titan X (Pascal) 12GB Video Card (£1199.99)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (£89.10 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£185.99 @ Novatech)
Total: £2867.48
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-30 01:40 BST+0100

Add the second Titan X and you will have a far better system.

 

[Mikeadamwood]

Thanks for putting the list together!

I think it's due to the Cuda cores, GPU rendering is reliant on Cuda core count. 980ti has 2816cores whereas titan x has 3584 but also has a huge jump in price.

980ti: 2816 x 4 = 11,264 Cuda cores

Titanx: 3584 x 2 = 7168 Cuda cores

If I was to go for the titan x, can only 2 cards fit in a 4 way motherboard or could I add more later.