$1200 System, $1000 Upgrade Time

[CaptainPrivate]

Evening, everyone!

Right now, I have this system:
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230v3, cooled by Noctua U12S
GPU: EVGA Reference GTX 760
Motherboard: MSI H97I-AC (Mini-ITX)
RAM: 2x8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X DDR3-1600
PSU: Seasonic M12II-620W
Storage: 1x Samsung 840 EVO 256Gb + 1TB HDD
Case: Rosewill Legacy W1 (Mini-ITX)
Other: Asus PB287 4K display + a pile of audiophile equipment

So, that's what I have to work with. I have a budget of $1000, no more, but am at a standstill as to what exactly takes priority. I do a lot of 3D rendering (Blender), digital design work (mainly VHDL synthesis in Xilinx's ISE suite), and a fair amount of gaming (no new titles, really), though there's one very important thing that should be noted: I host a fair amount of mission-critical project data for our engineering team back at the university, so I need this thing to be dead reliable. The H97I has done a respectable job, but I've been looking into a C226-based motherboard for this next upgrade.

Given this budget of $1000 and that system, what exactly would you do? I was thinking a new ~$100 mid-tower case, Asrock's C226-WS motherboard, a single GTX 980, and an EVGA SuperNova 850W PSU for a future second 980, and it ends up pushing the very top of my budget. Selling back my current GPU and Motherboard could pick me up another couple hard drives to make use of the HP SmartArray P812 I bought a while back but haven't had a PC for yet.

Thoughts are welcome! I'll provide more details as needed, but that should be enough to get things started.
-CaptainPrivate

 

[bambiboom]

CaptainPrivate,

In general, CaptainPrivate, the major obstacle to a substantial upgrade are the liimitations of LGA1150 for workstation use : a memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s as compared to 68GB/s for LGA2011-3, 16PCIe lanes as compared to 40, a limit of 32GB of RAM (768GB for LGA2011-3) and most importantly, the limitation of four cores for LGA1150 to eighteen for LGA-2011-3. Today, rendering is a combination of CPU and GPU procsssing and a strong reasons fro as many cores as possible. If you need reliability and precision- which animation and rendering of particles, shadows, and textures, I would also suggest ECC RAM and for viewport support and high anti-aliasing- Solidworks has drivers that run at x128.

Over Budget Option: In summary, my recommendation would be to replace the motherboard with an X99 board like an ASUS or ASrock with Xeon E5 and ECC support. Although my inclination would be to use an ASUS WS, the least expensive ($230) at the moment is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543&cm_re=asrock_x99_extreme_4-_-13-157-543-_-Product

> and use a Xeon E5-1650 v3 about $570):

http://ark.intel.com/products/82765/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v3-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=E51650V3BX

Then I'd recommend a Quadro from the recent (9.14) Kx200 series as the cost / performance is excellent. I've been using a K2200 (4GB) for about one month, running a pair of 27" 2560 X 1440 displays doing 3D modeling and rendering with very good response. I had a Quadro 4000 (2GB) previously that scored 2044 on Passmark 3D test and the Quadro K2200 scores 3553- higher than a Quadro K4000 (3GB), and for $450.

Closer to Budget Option: Having gone through this, I realize that $230 + $570 + $450 + RAM is going to be at least $1600+ , so if the cost is too far over, you might consider an alternative of selling the current system, adding that amount to the $1,000 upgrade budget and buying a Dell Precision T7500 with a pair of Xeon X5677, which are 3.46/ 3.73GHz:

http://ark.intel.com/products/47929/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5677-12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T7500-2x-Intel-Xeon-Quad-Core-X5677-3-47GHz-96GB-1TB-M1287-/381011340283?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item58b60babfb

> which is a T7500 with dual X5677's and 96Gb RAM for $780. That's the level of RAM that will really keep everything moving in large projects. This would have cost probably $8,000 new as the CPU's were almost $1,700 each. Then, sort out a good 480-512GB SSD for the main drive, and add- if budget permits- a Quadro K4200 for about $850:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G28N5480&cm_re=quadro_K4200-_-14-133-558-_-Product

The K4200 is a recent card, but there have been sales of used ones in the $650 range. I've had eight used Quadros over the years and never had a failure. Even a 2004 FX 580 still works perfectly. They're tuned to run at full bore all the time, and can.

The Precision T7500 is less forward-looking than the the LGA-2011-3, and would have DDR3 1333 RAM instead of DDR4 2133, but the 8 cores / 16 threads at 3.46 / 3.73 should do the job and reliably. I bought a used T5400 in 2010 and it's logged about 22,000 hours without blinking.

GPU Alternate: You could have similar performance to the K4200 but for less cost by finding a good, used Firepro W7000 (4GB). However, if you're principally using Autodesk and / or Adobe software- or Solidworks, a CUDA-based card will have advantages.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro K2200 (4GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H 2560 X 1440 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >
[ Passmark Rating = 4032 > CPU= 9247 / 2D= 821 / 3D=3553 / Mem= 2584 / Disk= 2470]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB DDR2 667 ECC> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys WMP600N WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 and and Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit >
[ Passmark system Rating = 1859, CPU = 8528 / 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

Dell Precision 390 (2006): Xeon X3230 quad-core @ 2.67GHz > 8 GB DDR2 667 ECC > Firepro V4900 (1GB) > 2X WD 320GB >Linksys WMP600N WiFi Dell 24" > 1920 X 1200 > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
[ Passmark system rating = 1458, CPU = 3699 / 2D= 431 / 3D=1350 / Mem= 885 / Disk=552]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects

 

[CaptainPrivate]

I could probably stretch out another $200 if absolutely needed, and a bit more if I wait until the tax return checks come back, but I doubt I could afford an all-out 2011 rebuild right now, at least with a Quadro. I do know, however, that most of the applications I use don't benefit directly from the improved OpenGL performance a Quadro would offer, and I've personally never had a problem with any of nVidia's drivers, professional or otherwise... I had a Quadro FX-3700 at one time in a smaller workstation, and while I can't speak for floating-point precision and whatnot, I can't really say it was any more reliable than any of the GeForce cards I've ever owned. They really do have good drivers for just about everything. Blender (specifically, the internal Cycles render engine) scales just about linearly with your hardware, and CUDA performance is really the only thing it cares about when rendering on the GPU.

I like the thought of a 2011v3 rebuild... even in the future, I could drop a Xeon up to 18 cores in there once they hit eBay as surplus, though that will definitely be a long time from now 'till the prices come down. If I were to go with a single-socket motherboard probably from SuperMicro for $300 and a $600 six-core E5 (maybe more), I think I could manage enough for new memory, but I'd end up sticking it out with my GTX 760 until later in the spring, and would rather not have to do a Windows reinstall if at all possible. I'm expecting maybe $500 or so for my current system, which would definitely be a start... I might be able to pull it off.

If I were to keep my current E3-1230, which does still perform admirably, I could pick up a new SuperMicro board and drop a fair chunk of my budget on a higher-end Quadro, and probably top off my board at 32GB of memory. I really do wish these little processors would support buffered DIMMs, but I guess that's why they're so cheap (relatively speaking) for a Xeon. Or, while I agree with being a fan of the Quadro cards, I could drop two GTX 970s in there to handle viewport rendering at 4K... I have a scene with upwards of two million vertices before being collapsed and decimated for rendering, and it absolutely chugs trying to keep up. Having a little over 3200 CUDA cores between two cards would crush most of my render loads, but then I'd still be stuck with my current Xeon for CPU-intensive things like synthesizing VHDL for FPGA work. It seems like I'm torn between a platform upgrade, or a GPU upgrade.

I like the looks of that Precision, but I'm a bit afraid that I'd pick one up and wish I had something more upgradeable in about a year from now. I'm no stranger to eBay... I have a small stack of HP ProLiant DL380's here (G4, G5, and one DL385 G5P) that pulled file-server duty for a short while until I got something that made a bit less noise. I think I'd rather do a rebuild than pick up another used unit.

I'll do a bit of research and see what builds I can't come up with - I'll drop an exact list of components and prices here when I do, but until then, any other opinions are always welcome!