klhsx1,
Used workstations are excellent value, offer great performance for a reasonable, and are extremely reliable in my experience. I've had five used used workstations since 2008 and today have a used, upgraded HP z420 for 3D modeling, for rendering a dual CPU Dell Precision T5500 and a T3500 as a backup /business system
The LGA1366 platform has the best cost /performance ratio of any, but for your uses, a dual Xeon E5 seems more appropriate and us more forward-looking. The principal advantages are: the ability to use up to 14-core CPU's as compared to six core for LGA1366, the RAM is DDR2-1600 or 1866, and the disk system is 6GB/s instead of 3GB/s. The E5-2600 series v1 CPU's are highly depreciated and only recently have become very good value in anticpation of the Xeon E5- v4/s which are 14nm (Skylake).
For your system, consider:
Dell Precision T7600 Barebones No Heatsinks No CPU No RAM No RAID No HDD > sold for Approximately C $601.23 or offer
To this add a single:
INTEL XEON E5-2687W 8 CORE TURBO 3.8GHz 20M 8GT/s SOCKET LGA 2011 BX80621e52687W sold for C $400
This provides 8-cores @ 3.1 / 3.8GHz. The reasoning is that the 3.8 GHz is a good clock speed for 3D modeling and most multi-threaded rendering and Adobe applications have a peak thread efficiently at about 8-cores, for which 3.1 is a good speed. Some programs are not as efficient over two CPU's, but as software progresses, use of all available core will be optimized and a second processor can be fully utilized. Solidworks is already optimized in this way- the more cores the better.
The
T7600 specification is impressive: up to 512GB of DDR3 1600 ECC registered- registered is recommended for dual CPU systems, two 150 W GPU/s, NVIDIA Maximus that congiures a Quadro /Tesla co-processor system, a 1300W power supply, and a very good disk system.
For this use, a minimum of 32GB of RAM in 6GB modules, and add another 32GB when adding the 2nd processor. If .however, you are processing quite large animation files, make it 64GB + 64GB later.
GPU 1: There is no better cost /performance GPU at the moment than the
Quadro M4000 (8GB) C $1,180) with plentry of memory and bandwidth for animation /simulations.
GPU2 : In the second x16 PCIE slot, a Tesla M2090 (6GB) coprocessor, (sold for C $126.85) which adds a 1.4GHz GPU and CUDA cores is extremely useful for accelerating polygon positional calculations in simulations. The peak double precision: 665 Gigaflops and peak single precision: 1331 Gigaflops. If you are simulating fluids and particles this is very useful. There are other models with many more CUDA cores with Kepler GPU's plus more memory and one of those might be a consideration.
RAID controller:
LSI MR9260-8i > sold for C $100
Disk1: For the C: drive- OS and Programs, a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB > C $210
Disk 2, 3:
Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST2000NM0033 2TB > C $360 (C $170 each) these are enterprise-rated and have 128MB cache instead of 64MB
OS: The OS may be reloaded form a Dell reinstallation disk and activated by the COA on the case. When I’ve done this with the T5500 and T3500, it activated automatically without having to enter the number.
There are a lot of variables and infinite possibilities, but in this example:
(All in C $)
System: $600
CPU: _ $400
RAM: _ $140
GPU 1: $1,180
GPU 2: $126
RAID controller: $100
Drives:_ $530
____________________________
TOTAL = C $ 3,076
This is of course, a bit over the budget of $3,000 ($2,000 + $1,000) so the Tesla GPU could be added later.
Performance should be quite good. A single E5-2687W in a Precision T7600 has a Passmark CPU score of 15175 and with a PERC H310 controller, disk scores as high as 7203. A Quadro M4000 is a T7600 score 5603 in 3D.
And the second CPU plus another 33GB or 64GB of RAM, a PCIe SSD, higher rated Tesla coprocessor and RAID 5 for the storage disks can be added- plenty of reserve capability.
The other approach would be to use LGA1366 and for that I'd suggest Dell Precision 7500 and this would be quite a bit less expensive. The limit would be 12-cores @ 3.47 /3.73GHz (X5690) which is still very good. A T7500 with a
pair of X5690's has a Passmark CPU score of 15972 which is about 5% higher than a
single E5-2687W. Interestingly, a pair of X5690's is similar or a bit more expensive than a single E5-2687W. See the results below for a T5500 that was purchased for $171 US and upgrade costs were about $850, used as dedicated rendering system.
In my view, the T7500 or an HP 800 can't be improved in terms of cost /performance, and if the dual 6-core is not a limitation then that would be a very good approach. However, for professional use looking forward to expanded capabilities, the Xeon E5 has more potential- it can use E5 2600 v2 CPU's and might delay changing systems for up to two years and thereby justify the costs.
Cheers,
BambiBoom
1. HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) > 32GB DDR3 1866 ECC RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)>
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555] [Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15
Pending upgrade: HP /LSI 9212-4i PCIe SAS /SATA HBA RAID controller, 2X Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB (RAID 1)
2. Purchased for $171:
Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (
Original): Xeon E5620 quad core @ 2.4 / 2.6 GHz > 6GB DDR3 ECC Reg 1333 > Quadro FX 580 (512MB) > Dell PERC 6/i SAS /SATA controller > Seagate Cheetah 15K 146GB and 300GB > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
[ Passmark system rating =
1479 / CPU = 4067 / 2D= 520 / 3D=
311 / Mem= 1473 / Disk= 1208]
2. Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (
Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6 -core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z313 > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating =
3844 / CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D=
3550 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)
Purchased for $53:
3. Precision T3500 (2011) (
Original) Xeon W3530 4-core @ 2.8 /3.06GHz > 4GB (2X 2GB) DDR3-1333 ECC > GeForce 9800 GT (1GB)> WD Black 500GB
[[Passmark system rating =
1963, CPU = 4482 / 2D= 609 / 3D=
805 / Mem= 1409 / Disk=1048]
Upgrades, about $250:
3. Dell Precision T3500 (2011) (
Rev 2) Xeon X5677 4-core @ 3.46 / 3.73GHz > 12GB (6X 2GB) DDR3-1333 ECC > Quadro 4000 (2GB) > PERC 6/i + Seagate 300GB 15K SAS ST3300657SS + WD Black 500GB > 525W PSU> Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > 2X Dell 19" LCD
[Passmark system rating =
2751, CPU = 7236 / 2D= 658 / 3D=
2020 / Mem= 1875 / Disk=1221]