iMac owner thinking of self build.

[Richard Floyd-Walker]

Hi.
I have a 2011 27" iMac with a 3.4 GHz i7, a 1GB Radeon HD 6970M and 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ram. My hard drive is a 1TB 7200rpm. I only use this machine for VFX work in After Effects, C4D and sometimes I edit in Premiere. My comps on average usually have 25 layers of media. Some being 3D and almost always having some kind of particle based work using Particular. I rarely work in anything below 1080p and I am starting get handed 2.5k and 4k footage to work on and am thinking of upgrading my machine.
Instead of just getting another iMac I am thinking that I should go for a Windows based machine so that I can take advantage of being able to over clock and also be able to upgrade individual components, like graphics cards etc.
However, I have only ever known Macs so I don't have any idea what to expect performance wise from a different machine.
For instance Say I build a system with equal specs to my iMac but put in an Nvidia GTX 660 and over clocked the i7 cpu to 4.2GHz. What, if any difference in performance would i get over my iMac.
Then, say I went down the Socket 2011 route and got a 3930K over a 4 core i7 but kept the GTX 660. Would there be another step in performance.
I would also opt for SSD as my OS drive if I were to build but I am just trying to gauge what gains can be made from my base model, which is my iMac, by separating the components and understanding what difference they make individually.
By the way graphics card I mentioned was just an arbitrary example and I am open to other suggestions. My work is mostly After Effects so the advantages of CUDA are not as important as it is to those that work a lot more in Premiere.

I apologise for the long question but I do look forward to your replies.

P.S. I am just as happy in a Windows environment as I am in OSX. So I my component choices do not have to be Hackintosh compatible.

Thanks again.

 

[aevm]

I'd recommend an i7-4930k, if you can afford to spend $579 on the CPU alone. The price is painful, but this CPU would make you 20% or 30% more productive than an i7-4770k in your line of work.

If you don't have a 1440p monitor you should get one. It's hard to edit large images if you need to scroll all the time. I own this Viewsonic
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116578
and love it. There are less expensive 1440p monitors too:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2RY0X59885

Make sure you get Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and 32GB of RAM.
Windows 7 Home Premium wouldn't serve you well because it's limited to 16GB of RAM.

 

[dwatterworth]

I fully agree with aevm and the above statement. In addition to the suggestions already made, the memory should be your primary concern after the processor. Getting high speed memory will net you some of the largest performance gains (alongside a good sized SSD) for the applications you use. I work in an architecture firm and have been responsible for not only drawing/designing but building all of our heavy duty workstations which are used for extensive 3d modeling, drafting, rendering and image/video editing. I made the move on my 3960X/LGA 2011 based machine from 1600mhz DDR3 to 2133mhz ram and instantly noticed an immense difference in application response and performance. If you get 32gb or more of memory, you will be able to implement a ramdisk (using a virtual partition in your system memory as a physical drive) to load all of your in-progress work onto which will further speed you on your way.

 

[aevm]

If you upgrade to the i7-4930k I expect things that used to take 5 minutes will now take 3 minutes. You can get an idea from the charts in here:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_4820k_processor_review,10.html

SSD: I recommend the Samsung 840 Evo 256GB.

 

[aevm]

Let's talk about motherboards for a change:

This is a good motherboard for the i7-4930k (or even i7-4960x, if you really want the best CPU available)

ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 Intel X79
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131855

It would allow 8x8GB

If you go with the i7-4770k you need a Z87 motherboard, and those typically allow 32GB of RAM (4x8GB).

Video card: the GTX 660 sounds like a good idea. Personally, for my work computer, I went with i7-4770k/32GB/Asus GTX 660 Ti. I wanted the 4930k but I just couldn't spend that much. My GTX supports two monitors, at 2560x1600 and 2560x1440, I just needed the DVI cables that came with the monitors.

 

[Richard Floyd-Walker]

Let's talk about motherboards for a change:

This is a good motherboard for the i7-4930k (or even i7-4960x, if you really want the best CPU available)

ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 Intel X79
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131855

It would allow 8x8GB

If you go with the i7-4770k you need a Z87 motherboard, and those typically allow 32GB of RAM (4x8GB).

Video card: the GTX 660 sounds like a good idea. Personally, for my work computer, I went with i7-4770k/32GB/Asus GTX 660 Ti. I wanted the 4930k but I just couldn't spend that much. My GTX supports two monitors, at 2560x1600 and 2560x1440, I just needed the DVI cables that came with the monitors.

Thanks for that. 20% to 30% is a pretty good upgrade. It seems that for the price of a new iMac I can build myself a pretty decent Windows system.

 

[aevm]

I am 99% sure your Mac has an i7-2600 inside. You can see an i7-2600k (i.e. i7-2600 unlocked) compared with i7-4770k here:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=836

And a comparison between i7-2600k and i7-4960x (the i7-4930k's bigger brother, also with 6 cores):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=995

You may see improvements between 10% and 80% IMO.