Question Is this PC worth building?

[BrutalHero]

Hi,

I have in my hands a HP Z8 G4 Motherboard with 2 Xeon Gold 6128 3.4ghz CPUS and 2 RTX 5000 Graphics cards and around 400 gb of DDR4 Ram..

I am only missing the case to setup everything together, which will cost me around 500 euro.

My Question: Is it worth paying the 500 euro to make this setup or it's better off selling all the parts individually and buying an I9 9900k with an RTX 3080.

Computer Usage : Game Development (Unreal Engine 5, Unity) Photoshop, Blender , Gaming and normal daily tasks.

 

[Lutfij]

A follow up to this thread, nontheless;
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/hp-z8-g4-motherboard-please-help-me.3776854/#post-22792740

Not worth it, if you're spending nearly the same on a new build albeit with concurrent generation tech/gear.

 

[DavidM012]

https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Xeon-Gold-6128

The I9-9900k has higher single and multi core scores to push the gpu harder and most games or probably every game runs just fine on systems with 16gb of ram. 32gb for the other tasks.

Dunno if the extra memory bandwidth on the xeon provides any comparable peripheral boosts that make up for it somehow but it's also probably best to stay in shape and use things for their intended purposes so flog the xeon rig and buy the i9 rig.

Games also won't benefit from more threads from the 2 cpus some would just be idle. 2 cpus are only useful for multitasking.

Unreal Engine

CPUs from Intel or AMD that have more than 6 cores/12 threads. However, most experts have advised adding more than 8 cores for anyone planning on getting serious with Unreal Engine. For Intel, you can go with the Intel Core i5-12600K and above. Likewise, for AMD, you can go with the Ryzen 5 5600X and above.

https://opendata.blender.org/benchm...PU&group_by=device_name&blender_version=3.2.0

The benchmark list for blender says 2 xeon 6144 gold are better for that don't see the 6128 on it but you could search the other xeons and compare them to the 6128 golds for an idea of whether they are more or less powerful than the 6144.

So I guess it depends what you'll be doing the most. You'd need to go even higher with your cpu I mean get an even better CPU to get those intensive tasks to work faster and get the most out of it probably.

This casts a bit more light on it I think

https://www.cgdirector.com/best-computer-for-blender/

The i9-9900k is middle of the road for it. You won't get the versatility if you go with the xeons but you won't get the somewhat higher blender score if you go with the i9.

 

[BrutalHero]

https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Xeon-Gold-6128

The I9-9900k has higher single and multi core scores to push the gpu harder and most games or probably every game runs just fine on systems with 16gb of ram. 32gb for the other tasks.

Dunno if the extra memory bandwidth on the xeon provides any comparable peripheral boosts that make up for it somehow but it's also probably best to stay in shape and use things for their intended purposes so flog the xeon rig and buy the i9 rig.

Games also won't benefit from more threads from the 2 cpus some would just be idle. 2 cpus are only useful for multitasking.

Unreal Engine

CPUs from Intel or AMD that have more than 6 cores/12 threads. However, most experts have advised adding more than 8 cores for anyone planning on getting serious with Unreal Engine. For Intel, you can go with the Intel Core i5-12600K and above. Likewise, for AMD, you can go with the Ryzen 5 5600X and above.

https://opendata.blender.org/benchm...PU&group_by=device_name&blender_version=3.2.0

The benchmark list for blender says 2 xeon 6144 gold are better for that don't see the 6128 on it but you could search the other xeons and compare them to the 6128 golds for an idea of whether they are more or less powerful than the 6144.

So I guess it depends what you'll be doing the most. You'd need to go even higher with your cpu I mean get an even better CPU to get those intensive tasks to work faster and get the most out of it probably.

This casts a bit more light on it I think

https://www.cgdirector.com/best-computer-for-blender/

The i9-9900k is middle of the road for it. You won't get the versatility if you go with the xeons but you won't get the somewhat higher blender score if you go with the i9.

Thanks you for the thoughtful reply.

Really helped me a lot.

 

[BrutalHero]

A follow up to this thread, nontheless;
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/hp-z8-g4-motherboard-please-help-me.3776854/#post-22792740

Not worth it, if you're spending nearly the same on a new build albeit with concurrent generation tech/gear.

Thank you!

 

[geofelt]

You do not need a case to test out the system you have.
Lay the parts out on a table and start the motherboard by shorting the two PWR pins.

Try it and see how happy you are with gaming.

My guess is that for fast action games, your graphics cards will be inadequate.
For cpu limited games, the single thread performance will not be as good as you want.

A 9900K would not be a big boost for gaming.
A simple I5-12600K would be better.
Here is a review:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_12600k_processor_review,21.html

In a month or so, you may find 13th gen to be some 15% better price/performance.

Likely, you can reuse 4 sticks your ddr4 ram.

 

[BrutalHero]

You do not need a case to test out the system you have.
Lay the parts out on a table and start the motherboard by shorting the two PWR pins.

Try it and see how happy you are with gaming.

My guess is that for fast action games, your graphics cards will be inadequate.
For cpu limited games, the single thread performance will not be as good as you want.

A 9900K would not be a big boost for gaming.
A simple I5-12600K would be better.
Here is a review:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_12600k_processor_review,21.html

In a month or so, you may find 13th gen to be some 15% better price/performance.

Likely, you can reuse 4 sticks your ddr4 ram.

Thanks for the tips, unfortunately I dont have the PSU that comes with the Hp Z8 Case, so I cannot start it.

I will probably sell all the parts I have separately and build a full blown gaming pc.

Thanks for the review.

 

[Karadjgne]

For gaming, not worth it. The Quadro's aren't very good when it comes to FPS, it's not what they are designed for. Neither is the Xeons, lower IPC per core vrs the newer desktop cpus and lower Turbo speeds.

But that's gaming. With something like blender, it'll use as many available cores as it can, and even at max, the 9900k can't touch the sheer computational power of the H8's dual Xeons at 112 threads. The Quadro's also are better suited for renders than the mainstream cards.

400Gb of 6 channel ram vs 128Gb of dual channel ram. That's a massive discrepancy if doing anything heavy ram bandwidth related, not to mention storage capabilities of the H8 vrs a Z390. Serious lack of pcie lanes.

So it's a matter of pick your poison. The Xeon is a workhorse cpu, and your setup is about perfect for the job it has to do, but kinda sucks at gaming. The i9/3080 is leaps ahead in gaming, but comparatively sucks compared to the H8 setup for working purposes.

What's more important.

 

[DavidM012]

Something looks odd about the memory. It's 400gb but 400gb isn't divisible by 16, 32, 64 or 128 without a 0.5. 400gb by 8gb is 50 but there's only 24 dimm slots. All the ram modules aren't 8gb then. There must be a mix between different sized modules.

So you'll have to sort the ram somehow.

There is something fun about having 400gb of memory though, you could put your games on ramdisk. It's one of those things I've always wanted to try if I had the opportunity.

You might have trouble selling it if you can't prove it's working.

Not sure what size or type of power supply it needs but could look it up. Why? Because maybe to make the money you have to invest a bit. Though I expect the power supply would be super expensive and you couldn't mess around with inferior power supplies with it.

Then there is the notion of why the machine was configured this way and what it's purpose was. It's hard to guess it was some kind of server if it has 2 quadros in it.

So there's a maybe that it's good for some other 3d graphics application.

 

[kanewolf]

Something looks odd about the memory. It's 400gb but 400gb isn't divisible by 16, 32, 64 or 128 without a 0.5. 400gb by 8gb is 25 but there's only 24 dimm slots. All the ram modules aren't 8gb then. There must be a mix between different sized modules.

The OP said "around 400GB". I would take that number with a grain of salt.

 

[DavidM012]

384 by16=24. And 400 by 8 is 50.

 

[DavidM012]

It's 'adequate' for gaming it's just not ultra on the latest releases.
A full blown gaming rig is a rare privilege of playing the latest titles at the max settings but sometimes it's just as boring to replay them. Still that's all a matter of preference. You always want to set it higher

Saving time on blender might be worth something if you're doing a lot of it but to get some better blender performance was the i9 12900k and it's equal (by a couple of fps) to the i5-12600k for gaming. Where the i5-12600k is slower on blender.

Referring back to the blender benchmarks the i9 12900k

Intel Core i9-12900K	362.53	17
2X Intel Xeon Gold 6144 CPU @ 3.50GHz	356.09	1

Is slightly better than the xeon on the cpu.

So then it's why the 2 quadro gpus.

Only 1 3080ti is necessary for gaming so you're slicing off a bit of rendering power to play games at the highest setting?

So there must've been some kind of original purpose here that we're oblivious to.

The i9-12900k matches it for the purposes the OP stated and presumably photoshop isn't as demanding as blender and unreal engine.

There's the CPU+GPU combo to explore for 3d applications.

 

[DavidM012]

Also to think about pending releases

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-7-7700x-edges-past-core-i9-12900k-in-new-benchmark

Zen 4 being on the horizon.

 

[BrutalHero]

For gaming, not worth it. The Quadro's aren't very good when it comes to FPS, it's not what they are designed for. Neither is the Xeons, lower IPC per core vrs the newer desktop cpus and lower Turbo speeds.

But that's gaming. With something like blender, it'll use as many available cores as it can, and even at max, the 9900k can't touch the sheer computational power of the H8's dual Xeons at 112 threads. The Quadro's also are better suited for renders than the mainstream cards.

400Gb of 6 channel ram vs 128Gb of dual channel ram. That's a massive discrepancy if doing anything heavy ram bandwidth related, not to mention storage capabilities of the H8 vrs a Z390. Serious lack of pcie lanes.

So it's a matter of pick your poison. The Xeon is a workhorse cpu, and your setup is about perfect for the job it has to do, but kinda sucks at gaming. The i9/3080 is leaps ahead in gaming, but comparatively sucks compared to the H8 setup for working purposes.

What's more important.

Thanks a lot , I am thinking on keeping the xeons for heavy work like game development blender etc. All the extra ram will be handy as I have 16 gb x 24 slots.

I will try and find a cheaper Case and then it will be worth it as I already have the motherboard the cpus and the gpu.

I am also thinking of building my own PC with a I9 12900KS and a RTX 3090ti, but I am still not sure about the GPU, should I wait for the 4090ti ?

 

[BrutalHero]

Something looks odd about the memory. It's 400gb but 400gb isn't divisible by 16, 32, 64 or 128 without a 0.5. 400gb by 8gb is 50 but there's only 24 dimm slots. All the ram modules aren't 8gb then. There must be a mix between different sized modules.

So you'll have to sort the ram somehow.

There is something fun about having 400gb of memory though, you could put your games on ramdisk. It's one of those things I've always wanted to try if I had the opportunity.

You might have trouble selling it if you can't prove it's working.

Not sure what size or type of power supply it needs but could look it up. Why? Because maybe to make the money you have to invest a bit. Though I expect the power supply would be super expensive and you couldn't mess around with inferior power supplies with it.

Then there is the notion of why the machine was configured this way and what it's purpose was. It's hard to guess it was some kind of server if it has 2 quadros in it.

So there's a maybe that it's good for some other 3d graphics application.

Hi just to clear everything out , I have 16 gb x 24 slots which is 384, thats why I mentioned around 400.

About the Power Supply I also think that it has to be the original one that HP provided as it looks like a custom PSU that supports this kind of machine, I already contacted a person that has the case and power supply and they are asking for 500 euro which I am not sure if it's worth it.

I have 2 RTX 5000 Graphics cards which I could sell for around 700 euro each , the Xeon CPUS are around 200 euro each and the motherboard 500 euro. So I would get like 2000+ euro from selling everything but it could take time so I am not sure what to do exactly.

Also I have like 30 sticks of 16gb ram (DDR4 at 3200mhz) that I could sell , which would be another 1000 or so euro.

My only problem is that the CPUS are quite old and I dont want to spend another thousand to buy newer ones

 

[DavidM012]

I'm not sure.

nvidia/comments/l8z8so
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/l8z8so/quadro_rtx5000_vs_geforce_rtx_3090/


https://technical.city/en/video/Quadro-RTX-5000-vs-GeForce-RTX-3090-Ti

So the 3090ti blows quadro 5000 out of the water but you have 2x and they can work with an sli bridge. So I don't know if that's advantageous somehow for 3d rendering.

Why do they exist if the 3090ti is cheaper and they are more expensive but inferior? So who would buy them if they are no longer relevant?

People in 3d biz are likely to be super savvy and will spot a bad deal a mile away. It will be tough. Buyers will want to know everything has been tested and working. Troubleshooting rows of 24 dimms will take an amateur a month of sundays.

So you reckon you could make 3000 euro selling everything and buying the psu is 500 euro and 2500 euro will cover a 3090ti, a 12900k cpu and a motherboard.

Well hiking the power of the cpu is costing money for gaming when it's roughly equal to what this thing can do on blender. Supposing it's working properly.

So maybe don't give up the 2 quadros until you know what they are capable of.

 

[BrutalHero]

I'm not sure.

nvidia/comments/l8z8so
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/l8z8so/quadro_rtx5000_vs_geforce_rtx_3090/


https://technical.city/en/video/Quadro-RTX-5000-vs-GeForce-RTX-3090-Ti

So the 3090ti blows quadro 5000 out of the water but you have 2x and they can work with an sli bridge. So I don't know if that's advantageous somehow for 3d rendering.

Why do they exist if the 3090ti is cheaper and they are more expensive but inferior? So who would buy them if they are no longer relevant?

People in 3d biz are likely to be super savvy and will spot a bad deal a mile away. It will be tough. Buyers will want to know everything has been tested and working. Troubleshooting rows of 24 dimms will take an amateur a month of sundays.

So you reckon you could make 3000 euro selling everything and buying the psu is 500 euro and 2500 euro will cover a 3090ti, a 12900k cpu and a motherboard.

Well hiking the power of the cpu is costing money for gaming when it's roughly equal to what this thing can do on blender. Supposing it's working properly.

So maybe don't give up the 2 quadros until you know what they are capable of.

Good thinking, I will research a little bit more about the quadros as its gonna be easier just buying the case with a psu and having a computer than selling everything.

Thank you

 

[DavidM012]

Either road is difficult. After all the power consumption of the h8 rig will be higher with 2 cpus and 2 gpus. It's merely that you have to show it's working.

You think you can upgrade the 2 cpus for a thousand euros. What cpu do you have in mind for that? So that can be looked up as well.

I guess you don't have the sli bridge for the 2 quadros. That will cost a couple of hundred too. And you don't know if it's working at the moment.

Having the 30 dimms complicates things as they should be matched. So testing them all will be onerous. You're gonna insert 24 random dimms and switch it on. It's gonna go beep and you don't know what's up.

The method to install the dimms one at a time, shut down, restart, shut down, next one... omg.

So I would'na said easier but you can't sell shtuff 'not tested don't know if it's working'.

 

[BrutalHero]

Either road is difficult. After all the power consumption of the h8 rig will be higher with 2 cpus and 2 gpus. It's merely that you have to show it's working.

You think you can upgrade the 2 cpus for a thousand euros. What cpu do you have in mind for that? So that can be looked up as well.

I guess you don't have the sli bridge for the 2 quadros. That will cost a couple of hundred too. And you don't know if it's working at the moment.

Having the 30 dimms complicates things as they should be matched. So testing them all will be onerous. You're gonna insert 24 random dimms and switch it on. It's gonna go beep and you don't know what's up.

The method to install the dimms one at a time, shut down, restart, shut down, next one... omg.

So I would'na said easier but you can't sell shtuff 'not tested don't know if it's working'.

Yeah , looks like a lot of work for me, I don't want to sell anything untested as the value will go down.

I may take the hit for the case and power supply just for the ability to test everything.

I haven't really looked into the CPUS that are suitable for upgrade but from some research I can see that most new xeons are really freaking expensive . Like the Xeon Gold 6240 , it's a 2019 CPU but its still in the 2k range.

I don't think it's worth upgrading anything as I won't use it to the full potential.

I mainly want to play games and develop games, I don't need to create triple AAA games with hyper realistic graphics.
I think it will be way easier to take the hit for the case and PSU and then sell the computer as a complete build on eBay.

 

[DavidM012]

So to get the two gpus to work in sli for rendering will require the sli bridge.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/nvi...slot-configuration-for-nvidia-quadro-rtx-5000

around £115

So basically, you can match the i9 12600k + 3090ti for blendering quite closely but not for gaming. You renders your game but can't test it on the highest settings. Things look a bit out of shape.

 

[DavidM012]

and with that workload your energy bill will be higher long term. The investigation then becomes, could you shave something off your energy bill and stick it on a new i9 12700k rig? Ryzen also competes in blender with the 5950x but doesn't hit the highest note in gaming either and zen 4 is on the horizon and in a month or two the scene is going to look different.

With these workloads I would imagine power consumption becomes relevant.

 

[BrutalHero]

and with that workload your energy bill will be higher long term. The investigation then becomes, could you shave something off your energy bill and stick it on a new i9 12700k rig? Ryzen also competes in blender with the 5950x but doesn't hit the highest note in gaming either and zen 4 is on the horizon and in a month or two the scene is going to look different.

With these workloads I would imagine power consumption becomes relevant.

So to get the two gpus to work in sli for rendering will require the sli bridge.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/nvi...slot-configuration-for-nvidia-quadro-rtx-5000

around £115

So basically, you can match the i9 12600k + 3090ti for blendering quite closely but not for gaming. You renders your game but can't test it on the highest settings. Things look a bit out of shape.

Perfect I was looking for the SLI adaptor and I couldnt find it.

As for power consumption I don't really mind as the electricity bill is paid with the rent. So I don't pay anything for electricity .

For the gaming performance I don't mind as long as its playable. I am looking for medium-high settings 60+ fps.

Of course later down the line I can focus on building a beast of a gaming pc to achieve the best results but for now as I have the components at hand I will just focus on this workstation .

 

[DavidM012]

Who pays might mind when the bill goes through the roof. The value of the components will decline over time. I would guess you have a narrow window of opportunity to make your mind up.

The idea then seems to be assemble the system, which is the first hurdle, test it in sli - I can't find any benchmarks for 2 quadros in sli vs anything only a vague statement that nvidia claims it doubles the gpu power but in practice it rarely does - which I assume refers to gaming because dual gpus don't benefit gaming but 3d applications can leverage that.

But I can't say for sure because I don't see any documentation about it.

So it's up to you to get to grips with the system and judge if the blendering is equal to the 3090ti performance.

 

[Karadjgne]

So the 3090ti blows quadro 5000 out of the water but you have 2x and they can work with an sli bridge.

Not sli, Windows 10/11 and is mgpu based (multi-gpu) and DirectX 12 native which uses both cards simultaneously, but independently of each other, on the same project, basically doing what the 2x cpus do. That allows doubling of the vram etc as both cards can be brought to bear, added. With sli, that was simultaneous but only in the sense that each card only did half the work on a frame, so vram was not added. That's a benefit when using higher resolutions or more vram intensive applications.

The Quadro RTX's are workhorse gpus, the mainstream RTX are racehorse gpus. They each have benefits and drawbacks depending on application.

With the H8 pc, Op could easily run several VM's and run several different renders/compiles simultaneously, and not affect time used much at all if looking for comparisons after changes, whereas with a more traditional gaming setup, that would be far more restricted or take much longer to do, being limited by a single cpu/gpu.

 

[DavidM012]

oh well we used to think of sli as 'dual' gpu but yes the architecture is different with nvlink. Still can't find any benchmarks on 'dual rtx 5000 vs 3090ti' or vs anything. dual rtx 5000 on direct x.

It seems to be too far out of the mainstream consumer market. So you'll have to discover it. Which is a kind of fun thing but bear in mind how the market's going to move with prices.

Yes with the dual cpu architecture you could have several intensive tasks open at once and task switch. But you won't get the gaming performance of a gaming pc.

If you move to a gaming pc later you'll lose some of the multitasking facility. How long will the h8 rig be useful? A year, two years, five years? If you're planning to sell it to cash in for a new build you're slicing off a bit of that multi tasking capability and tacking it on to a high frame rate in a game.

The software might get heavier in tandem with the new releases of hardware. making those 6128s struggle more. Windows 10 retires 2025. You could likely run linux on it indefinitely.

So it's just delving into it really.