- Sep 4, 2018
- 6
- 0
- 10
Does anyone have any good suggestions for buying a desktop/workstation that can Maya, Nuke, ZBrush? I'm looking for something that won't go above the costs of $2000 if possible!
Looking for a desktop that can run Maya, ZBrush, Nuke, etc
- Thread starter digiaquarius
- Start date
Solution
ScrewySqrl
Champion
- Aug 2, 2010
- 11,199
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- 53,540
Just a little bit over.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4GHz 16-Core Processor ($711.77 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC - Freezer 33 TR (Black/White) CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock - X399M Taichi Micro ATX TR4 Motherboard ($283.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($296.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial - MX500 1TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($189.01 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Hitachi - Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.95 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card ($364.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill - Galaxy-02 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2015.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-05 10:54 EDT-0400
this shoudl handle any rendering/workstation tasks handily.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4GHz 16-Core Processor ($711.77 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC - Freezer 33 TR (Black/White) CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock - X399M Taichi Micro ATX TR4 Motherboard ($283.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($296.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial - MX500 1TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($189.01 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Hitachi - Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.95 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card ($364.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill - Galaxy-02 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2015.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-05 10:54 EDT-0400
this shoudl handle any rendering/workstation tasks handily.
- Sep 4, 2018
- 6
- 0
- 10
Thanks for the list, any chance you have any recommendations for any current workstation or desktop without having to build one?
ScrewySqrl
Champion
- Aug 2, 2010
- 11,199
- 232
- 53,540
for teh cost, building your own is going to be much more powerful.
Just for comparison: with a step down in CPU (the 12 core 1920X Threadripper) and step up to GTX 1080ti GPU)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1VK-01JD-00K12
thats $3600 (vs $2071 modifying the above build to match - and even then it has a 4-times larger SSD)
Just for comparison: with a step down in CPU (the 12 core 1920X Threadripper) and step up to GTX 1080ti GPU)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1VK-01JD-00K12
thats $3600 (vs $2071 modifying the above build to match - and even then it has a 4-times larger SSD)
- Sep 4, 2018
- 6
- 0
- 10
I checked online for these parts and they're US pricing. I forgot to mention that I live in Canada so I'm looking for something that's in the $2000 CAN range. Can you provide a list that's within that range?
Please and thank you!
Please and thank you!
ScrewySqrl
Champion
- Aug 2, 2010
- 11,199
- 232
- 53,540
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1920X 3.5GHz 12-Core Processor ($499.99 @ Memory Express)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC - Freezer 33 TR (Black/White) CPU Cooler ($52.90 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: MSI - X399 SLI PLUS ATX TR4 Motherboard ($418.90 @ Newegg Canada)
Memory: Team - Vulcan 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($360.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($122.92 @ Mike's Computer Shop)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($72.75 @ Vuugo)
Video Card: XFX - Radeon RX 580 8GB GTS Black Core Edition Video Card ($319.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT SW RED ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($67.99 @ PC-Canada)
Total: $1961.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-06 13:38 EDT-0400
due to the differences between teh US and Canadian Dollars, I had to step down the CPU (to teh 12-core model) and teh GPU (to an AMD RX 580). the price drops that have happened in the last couple of months to GPUs in the US have not hit Canada yet, with GTX 1070s still over $500. Also changed to a 80+ Bronze PSU and a smaller (500 GB) SSD
CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1920X 3.5GHz 12-Core Processor ($499.99 @ Memory Express)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC - Freezer 33 TR (Black/White) CPU Cooler ($52.90 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: MSI - X399 SLI PLUS ATX TR4 Motherboard ($418.90 @ Newegg Canada)
Memory: Team - Vulcan 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($360.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($122.92 @ Mike's Computer Shop)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($72.75 @ Vuugo)
Video Card: XFX - Radeon RX 580 8GB GTS Black Core Edition Video Card ($319.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT SW RED ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($67.99 @ PC-Canada)
Total: $1961.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-06 13:38 EDT-0400
due to the differences between teh US and Canadian Dollars, I had to step down the CPU (to teh 12-core model) and teh GPU (to an AMD RX 580). the price drops that have happened in the last couple of months to GPUs in the US have not hit Canada yet, with GTX 1070s still over $500. Also changed to a 80+ Bronze PSU and a smaller (500 GB) SSD
Building a PC really is not hard. The only part you could possibly have a problem with is installing the CPU on the motherboard. If you are not careful you could bend the fine hair like pins on the motherboard rendering it unusable.
Installing a GPU takes about two or three minutes. installing a hard drive is the same time. You just have to plug in one or two cables per component, and close the case. You go to the manufacturer web site, download the drivers and install them and you are done.
So my recommendation is to get a base hp Z420 machine, upgrade the GPU, Ram, and buy an SSD drive. Avoid installing the CPU, save money and get the case motherboard power supply and CPU for a small price, and then by the rest and install it.
HP z420.
e5-1650 CPU, 32GB ram, $600 this is for an ebay certified machine, if you look on kijiji you can get it for more like $400 or $500
Samsung Evo 860, 500 gb, $129.99
GTX 1080 $620
$1329
Not as cpu intense as the ryzen build, but if you consider that maya is your main sotware, and maya wont use more than 6 cores, for viewport performance and modeling, those extra cores wont be used. The place where those cores is an advantage is in multi threaded applications, and in video editing.
For modeling you want a 4 to 6 core machine with decent single threaded performance. And then you want to decide what your primary software is going to be, and if it supports single or multi core CPU.
The ryzen CPU is 12 core which will be better for video editing it's also faster per core, but the $500 for the CPU alone, is what you pay for a motherboard, case, cpu, power supply all together if you get a used workstation, and you don't have to build it if you get a used hp workstation.
Maya view port performance will be acceptable with the 1650 , 32gb ram hp workstation, and the GTX 1080 card in this build is a far better card than the radeon.
see this link for comparison, and rightully so at twice the price.
https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W7_VISmBdGk/maxresdefault.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DW7_VISmBdGk&h=720&w=1280&tbnid=p9DKUCPiIn5tHM:&q=radeon+rx+580+vs+gtx+1080&tbnh=118&tbnw=211&usg=AFrqEzeLqbZcVB2RZ-ZAZMotOiM_RrIGIA&vet=12ahUKEwiJxrqp0qrdAhVs7YMKHVxMBOYQ9QEwAHoECAcQBg..i&docid=d7eMzbTt9Z-7CM&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJxrqp0qrdAhVs7YMKHVxMBOYQ9QEwAHoECAcQBg
You need to take a moment to think about whether this is a GPU rendering, or a CPU rendering machine, and then tailor your spending to match that.
In my experience there is no need for a $500 ryzen CPU to model and animate in maya. It wont be used for rendering if you set up GPU rendering (which everyone is going to now).
The GTX 1080 with GPU Rendering in VRay, and Redshift will be very fast.
See this post on puget systems about rendering configurations.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/content_creation/rendering.php
Installing a GPU takes about two or three minutes. installing a hard drive is the same time. You just have to plug in one or two cables per component, and close the case. You go to the manufacturer web site, download the drivers and install them and you are done.
So my recommendation is to get a base hp Z420 machine, upgrade the GPU, Ram, and buy an SSD drive. Avoid installing the CPU, save money and get the case motherboard power supply and CPU for a small price, and then by the rest and install it.
HP z420.
e5-1650 CPU, 32GB ram, $600 this is for an ebay certified machine, if you look on kijiji you can get it for more like $400 or $500
Samsung Evo 860, 500 gb, $129.99
GTX 1080 $620
$1329
Not as cpu intense as the ryzen build, but if you consider that maya is your main sotware, and maya wont use more than 6 cores, for viewport performance and modeling, those extra cores wont be used. The place where those cores is an advantage is in multi threaded applications, and in video editing.
For modeling you want a 4 to 6 core machine with decent single threaded performance. And then you want to decide what your primary software is going to be, and if it supports single or multi core CPU.
The ryzen CPU is 12 core which will be better for video editing it's also faster per core, but the $500 for the CPU alone, is what you pay for a motherboard, case, cpu, power supply all together if you get a used workstation, and you don't have to build it if you get a used hp workstation.
Maya view port performance will be acceptable with the 1650 , 32gb ram hp workstation, and the GTX 1080 card in this build is a far better card than the radeon.
see this link for comparison, and rightully so at twice the price.
https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W7_VISmBdGk/maxresdefault.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DW7_VISmBdGk&h=720&w=1280&tbnid=p9DKUCPiIn5tHM:&q=radeon+rx+580+vs+gtx+1080&tbnh=118&tbnw=211&usg=AFrqEzeLqbZcVB2RZ-ZAZMotOiM_RrIGIA&vet=12ahUKEwiJxrqp0qrdAhVs7YMKHVxMBOYQ9QEwAHoECAcQBg..i&docid=d7eMzbTt9Z-7CM&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJxrqp0qrdAhVs7YMKHVxMBOYQ9QEwAHoECAcQBg
You need to take a moment to think about whether this is a GPU rendering, or a CPU rendering machine, and then tailor your spending to match that.
In my experience there is no need for a $500 ryzen CPU to model and animate in maya. It wont be used for rendering if you set up GPU rendering (which everyone is going to now).
The GTX 1080 with GPU Rendering in VRay, and Redshift will be very fast.
See this post on puget systems about rendering configurations.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/content_creation/rendering.php
if you want to go into the $2000k range, then I recommend the following build. I have almost the same computer, and it is super fast.
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/boiledegg/saved/#view=PwkD23
if you watch video comparisons of the ryzen threadripper vs the i7 8700k you can see that the ryzen overheats, whereas the i7 8700k can be greatly over clocked with the Noctua cooler and still wont get as hot as the thread ripper.
For a monitor dont spend 500$ on a computer monitor, get a used LCD TV for $100. If you dont need 4k this is a great way to save money. now that 4k TV's have dropped to $500 from $2000 entry level, this has rendered the decent 1080p 42" tvs obsolete, and they are still the standard resolution for movies now.
I owned both these systems at the same time so i can make comparisons.
the difference between the hp z420 build and the i7 8700k build is that when texturing in the UV editor, the hp machine will be slower with complex sets of textures that are 2-4k. The i7 machine will not be laggy here. Substance painter you can load in 4k textures on complicated objects (300 parts object) and it wont slow down. With the hp machine you would not be able to do that without crashing the machine, and would have to seperate the parts and work on them less parts at a time. GPU Rendering wont really be much slower different because you would have the same GPU and same SSD so only the ram speed and the motherboard would be a bottle kneck, it is slower but its nowhere near half as slow (and you are paying double the price) .
Vray does have a hybrid mode that engages the cpu and gpu simultaneously, and this is where the rendering could potentially be much faster on the i7 machine.
If you are on a budget get the hp z 420, look for the components second hand, and make bids on them. You may get away with substantially less than listed here. Say $1100 and no tax. The machine wont be as fast, but it the main functionality in maya, and in rendering will be plenty fast.
If you have the money, get the i7 build over the ryzen build. It is optimized for maya, whereas the ryzen is optmized for multi threaded applications, like video editing in adobe premiere pro, which maya is not ( maya rendering can be optimized for mult threading, but GPU rendering is faster and this is where everyone is going now).
some things to consider is if you do get a used hp z 420 workstation, be sure to check the date it was manufactured as there are limitations on which version of CPU you can upgrade it to . For example the e5-1650 v2 , or other e5 -1650 chips will not necesarily work in your hp z420 because of a boot block they install on the mother board to force your to buy a whole new machine instead of upgrading the cpu.
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/boiledegg/saved/#view=PwkD23
if you watch video comparisons of the ryzen threadripper vs the i7 8700k you can see that the ryzen overheats, whereas the i7 8700k can be greatly over clocked with the Noctua cooler and still wont get as hot as the thread ripper.
For a monitor dont spend 500$ on a computer monitor, get a used LCD TV for $100. If you dont need 4k this is a great way to save money. now that 4k TV's have dropped to $500 from $2000 entry level, this has rendered the decent 1080p 42" tvs obsolete, and they are still the standard resolution for movies now.
I owned both these systems at the same time so i can make comparisons.
the difference between the hp z420 build and the i7 8700k build is that when texturing in the UV editor, the hp machine will be slower with complex sets of textures that are 2-4k. The i7 machine will not be laggy here. Substance painter you can load in 4k textures on complicated objects (300 parts object) and it wont slow down. With the hp machine you would not be able to do that without crashing the machine, and would have to seperate the parts and work on them less parts at a time. GPU Rendering wont really be much slower different because you would have the same GPU and same SSD so only the ram speed and the motherboard would be a bottle kneck, it is slower but its nowhere near half as slow (and you are paying double the price) .
Vray does have a hybrid mode that engages the cpu and gpu simultaneously, and this is where the rendering could potentially be much faster on the i7 machine.
If you are on a budget get the hp z 420, look for the components second hand, and make bids on them. You may get away with substantially less than listed here. Say $1100 and no tax. The machine wont be as fast, but it the main functionality in maya, and in rendering will be plenty fast.
If you have the money, get the i7 build over the ryzen build. It is optimized for maya, whereas the ryzen is optmized for multi threaded applications, like video editing in adobe premiere pro, which maya is not ( maya rendering can be optimized for mult threading, but GPU rendering is faster and this is where everyone is going now).
some things to consider is if you do get a used hp z 420 workstation, be sure to check the date it was manufactured as there are limitations on which version of CPU you can upgrade it to . For example the e5-1650 v2 , or other e5 -1650 chips will not necesarily work in your hp z420 because of a boot block they install on the mother board to force your to buy a whole new machine instead of upgrading the cpu.
the base hp workstation mentioned above for $600
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/12-Logical-Core-HP-Z420-E5-1650-3-20GHz-32GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-nVidia-Quadro-600/323360145129?hash=item4b49c43ee9:g:SQIAAOSwlUpbU1lx
And another one with a 1650-v2 which is about 20 % faster CPU
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Z420-Workstation-Intel-Xeon-E5-1620-V2-Quad-Core-3-7GHz-16GB-256GB-SSD-K2000/173521612826?epid=2087846195&hash=item2866b1b01a:g:ucUAAOSwM9RbK73W
If you buy a used workstation, try to get one that has a good CPU, e5-1650, e5-1660-, these come in version v1, V2, V3, and higher version is more preferable, but if you do the comparison you will see that the v2 versions are not more than 20% faster, so not worth spending a whole lot more to get this over a v1
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-1650-v2-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-1650
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/12-Logical-Core-HP-Z420-E5-1650-3-20GHz-32GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-nVidia-Quadro-600/323360145129?hash=item4b49c43ee9:g:SQIAAOSwlUpbU1lx
And another one with a 1650-v2 which is about 20 % faster CPU
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Z420-Workstation-Intel-Xeon-E5-1620-V2-Quad-Core-3-7GHz-16GB-256GB-SSD-K2000/173521612826?epid=2087846195&hash=item2866b1b01a:g:ucUAAOSwM9RbK73W
If you buy a used workstation, try to get one that has a good CPU, e5-1650, e5-1660-, these come in version v1, V2, V3, and higher version is more preferable, but if you do the comparison you will see that the v2 versions are not more than 20% faster, so not worth spending a whole lot more to get this over a v1
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-1650-v2-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-1650
Twistfaria
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- Feb 3, 2016
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I believe that ZBrush does utilize multi-threading well so if that is a large part of your work flow a Ryzen CPU might be worth getting. Other than the threadrippers there is the most recent addition to their lineup in the AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7GHz 8-Core Processor which is cheaper than the i7 and comes with a cooler.
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