kittypuss420 :
Hey, I'm a animation student in university. I am currently doing all of my work on a laptop that does not meet my needs, therefore I plan to use my laptop as something to bring back and forth to school but have a desktop when really doing work.
My primary uses are Mudbox/Zbrush, Photoshop,Illustrator and Unity3D.
I also hope to use two different monitors with either HDMI or VGA ports.
My budget is hopefully under $1500 CAD
If anyone can please help out with a build it will be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
kittypuss420,
Animation is demanding of both the CPU single-threaded performance, and as the rendering can be CPU, GPU or CPU/GPU based, becuase the files sizes are large, there needs to be a lot of memory and a fast disk. and the GPU need to be very good. that seems to include about every part. For animation on a budget - and appropriate to your moniker, how about:
HP Z420 Workstation Quad Core E5-1620 3.6GHz/16GB/500GB/AMD FirePro 2270 sold for C $432.01 + C $39.26 shipping
The Xeon E5-1620 4-core @ 3.6/3.8GHz has excellent single-threaded performance and paired with a GPU with a good number of CUDA cores, should be quite reasonable at rendering. The software needs to be researched though as some Adobe products do not recognize dual GPU's, but they may still run as-co processors- not sure. A pair of GTX 970's with 1664 CUDA cores each might be a good choice for this. An HP with an E5-1620 and single GTX 970 has a Passmark 3D score of 8913. That is very good. As it happens, my other z420 has the highest 3D score for a z420 using a workstation GPU (Quadro K4200 4GB, 1344 CUDA cores) and that score is 5032. I am usually a strong advocate of workstation cards and if you look at
Autodesk certified / recommended hardware for Mudbox, you'll see only a couple of what Autodesk calls "consumer" cards. They are more expensive, but if you can find a a Quadro K4200 4GB (now about $500 US) or even a K2200 4GB or K1200 4GB at a reasonable price, that is a longer future as you move into viewport software and need 10-bit color correction and x64 anti-aliasing.
Depending on the system you buy , try and have a minimum of 16GB and leave room by using larger modules to eventually have 32GB.
For a very fast disk system, have fast 250GB SSD such as a Samsung 850 EVO for current projects, and a 1TB mechanical storage drive. Some people run a separate SSD for OS/programs and projects but SSD access times and read/write rates are so high I've found that doing everything on one (480GB) SSD works very well.
The good feature of this kind of system is mainly that you don;t have to research, order, assemble, configure, and test a system form parts. Also, LGA2011 means you can upgrade to a large choice of Xeon E5-1600, E-2600 both v1 and v2 versions up to 8-core. LGA2100 also allows a lot of RAM- the z420 can use 64GB of ECC 1600. I have a z420 like the one above and in the Summer plan to change the E5-1620 to an E5-2690 which is an 8-core @ 2.8 /3.8GHz which cost US $2,050 new but now costs $400.
I've had perfect reliability wiht both used HP z420, and a variety of Dell Precisions over the last 7 years- they're built for exactly this kind of continuous running at full bore. The z420 is also extremely quiet.
Cheers,
BambiBoom
Modeling:
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
(Passmark V9.0 Beta Rating = 5019.1 > CPU= 14206 / 2D= 779 / 3D= 5032 / Mem= 2707 / Disk= 4760]
2. HP z420 (2013)(Revision 2) > Xeon E5-1620 four core @ 3.6 /3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000(2GB) > Samsung 840 (250GB) WD Black 1TB > > M-Audio 192 soundcard > Linksys WMP600N WiFi
[Passmark system rating = 3815 / CPU = 8985/ 2D= 767 / 3D= 2044/ Mem= 2523 / Disk= 2986]
Rendering:
3. 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)
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