3D design machine for €450 ?

NeVeR

I thinking of getting back into 3D design as a hobby, My old PC wont be able to handle it.

I dont need a montior or OS,

It will need to be able to render the designs and run 3Ds max and other programs at the same time.

What will I be able to build for €450

I need the following

Case
HDD
RAM
PSU
Processor
Motherboard
Graphics Card


I know it's a big ask but cant afford much more.

NeVeR

What about this

Solitaire

Will a graphics card even be of any use to you? Most CAD/rendering works through the CPU unless you have an expensive Quadro/FireGL, or any recent nVidia card IF you are using Gelato.

IMHO that build is too PSU-heavy and CPU-light.

€450 shipped:



Sorry, my preferred PSU was "very" out of stock so I was stuck paying a but more for one and had to drop this as a result It would have put it slightly overbudget but it would have been worth it on that quad!

Unregistered.

NeVeR wrote: »

What about this...

RAM is a little expensive for what it's going for these days. PSU is OTT. Graphics card, AFAIK, is also a bit overpriced considering a 5770 is hovering around the 100 mark on specials these days.

NeVeR

Thanks for the replies.. I didnt know that about the graphics card.. But i would like one with HDMI so i can hook it into my TV for watching movies sometimes.

Also i hate that site as you cant pay by credit card or Paypal.. such a pain.

Solitaire

AFAIK you can pay by Paypal... I prefer the bank transfers over credit card actually! So long as you have Internet or Phone Banking you can make the transfer seconds after you order, processing isn't that much slower than credit card after the first time!

indough

when i tried it by paypal it said something to the effect that you can pay by paypal but not by a paypal credit card transfer, as in it must be in your PP account already afaik. dont know how theyd tell the difference but thats the way it seemed to me

Solitaire

Ah flip

NeVeR

Solitaire wrote: »

Ah flip

Whats this mean?

Solitaire

An expletive that was drowned at birth :pac:

NeVeR

So should i get lesser graphics card and a better CPU and RAM ?

Unregistered.

NeVeR wrote: »

So should i get lesser graphics card and a better CPU and RAM ?

What programs will you be using (or intend on using in the future)? You could look up if they can render through gfx card or not.

imitation

I would gun for a better processor (with as many cores as you can get) over a GFX card if 3d is your game (dont however go for a non ATI/nVidia card). What I find with Cinema 4D is that open GL will help you out with previews, but rendering the final scene is down to the processor. This is due to the fact 3D packages use ray tracing, while 3D cards use other methods to generate graphics for games and so can't bring the brunt of there processing ability to be of any use.

That being said, things are changing, with things like cuda changing how graphics cards work, so it maybe worth researching a bit more

Which retailers are you guys recommending now ?

NeVeR

Unregistered. wrote: »

What programs will you be using (or intend on using in the future)? You could look up if they can render through gfx card or not.

I will be using 3Ds max / Vray / Photoshop they are the main ones but i might use others not sure at the moment.

I cant really afford a high end Graphics card. This is just a hobby and cant spend mad money.

Would the AMD quad core be better then the Intel core i3 ?

Solitaire

Probably. Depends entirely on how well your chosen 3D package(s) play with HyperThreading.

indough

3ds max is meant to benefit a fair bit from it anyway afaik (about 10%). pretty sure vray does too

Solitaire

A HT-friendly app will get a 100% performance boost from HT though (arguably from inefficient code in the first place ) Good apps will get 80-90% extra performance from HT. I remember an old i3-330 review where X3 got a ~90% boost in raw FPS from having HT switched on. At the other polar extreme, Crysis in the same review had its FPS reduced by 10% when HT was toggled on

Unless you're OCing, you'd need a consistent ~80% render boost from HT to make an i3-330 more desirable than an X4-640 - bear in mind that reviews hinted at L3 cache giving zero improvement in performance in rendering, so a 3GHz Athlon quad is a fantastic budget option for rendering on the cheap

Of course, if OCing then the further you go the less boost you need from HT, as an i3 can OC much higher and cooler than an Athlon quad

indough

http://techgage.com/article/intel_core_i7_performance_preview/6

Solitaire

Nothing about AMD in there...

marco_polo

All athlon and phenom Quads (as well as a most X3 cores) are faster than the i3 @3DS max according to these CPU benchmarks, so there is not much of a HT boost for the dualie i3 by the looks of it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Image-Rendering-3DS-Max-2010,2420.html

Similar story for CS 5

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Image-Processing-Adobe-Photoshop-CS-5,2426.html

NeVeR

Can anyone post up a suggested product list.. If can go over budget by a little bit.

Solitaire

No surprise. I suspect a cheap X4-640 will rape anything under an i5-760 at 3DS but it really depends on what packages NeVeR wants to run...

indough

Although we've concluded that Core i7 in general is faster than Core 2 in pretty-much every-single test we ran, the biggest increases in performance were seen with our 3D rendering applications. There, we attributed that a big reason for the huge boost was due to HyperThreading, and these next few graphs solidify that fact.

Turning HT off caused very noticeable changes... a full decrease in performance of 25%. Minor changes were seen with the Techgage Dog model, which leads us to believe that ray tracing-based tasks can take better advantage of multi-threaded processors than most anything else.

Like earlier, we once again see similar results between 3ds Max and POV-Ray. Here, we see a 29% performance boost with HT enabled.

29% performance gain in 3d rendering is more than worth the money imo, but if its just as a hobby then perhaps not

marco_polo

An Athlon II Quad is the sweet spot I think on a budget.

Solitaire

indough wrote: »

29% performance gain in 3d rendering is more than worth the money imo, but if its just as a hobby then perhaps not

Most of that is related to a 10-20% jump in platform performance, with only a 5-15% jump due to HT.

And we're not talking i7 here; we don't have the budget. There's a big difference between 8 logical threads and 4 when you're only getting a 10% boost from HT!!

NeVeR

Solitaire wrote: »

No surprise. I suspect a cheap X4-640 will rape anything under an i5-760 at 3DS but it really depends on what packages NeVeR wants to run...

I dont mind.... I'm easy either way... My old builds were AMD but i could go with Intel..

Solitaire

It really depends on what software you want to use and finding out what level of improvement HT gives it. Although I suspect that (at stock speeds anyway) the AMD budget quad will be winning most of the time

NeVeR

Yes... i'm still looking.. Cant decide

How about this ?

Solitaire

That comes to €530

- Are you sure you need to spend that much on mobo?
- You need dual-channel memory for AM3, not triple
- Either go for an Asgard (cheaper) or a Thermaltake V3/V4 (better)
- Only go for this if the Cougar A400 and Amazon 450W are both out of stock; 32-33A of 12V power is plenty
- Why the HD5750? Why the passive version??
- I think the HD105 is a slow 5400rpm drive; look for the HD103 version, that's the full-speed F3

NeVeR

Solitaire wrote: »

That comes to €530

- Are you sure you need to spend that much on mobo?
- You need dual-channel memory for AM3, not triple
- Either go for an Asgard (cheaper) or a Thermaltake V3/V4 (better)
- Only go for this if the Cougar A400 and Amazon 450W are both out of stock; 32-33A of 12V power is plenty
- Why the HD5750? Why the passive version??
- I think the HD105 is a slow 5400rpm drive; look for the HD103 version, that's the full-speed F3

How is it €530 ?

I thought they only put the RAM that will go with the Mobo in the selection.. so i didnt even look ..

I got the mobo for the inputs. But i could go for a cheaper one.

Dont know about the Graphic card.

Can you post what you sould build so i've something to look at

Cheers

Solitaire

It comes to nearly €500, add €30 for shipping and you get...

Anyway, this is my revised build, €410 shipped:



If you're not going to be gaming on this thing I might as well go for a fairly small nVidia solution - if you ever do bump into CUDA you can get a bit of a boost off it. And yes, it has HDMI... Otherwise similar to the last one I did for you, only with a big CPU cooler and a larger HDD this time around, and less money spent!

Dublin_Gunner

Here's my suggestion for €457 - I did not include a DVD burner, as these are a dime a dozen, so I'll leave that up to you



Good 6 core CPU, decent enough gfx for the price, good HDD, 4GB ram. Would be a pretty decent rendering machine.

There's no need for an aftermarket cooler in any of these builds. The stock coolers are just fine for your requirements, and will even allow for a little bit of overclocking if you wish.

Plus, the mobo gives futureproof-ability with SATA-600 and USB-3.

**oops, for some reason the PSU didn't go into the basket! Add €40 for a Corsair or Cooler Master 400W~

The build might be €50~ over budget, but with that CPU you'll be working with a good load more power.