Basically I need a new desk top as I shall be doing some very heavy 3d solid modelling quite soon. I dont fancy just buying one off the shelf, so could someone in the know just do me a list of decent gear??

By decent gear I dont mean the most expensive everything components that will give 90-95% performance compared to the best available should be sufficient, but I need loads of space to expand if possible!

Cheers!!

 

You get what you pay for a Celeron will give 90% of the performance of a Pentium however If I was doing 3D Modelling I would be looking for a real SMP motherboard two processors, very fast hard disks in raid, loads of RAM and a high end card.

You should state a budget and the OS you are going to use so people know what you have to spend where.

In reality you will have to choose to make do, or have good kit which costs. Modelling creates a lot of disk activity and uses a lot of resources as such anything less than the best you can afford will be a performance hit.

 

Mac Pro

 

was gonna suggest a mac tbh

 

The only problems with a Mac would be that the OP said about wanting to be able to expand in the future.

I would ask the OP to post what sort of budget he has for the machine he wants built, as this will determine the specifications of any components.

 

It depends heavily on the software you're using.. worth checking what their recommendation is on hardware.

 

Which is why I suggested a Mac Pro, which is very expandable

 

To be fair ill pay whatever i need to pay, because I want to do it once and do it right. I just want to avoid getting shafted by lining someone elses pockets....

Progs ill be using are mainly Catia and Solidworks, but with a little 3ds max and other progs along the way.

PS cheers for the response, this room being a little thin on topics I wasnt expecting so many hits!

 

Well as you know, rendering speed is simply down to CPU.. so the more you spend on a CPU, the faster your scenes will render...

 

Very kind of you to assume that I know anything about PC's, but I assure you that this is not the case

In all seriousness though, Ive had a friend recommend the new Intel Core i7 processor to me, but its a serious expense.... worth it in your opinion??

 

No, not really. I always recommend to people to buy middle of the road stuff - it's the best value for money. Something like a Q9450 based system should be quite speedy.

 

Thing is though, I can get an i7 for the same price as a quad.... I realise that ill need to spend more on a board and ram, power supply etc, but in the long run I may be better off...

 

If your being serious, then we need to know what your actually doing?

Rough idea of price range ?

And as above, what OS ?

 

My current PC is a 2 year old dual core jobby with plenty of ram, but im still on XP as I find it more user friendly than vista not to mention less resource hungry.

And as stated earlier, it will be for 3D solid modelling not gaming. If my current machine would run the software without slowing to a crawl, I wouldnt be looking to upgrade.

PS would like to stay away from Mac's as getting the software again is not an option.

 

You know Macs can run XP right? So why would you need to get the software again?

 

Lol nope didnt know that! That broadens my choice even more then....

 

All new Macs running on Intel chips can run Windows XP alongside OS X using a prgram (which is part of the Apple OS X operating system) called "Bootcamp". This can also be upgraded using third party software (called "Parallels") to allow you to run XP in a virtualistion from within OS X without needed to reboot between OS's.....

 

Fuck Macs.

 

Erm...... ok!

 

Speaking from a Windows PC viewpoint you are going to be using software that is fairly CPU, GPU intensive that can use a lot of ram. I looked at the specs for 3d Studio max and it supports 64bit, so a logical choice is going to be a 64bit os allowing you to utilize the extra ram available. I will be honest, I am not familar with solidworks or catia so could not offer personal advice on those.

I would go for the following spec system if budget isnt a problem.

Intel core i7 920 quad cpu - Most modern design software is multi threaded
Intel based x58 mobo - provides support for up to 12GB DDR3 1800mhz ram and 8 core cpu's- future proofing as best as possible
Ram 6GB DDR3 Ram minimum of 1300mhz - expandable to 12GB
Nvidia Quadro or Ati Fire Pro graphic cars- Dont buy a gaming card like 8800gts!
Hard Disk- Sata 2 for OS, large Drives for data. Raid configurable for speed/safety

If you are on a budget then:

Intel q6600 Quad £150, Intel p35 based mobo, 8GB DDR2 1066mhz ram(4x 2GB), ATI Fire Card/ Nvidia Quadro graphic, and suitable Hard Drives.

 

+1 too right

 

A very mature and grown up reply. Care to elaborate some reasoning behind your blanket statement?

As above

 

In this situation I think the Mac is not a viable choice as 3D Studio is not available on the mac and although you can run windows using an emulator that would be a waste as you would have MAC OS, Emulator, Windows, 3D Studio all using Ram and CPU Cycles. The other problem is the MAC Pro comes with an ATI 2600 GPU which would not be up to 3D rendering. There is an option to add a 1.5GB Nvidia Quadro card but thats £1500 on top of the Mac and software cost.

Mac's are great for photoshop and final cut stuff but I think it would struggle in this case.

 

Because there is no real reason to use a Mac other than as a fashion statement. The guy is interested in cpu cycles used for raytracing, not how good his desktop looks.

 

Cheers for all the input gents, greatly appreciated. Have a spec that im comfortable with now so roll on the weekend!

 

What did you go for?

 

Intel Core i7 920 processor, Asus P6T Motherboard, 4gig DDR3-2000 ram in a coolermaster cosmos case..... plus other bits and pieces that ill hunt for when im there.

Providing that they have all of that in stock that is.....

 

I'd go for more RAM. The i7 CPU's are at a premium price as they're new.

 

I fully intend to buy more Ram as soon as the machine is up and running but DDR3 isnt cheap at the minute and 4gig will do for now!

Regards the i7, I was quite surprised that they could be had for such a reasonable (£250) amount!

 

Only one of the cheapest ones though.. New tech isn't very cost-efficient!

 

Granted, it is THE cheapest one the price rises exponentially. But I figure the cheapest i7 has to be better than an equivalently priced quad.

I hope.......

 

I'd be furiously googling to find a comparison before you assume that!

 

I have, and on the surface it looks great.... but im always suspisious(sp) about these comparison sites.

Like that one on telly that says asda is cheaper than everyone for everything...... thats actually owned by asda

 

Sites like anandtech, hardocp, etc are good to look..

 

I just had a quick look about and yes, the i7 920 does seem to be about 10-20% faster than the fastest/comparative QX* CPU.

 

Sound! that will do me donkey!

 

Where are you going to buy all this stuff? If it's a real shop, it might be worth checking the prices on ebuyer.com to make sure you don't get ripped off!

 

What video card are you going for? A 3D gaming card like the 8800 will be useless for the type of work you want to do. Scan.co.uk have 6GB of corsair 1300mhz ddr 3 for £142 which I would go for and put the money towards a video card that will help render your images/animations.

Toms hardware ran a test on memory and the ddr 3 ram didnt offer signifcant improvement over ddr2.

 

Still up in the air regards a graphics card, as I cant find any real tests on software other than games..... So im clueless!

As for where im grabbing all this from, there is a PC fare near me every weekend thats usually a large chunk cheaper than any high street and a little cheaper than most advertised net prices.... So fingers crossed!

 

Really? A 3.2Ghz 8-core running upto 32gb of RAM? Mac Mini's (2ghz, 2GB) run Photoshop and Final Cut Pro in their sleep - the Mac Pro was built for apps like this

(PS, show me a PC with those specs that costs less than a Mac Pro )

Now why not just write something like that the first time instead of giving it the "fuck macs" And there's nothing "fashion statement" about a Mac Pro. Imac yes, but the Mac Pro is a tool designed to do a job...

Depends what OS he's running. 32bit XP won't see more than 3.5gb of RAM anyway - must admit no idea about the 64bit version...