Workstation for 2D(Raster-based) & 3D Animation - General Advice Please?

[bigsilly]

Hi!

I know that a proper workstation can cost as much money as some people make in a year - but, I've been looking at the prices of the component parts, and I think that I could get a basic one (with room for future upgrades) together for a total sum within my price range (a few thousand dollars, no more than 3k USD at the outset.)

I was just wondering if anyone here had any general advice about putting together one's own workstation, or alternatively buying one outright (if the price is right.) I know for example that a Mac Pro 2 falls within my price range, so if you think that would be much better than buying a pre-built PC Workstation, or buying the parts of a PC workstation that I would then put together myself, let me know why you think that.

So let me know what you think of the various motherboards, types of RAM, etc., please.

Of importance also is this fact: when I refer to 2D animation, I'm NOT talking about vector-based animation, but instead about raster-based animation, using a program like TVPaint or Mirage. So, because of the large amounts of HDD activity and transfers, I need very fast and very dependable HDD's.

Gaming is NOT a priority.

However, a relatively quiet system is, in terms of noise coming from the fans, chassis, etc.

Ok, thanks, bye!

 

[Blazkowicz]

strange post. nowadays every PC is a workstation . unless what you mean is you need a dual CPU, eight core system.

You can make a pretty good system well under your budget.
what comes to my mind :

Intel Q9450 if available (or Q9300, Q6600)
a mobo : let's say a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
4x2GB of PC2-6400 CL4 memory
4x1TB drives in raid 10 or 0+1
OS HDD (such as hitachi P7K500 250GB), DVD drive on the additional chipset's controller
a decent PSU (fortron green 400W might do it)
radeon HD3450 256MB
case : what pleases you.

maybe not what you asked for but as PC keep evolving, you can do batshit insane things with consumer hardware. we might build on that, with "workstation" motherboard/cpu/ram/psu.

I don't know if you need gobs of cpu power or gobs of ram or both. Opteron barcelona B3 are coming, I don't know if they're worth it to avoid FB-DIMM (needed with Intel socket 771 Xeon). I'm contemplating that mobo with 16 DIMMs :
http://www.superwarehouse.com/Tyan_Thunder_n3600M_(S2932)_S2932G2NR_Motherboard/S2932G2NR/p/1512090
so you can start with a pair of quads and 8x2GB ram, upgrade later to 32 or 48GB, drop Shangaï Opteron in place of the barcelonas. insane as well.
I'll let you add up and see if an Intel system is more interesting (with faster CPUs to begin with), I don't know.

 

[MfA]

As far as price there doesn't seem much difference between FB-DIMM and registered DDR2, cheapest for 2 GB is around 50 euro either way. Gonna eat a healthy part of the budget to get 16 GB of that. Don't the FB-DIMMs need more agressive/noisier cooling though?

The 24-30 inch x-IPS/PVA screen will set you back a bundle too. I'd start budgeting with the monitor ...

 

[bigsilly]

Hi! Thanks for your replies! To clear things up, I don't need more than four cores, but I definitely need as much RAM as possible. Starting off with 16 GB would be great, but I'd really need to have the real estate available on the motherboard to upgrade to at least twice that in the future.

Ok, thanks, bye!

 

[MfA]

You will have to get a dual processor board with 16 memory slots then (4GB modules are too expensive). Kinda silly that nowadays the most economical way to get more memory is to get more processors ...

 

[suryad]

Try slickdeals.net they have a sweet deal going on for a Dell quad core setup box. The price is 420 or something shipped.

 

[MfA]

He won't fit 8x2GB of memory in that, let alone have memory slots to spare for future expansion.