New PC build for 3D environment

  • Budget. How much are you willing to spend?
  • Where do you live (what country), and what currency do you use?
  •   -Is there a retailer you prefer?
  • Do you need or already have peripherals? (this can add to costs)
  • What will you be using your future computer for? Gaming? Rendering? Mix of both? Or is this a home media PC?
  • Do you overclock or want to get into overclocking?
  • Do you plan on going for custom watercooling now, or in the future?
  • OS. Do you need a new one?
    • I would like to get it in under USD$800
    • USA USD$$$
    • No
    • Nothing other than a 2x USB keyboard and a wireless mouse at the moment
    • I will be updating the mouse to something better for 3D graphics work soon.  This shouldn’t require anything extra I wouldn’t thing.  I can look into this more if needed
    • Some gaming
    • Mostly 3D graphics environments
      • I have a particular program that I will need to support and will include it and it’s specs at the bottom of this list
    • No overclocking needed – unless it’s needed to run what I need to run
    • No but I do want a quite build
    • No

If you Game-

  • What kind of settings do you like or what FPS do you want to play at?
  • What resolution will you be playing at? //or would like to play at.
  • What kind of games do you like to play?
  • What specific game will you be playing (if you only really play one)
    • 1080p
    • Puzzle games like Myst and Portal

If you Render or Edit things-

  • What application do you use to render? (very important)
  • Do you render movies or just photoshop pictures
    • Not rendering per-say but I’ll be using software for the D3 video server
    • http://r11.d3technologies.com/system-requirements-3
    • I can actually run this on my Surface Pro 3 (i5 w/ 8gigs RAM) – I would want a smoother, and more reliable, experience than I am currently getting however
    • And the ability to run a second monitor at the same time for my office work environment
    • No movies

Other Notes:

  • Please submit a PcPartpicker list as it's really easy to configure and edit. (you may have to change the URL to your region.)
  • What is your general experience in building computers? Is this your first build or are you seasoned and just looking for advice?
    • How do you submit a PcPartpicker list? Let me know and I’ll do it, I’ve already signed up for an account
    • This will be my first build from scratch but I have put new RAM, hard drives, PCIM cards in machines before
    • I also have some computer experience, well enough to be dangerous!

 Sorry about the formatting, it came in a little strange

DaveK

This is something that I just put together from PCPartpicker 

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/HomerJayK/saved/ZZxkcf

I still need to add the GTX 960 to this but they don't have it listed yet.  I have already the storage that I would need 250G Samsung SSD and the 1T Western Digital HDD

Open to any suggestions, DaveK

I don't have a whole lot of experience with this particular field, and especially this particular program.

I grabbed the newer version of the Xeon chip.  There's not much difference besides it being 100mhz faster and having better thermal performance.

H97.  The motherboard you've chosen is quite overkill for the Xeon chip.

You need storage of some sort.

GPU compatibility is really broad at "Support for DX11".  All modern GPUs will support this easily.

Smaller case that is still silence optimized.

Cheaper power supply.  500w would have been plenty, but 600w was very close in pricing.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/csbB99

I may consider 16GBs of RAM or a higher end GPU if you have money to spare, but this is a good starting point.

Thanks for the advice, I've taken quite a bit of it and put it back into part picker

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/HomerJayK/saved/ZZxkcf

- Is is recommended to get a cpu cooling fan?  

- I did change the motherboard to the one that you mentioned but I don't know anything about motherboards so I am just taking advice, if there is a reason that I may want something different I would like to know.

- I originally went with the 960 because I wasn't sure that they supported AMD but since they do the R8 does look like a good option.  I did go with the Sapphire made board though because the Dual-Link DVI might be useful for me on some jobs

- I put 16GBs of RAM in as well, 2 x 8, I'll leave the GPU for now and see if I can make some money off this thing and see about upgrading in the future.

Thanks for your help.  If @Some Tech Noob or anyone else has some more comments please leave them as I am keen to learn as much as I can about this build before pulling the trigger.

Cheers, DaveK