Yup, I need help for a workstation build

This may be long, so I'll apologize in advance for the wall of text.



I'm planning to build a proper workstation. Years of toiling with my Pentium G630-based computer rendered me a changed man. Now that I went to full-time employment as a remote designer for an overseas design firm a reorganization of my workspace is in order. Starting with my PC.

It's been a while since I built a new system so I don't know the latest in the consumer side of things like pricing and value vs. performance. It's a good thing that I started to look around on the Internet and stumbled at Tek Syndicate. So I'm taking this chance to ask you guys about your excellent opinions regarding my plans (BTW, I'm working around a 90,000-peso [roughly US$ 2,000] budget):



1. I'm sticking with Intel for my build, as I have good experience with that system for a very long time. The problem that I have is what GPU should I use. I use Adobe products, mainly Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, for my work and I would like to take advantage of GPU acceleration once I switch to Creative Cloud. I edit 1080p stuff, but future 4K editing capability would be nice. Also, I plan to poke around with 3D once I get a hang of Blender. Is CUDA really better than OpenCL in terms of acceleration and render times? Any recommendations for a graphics card on both sides of the fence? (No Quadro/FirePro, please, as I still plan on playing games and doing mainstream stuff on this PC)

2. Is it a good time to invest in a system that supports DDR4 memory or should I stay in DDR3? I don't plan on upgrading further once I'm done.



3. Any displays that you can recommend? I'm very keen on Asus' ProArt line but if you can recommend a brand that I can purchase here in the Philippines (or, at least, ship in a decent price) that would be great.



4. Air cooling or water cooling? I will admit: I have no experience in watercooling a PC so I'm a bit hesitant, but I need to wrap my head around that idea since I'll be using this PC at full throttle almost everyday. I plan on getting a Core i7 (Xeons are hard to come by in this country, for some reason) and I'm worried about heat and all that. I'm not overclocking anything, BTW.

5. Any bad experience with Samsung's SSDs? I plan on getting the 250 GB 840 Evo as it is on sale right now.



I hope you guys can help me with this one. Thanks! :)

Hi there!

1. 2000$ is sort of a tight budget for a decent workstation including the monitor, so you can scrap going with DDR4/X99/Haswell-E.

2. You can actually game with a FirePro/Quadro, I have done it. It works.

3. Air cooling

 

Here's what I would do with around 2000-2400$:

CPU:

Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3, 3,4 Ghz (4C/8T)

Cooler:

Noctua NH-U14S

Motherboard:

Asus P9D WS

Memory:

Crucial DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR3-1600, CL11, ECC (CT2KIT102472BA160B)

Storage:

3x Crucial MX100 512GB, SATA 6Gb/s (CT512MX100SSD1)  in RAID 5

Graphics:

AMD FirePro W4100, 2GB GDDR5, 4x Mini DisplayPort (100-505817/31004-50-40A)

PSU:

Corsair RM Series RM650 650W ATX 2.31 (CP-9020054)

Monitor:

ViewSonic VP2770-LED, 27"

 

(No Quadro/FirePro, please, as I still plan on playing games and doing mainstream stuff on this PC)

1. OpenCL has made major improvements.  OpenCL is actually sometimes faster than CUDA now.  However, with Blender, I believe CUDA is supported much more, so you may want to go nvidia.  In Adobe and other programs though, OpenCL is very capable.

You'll want to get the GTX 780 or 780 ti though, as the wider 384 bit bus will improve blender and other programs' performance.  The GTX 970 and 980 have a 256 bit interface, which is fine for games due to better compression in games.  In rendering applications, it's very different.

2. DDR4 + X99 is too expensive at this budget.

3. A good, clear/glossy IPS if you don't mind the reflections that will come with it.

4. Air cooling.  Always go air cooling unless you want the looks of water cooling, are limited by your form factor, or just have money to spend.

5. I have a 840 Evo 250GB in the laptop I'm typing right now.  Works great.  I do find that my 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD in my desktop is faster for read speeds, though.  Any other options in the 840 Evo 250GB's price range?

I adressed that in my post. Read it again.

Since this machine will be his primary workhorse for his job it would be kind of pointless to make the hardware descicions based on what you do in your free-time, right?

Well, up to the original poster.  GFX cards can still perform decently in productivity applications.  Yes, you can game on workstation cards, but if they are anything but high end, don't expect any good gaming performance.

For example, a quadro 6000 is comparable to a GTX 480 in games.  Not terrible performance, but it's a pretty Damn expensive k6000.

for the love of god .. friends don't let friends buy FIRE PROS 

Thats enough money for xeon 2011-e and i would recommend going that route if you want to use it for the next 5 years.

$2028 usd build for 3d/editing

I built you a E5 xeon socket 2011-3 with 16gb ddr4 one 256gb evo sdd 2x wd black 1tb hdd a k2200 workstation gpu and 2 benq 24" monitors for $2028 from newegg. I would go low clock speed more cores to start with and then throw $400-$700 bucks at it and upgrade the processor later once you generate some more money. the 1230 mentioned is the best power for dollar but puts you 0n an older platform thats 3 years in the making released in 2011 and chip progression has ended (1155)

 I know some or most (hope not lol) may disagree on the cpu choice but to get into the new platform now would save you alot of money later. if you have $600 more dollars you could get into a real nice 8 core. The other option which i would  choose now is the 5820k but will require another $100. When rendering in point cloud/3d/encoding having more cores at lower speeds veruses less at higher tends to lessen rendering time that being said the e5 xeon is under 2ghz but with 4 more threads may make up for it versus a 4 core 2-3 ghz. The main reason I selected it was budget and getting on the new platform.

  

On hindsight, $2000 is probably too tight for a budget so I'll try to hold back for a few months and save up an extra $400-600 to spend for the monitor and other stuff.

Most of you recommended Xeons, but the thing is Xeons are hard to come by in this country. Retailers in the Philippines don't stock them on a regular basis. I'd probably just ship them from Amazon if deals are good and hope that DHL/FedEx won't break them along the way (fingers crossed).

Also, a quick question should I choose to go to the green side, can I use a Quadro card and a GeForce card simultaneously? I was thinking of getting a Quadro K600 to take advantage of its 12-bit display output (obviously plugging my monitor there) and then plug in a GTX 980/780 Ti for CUDA. Will it work or am I just being stupid here?