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Hardware> is this a good deal?

cobuspcobusp Posts: 303
edited December 2019 in Carrara Discussion

Time is rapidly approaching to upgrade my hardware and Ive been looking on E-bay for potentially good deals. I cannot afford new, or the best refurbished workstations on the market, but would something like below give me good performance for my 3D workflow? I currently run an old i7 PCwhich is 7 years old.

Dell T7910 E5-2640v3 8C

2x Xeon 8 Core 2.60Ghz E5-2640 v3

128GB DDR4 Ram (8x 16GB PC4-2133P)

512GB SSD

LSI SAS MegaRAID 9341-8i 12Gbps SAS Controller 

Quadro K4200 Workstation Graphics (Single DVI-I (dual-link) Dual DisplayPort 1.2)

price: $ 1 500

Post edited by cobusp on

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,037

    2.60Ghz is not much unless thats each CPU, you would get 32 pretty render tiles but they wouldn't render that fast.

    I don't know for sure only guessing cheeky 

    piles of RAM though so can load lots in your scenes!

  • cobuspcobusp Posts: 303

    Thanks I appreciate your feedback.

  • cobuspcobusp Posts: 303

    Yes, I have pretty large scenes containing several characters in mind for this.

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588

    Have you looked at the Ryzen 3900X or 3950X for the CPU?  $1500 can buy you a powerful machine these days.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125

    On the topic of computer tech, I'm not sophisticated.  My strategy was to follow the advice given to Richard Hazeltine, the forum mod, in threads in the Commons Forum.  I figured if my computer could do what his does, I'd be in good shape. Note that Richard ordered the parts.   https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/362191/my-turn-for-system-building#latest

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    we are British  we use S   not Z   where an S is called for 

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    Diomede said:

    On the topic of computer tech, I'm not sophisticated.  My strategy was to follow the advice given to Richard Hazeltine, Haseltine the forum mod, in threads in the Commons Forum.  I figured if my computer could do what his does, I'd be in good shape. Note that Richard ordered the parts.   https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/362191/my-turn-for-system-building#latest

     

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    Diomede said:
    Diomede said:

    On the topic of computer tech, I'm not sophisticated.  My strategy was to follow the advice given to Richard Hazeltine, Haseltine the forum mod, in threads in the Commons Forum.  I figured if my computer could do what his does, I'd be in good shape. Note that Richard ordered the parts.   https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/362191/my-turn-for-system-building#latest

     

    Thank you

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,037
    edited December 2019

    think Ted was thinking of hazelnuts laugh

    and maybe a fork prong

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,226

    Sounds good compared to this:

    Apple's new Mac Pro could cost you more than $52,000

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/09/tech/apple-mac-pro-ordering-trnd/index.html

    surprise

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,024
    No, it is a bad deal. Any new 8 core from Intel or AMD could beat that old workstation at half the price. A new 16 core from AMD like 3950x (hard to find due to popularity) or even the old re-launched Intel 14 core 10940x could beat it at the same price. You can also get faster NVMe drives. Benchmarks rendering https://www.anandtech.com/show/15043/the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review-16-cores-on-7nm-with-pcie-40/5
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,323

    I'm now experiencing my first SSD (Solid State Hard drive) and cannot believe the difference it makes. I'm not used to how to work with them though. My new 1TB SSD is almost half full already, so I'm planning on using DIM to uninstall several of my non-character libraries and re-installing them to a different drive to leave plenty of room for my rendering needs. Granted, 500GB+ is still a LOT of room, compared to what I'm used to... but I know how I get when I get really stuck in.

    Anyway, I said all of that to try and encourage you to keep an eye out for a larger main SSD than 512GB. 

    My lower-cost build's motherboard has a max capacity of RAM of 64GB, so I'm maxed out. But I never even come close to using 32GB while working in Carrara - but that might just be me. My previous build was 16GB, so this time my goal was 32, but my brother went ahead and got the two more 16GB sticks to max me out. What a guy!

    I built mine on "Yesterdays" gems to save money. The new (3rd Generation) Ryzen were already out (and largely out-of-stock), but I went for the 2nd Gen Ryzen 7 octa-core and it just rocks. Not trying to sway, just reporting. 

    A friend at work has a workstation GPU (Quatro) and told me that he thinks they are overrated. I don't know anything about such things other than the fact that I've always wanted to try one. But I ended up getting a GTX 1660 6GB and it too is really pleasing me. I tried out Iray and it performs really well, even though I'm still more a fan of using Carrara's PR.

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