Rendering / Animation / Gaming Corei7 Recipe (for review) - Page 2 - Overclock.net

another_bryan · 04-26-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by chavez885

First thing bryan, hit the "+" sign beside people's posts and hit quote on the last person's post to multi-quote.

The coolermaster V8 is okay. I'd go with the noctua if you're looking to get it all in one place. Great cooler and descent price with combo on i7 920, will handle 3.6ghz+ overclocks pretty easily. (not sure what you're trying to get this i7 to)

For the memory, the dominaters are what you call "trendy" hardware, so I'd ditch those. Also for what you're doing the GTX 285 FTW is a bit overpriced and excessive, I'd personally go with a 275 as the performance between the 275 and 285 is marginal.

For monitors, I recently purchased a 19" ASUS wide for a friend, pretty nice panel even though it's a TN type, I was impressed. The ASUS monitors are pretty descent. Seeing as you do a lot of video editing type stuff, you might look into getting a IPS or MVA panel type of monitor if you can spend the cash. If you have a TN panel now and are happy with it, stick with it, they are cheap. If you want the good panel type, they will run you 450$+. Here's a few.

Dell 24" Ultrasharp 650$, on sale at times, one of the best.
450$ on Dell's refurb site.

Dell 22" Ultrasharp 279$ 2209WA is an IPS, the 2208 is a TN panel.

Here's my suggestion on parts, also threw in HD's as you forgot about those. Run dual WD 640gb's in RAID 0 and you will be flying through your video editing. It's very easy to setup these days. Hope this helps, welcome to OCN.

Nice response - and thanks for taking the time to illustrate.

Ive updated my recipe with the new Raid0 drives (though I opted for WD-blacks for the slight gains and longer warranty)

I also eliminated the V8 in favor of a noctua, after reading some of the reviews that seemed like a no brainer.

Still reading more about the GPU comparisons - man there are a lot of reviews on that topic, lol

With regards to the displays, I am not sure I understand what TN and IPS mean? I currently use dual 20.5 Dell ultrasharps, which work great, but cap at 1600 x 1200. I am all about real estate when it comes to working with overpopulated CAD tool bars and multiple apps. Hence the 1920 x 1200 res of the 24" makes me feel warm and fuzzy...

On the topic of memory, I am going to play the devils advocate....
I spent some time reading newegg reviews and forum posts on both OCZ's and Corsairs's Sites. In general, most people had no problem using only 6Gb on heavily overclocked systems. However, only with the dominators did I see a large number of owners raving about the ease of maintaining 12Gb at 1600 speed on large overclocks.. On the OCZ page (and their own forums) there were a lot of complaints from people claiming that they had to lower their memory speed to get stability once they upgraded to 12Gb, and OCZ reps even stood behind that reduction as "a common solution". Would a memory speed reduction amount to a notable change in performance?

jrharvey · 04-26-09

That looks like one heck of a machine there. What 3d modeling programs do you use to do your renderings. I do alot of rendering/cad/animation stuff. Actually its what I do for a living. Anyways, your choices are top notch but I can say that 12gb may be a bit overkill even for what your doing. I do renderings and animation every day and have yet to use past 4.5gb with my 64bit OS and Im even using Vista which is a memory hog. HOWEVER, with ram being so cheap you may as well if your not worried about saving money. Thats a good case also. I may get one of those myself.

another_bryan · 04-26-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrharvey

That looks like one heck of a machine there. What 3d modeling programs do you use to do your renderings. I do alot of rendering/cad/animation stuff. Actually its what I do for a living. Anyways, your choices are top notch but I can say that 12gb may be a bit overkill even for what your doing. I do renderings and animation every day and have yet to use past 4.5gb with my 64bit OS and Im even using Vista which is a memory hog. HOWEVER, with ram being so cheap you may as well if your not worried about saving money. Thats a good case also. I may get one of those myself.

Hi jrharvey
In a nutshell, I use Solidworks for all of my design, be it for production or for illustration. I then move it into Hypershot or Maxwell for still renderings, and HyperMove for Animation. On an average day, I am usually rendering on one display while concurrently working Solidworks or Photoshop or Indesign on Display 2; hence the need for lots of memory. I could probably get by with 8 or 10, but the kits for i7 seem to offer 6 or 12 with little between. I figure I am REALLY future proof with 12Gb

another_bryan · 05-27-09

Ok - I updated the list with the near-final parts that I am ordering. I am still not 100% the dominators will be worth their hefty pricetag but I want to avoid being capped on my O/C by a poor choice in memory, and from what I have read - the dominators seem to be a slam dunk to o/c even at 12GB. All the same - I haven't placed that order yet.

I DID order the GPU, the PSU, and the Case. I figure il do some wire sheathing while I wait for a few more invoice payments to arrive, or discover a great deal on Newegg.

As far as the GPU is concerned, the animation software I use does both GPU based animation processing as well as CPU based ray-tracing. The developers claimed that a huge lump of video ram would make a pretty big impact on render-speeds. Hence the reason for the change. Also, as I understand it, having 1 card will still allow me to use dual displays (whereas SLI kills that option??? seems weird)

chavez885 · 05-27-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by another_bryan

Ok - I updated the list with the near-final parts that I am ordering. I am still not 100% the dominators will be worth their hefty pricetag but I want to avoid being capped on my O/C by a poor choice in memory, and from what I have read - the dominators seem to be a slam dunk to o/c even at 12GB. All the same - I haven't placed that order yet.

As far as the GPU is concerned, the animation software I use does both GPU based animation processing as well as CPU based ray-tracing. The developers claimed that a huge lump of video ram would make a pretty big impact on render-speeds. Hence the reason for the change. Also, as I understand it, having 1 card will still allow me to use dual displays (whereas SLI kills that option??? seems weird)

1. They aren't, unless you are NEEDING faster than normal memory speeds, I see no reason to waste the cash on them. I'm running at 1200mhz on my memory @ 4.0 right now with a 6x multi. That memory cost me 90$. I could go with an 8x multi for closer to 1600mhz but then I'd have to adjust other voltages and uncore settings, not worth the time for me right now. Basically, you don't NEED domi's, but if you WANT them, you'll pay for it.

2. With vista you can run SLI and dual monitors, not positive if it works on windows 7, but I imagine it does.

jackson28 · 05-27-09

You can get the i7 920 DO Stepping for $285.50 with shipping.

https://www.antaresdigital.com/custo...cat=282&page=1

another_bryan · 05-27-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackson28

You can get the i7 920 DO Stepping for $285.50 with shipping.

https://www.antaresdigital.com/custo...cat=282&page=1

Nice catch!! I dug around 8 pages deep in Google looking for D0 chips and only found a handful, mostly out of stock or very overpriced. Have you used them before? Reputable and honest?

another_bryan · 05-28-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by chavez885

1. They aren't, unless you are NEEDING faster than normal memory speeds, I see no reason to waste the cash on them. I'm running at 1200mhz on my memory @ 4.0 right now with a 6x multi. That memory cost me 90$. I could go with an 8x multi for closer to 1600mhz but then I'd have to adjust other voltages and uncore settings, not worth the time for me right now. Basically, you don't NEED domi's, but if you WANT them, you'll pay for it.

2. With vista you can run SLI and dual monitors, not positive if it works on windows 7, but I imagine it does.

Its pretty easy to get caught up in the "numbers" game, In the real world, how much of a tangible difference can be felt between memory speeds like 1200 versus 1600?

MXjunk127 · 05-28-09

Not much...

I recently did a barrage of 3ds max rendering tests with various ram and its a few seconds improvement over a pretty long render, max, I would not worry about it.

I believe my ram only cost me about $150 after MIR for all 12GB, and its fine.

another_bryan · 06-18-09

Hey guys, so after weeks of waiting on specials and extra cash, I finally nabbed all of the parts I needed to finish the build...

I am pretty happy with the final build and it purrs along like a kitten right up to 3.8 without breaking a sweat. I am still working on my voltages to attain a stable 4Ghz but even if I dont manage that - i'm pretty stoked. Thanks to everyone for their input

Here are a few shots of the final build

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Rendering / Animation / Gaming Corei7 Recipe (for review)

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