Computer Build - Phase IV (Now with pictures)

[Alexander Morou]

Well,

Now there's no turning back, I've decided to do a piecewise approach to building my system, so I can't change my mind.

Here is a rundown of the system specifications:

 

 ☐ Memory          : Kingston HyperX 12GB (6x2GB in two 3x2GB packages)             $  411.98

 

 

 ☐ GPU             : Three EVGA 015-P3-1482-AR GeForce GTX 480                      $1,619.97

 

 

 

 

     Combo Savings   :                                                               -$   75.00

    Total (current) :                                                                $4,998.87    Remaining       :                                                                $1,285.97

The first purchase is for $1,412.96 $1,337.96, and consists of the CPU and the Full-tower case. If the purchase goes through today, I should have it by Wednesday or Thursday.

Edit:
It appears as though the combo for the two items I selected has to be added as a combo to be eligible for the savings it entails. Fortunately, since it was my first purchase from newegg, they were willing to help me out.

Update: 6/1/2010




The last image is a size comparison between the new Lian Li Case and my old Dell tower. It's notably bigger.

 

[Toams]

i love your formatting
please teach me your ways

 

[Alexander Morou]

Just received the Core i7 980X CPU and the Lian Li PC-P80 case. The CPU's cooler is as tall as a 50 DVD spindle, which is kind of surprising. Someone thought it might not fit in the case, then I unboxed it: it's 2ft tall and 2.083 ft deep, and 8.66 inches wide, so it's more than wide enough (frigg'n huge).

In about a week I'll probably order in the SSD, Motherboard, Windows 7 and the optical drive.

I'd give pictures, but I don't own a camera.Just ordered the motherboard and operating system for $690.73.

 

[Mega Flare]

your spending so much on a pc.... and its only going to play dvds? why not spend a few more bucks and get blu ray

 

[Alexander Morou]

Probably because I don't own any Blu-rays. I don't find the extra cost they require worth it.

 

[Jason]

Seriously?

Once you see the difference between Bluray and standard DVD, hot dayum you don't wanna' go back, some films just look TOO good in Bluray, good example being Avatar... it's shit hot...

Anyways, this is one expensive computer you're building, but it looks to be VERY futureproof, lol... how long are you expecting it to last?

 

[Daxis]

Jbrist, what I know so far is:

good laptop lifetime/warranty- 3 years, can get a $1300 laptop with that warranty that works(I've got my eye on one)

with the fact that yours is 4x that 1300, then a good deal would be that a laptop lasts 12 years without lagging too far behind the consumer massed produced market at the end of that time period, even with the powerful and consuming programs and apps that will(undeoubtedly) be run

Of course, I;m a total noob at shit like this and not the programmer here.

 

[Alexander Morou]

Yes, the main reason I'm spending the money I am is not because I'm wanting a super quick personal computer, but rather a hasty workstation that I can get things done on. Being able to play games is just an added perk.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

'Kay so real quick-like: I know it's every nerd's secret dream to have 32GB of RAM, because I do too, but honestly: I don't care what you plan on doing with your computer (with the exception of running like ten intensive applications at once, which is just silly), by the time you will ever even need anywhere near even half as much RAM as you're planning on putting in, your computer will be completely obsolete and they will have RAM with even better data rates. In short, go with 8--12 if you ABSOLUTELY have to waggle your e-cock--but do yourself a favor and save yourself some dollas.

Seriously, they don't even use that much in AVID systems.

 

[Alexander Morou]

'Kay so real quick-like: I know it's every nerd's secret dream to have 32GB of RAM, because I do too, but honestly: I don't care what you plan on doing with your computer (with the exception of running like ten intensive applications at once, which is just silly), by the time you will ever even need anywhere near even half as much RAM as you're planning on putting in, your computer will be completely obsolete and they will have RAM with even better data rates. In short, go with 8--12 if you ABSOLUTELY have to waggle your e-cock--but do yourself a favor and save yourself some dollas.

Seriously, they don't even use that much in AVID systems.

First, you're an ass.

Second, it's triple-channel memory, so 3xWhatever or 6xWhatever.

Third, it's 24 not 32.

Fourth, I didn't ask you for your financial advice. Keep it.

 

[Glitchfinder]

'Kay so real quick-like: I know it's every nerd's secret dream to have 32GB of RAM, because I do too, but honestly: I don't care what you plan on doing with your computer (with the exception of running like ten intensive applications at once, which is just silly), by the time you will ever even need anywhere near even half as much RAM as you're planning on putting in, your computer will be completely obsolete and they will have RAM with even better data rates. In short, go with 8--12 if you ABSOLUTELY have to waggle your e-cock--but do yourself a favor and save yourself some dollas.

Seriously, they don't even use that much in AVID systems.

If you knew the reasoning behind his decision, you might, just might, see why he's getting such an overspec'd build. First off, he's wanted to try his hand at 3D animation for a while, but his current set of computers was too low spec to handle it. Now, if you think this is going too far, keep in mind that with his rather in-depth examinations of whatever he does, he'll end up with Pixar quality work, which needs one of two things: a bunch of low-spec computers sharing power, or a supercomputer along these lines. Before you complain about HD space, keep in mind that that is one of the most easily upgraded parts of a computer, and he can buy more when he needs to.

Second, if you had ever actually taken the time to read through Alexander Morou's posts, or talk to him when he shows up on IRC, you'd realize that waggling an e-cock is the last thing he'd do, considering the fact that he tends to not only remain quiet, but also the fact that his ego is quite undersized compared to most of us. The fact that he was actually willing to post this at all shocked me, since he doesn't like to show off, and doesn't like people telling him he's spending too much when they have no interest in the matter and won't explain their reasoning. (In many cases, I have the feeling that they're trying to mitigate the fact that it suddenly makes them feel like crap, knowing it will be years before they can have a computer that good, and that by the time they do, it will be normal) The reason he posted this thread, as far as I can tell, was not to show off, but merely to generate honest feedback about what hardware he's getting, what he should be getting, and whether or not that hard drive will brick itself in half a year due to a firmware issue.

 

[Alexander Morou]

Bingo,

This is essentially what my aim was: to maximize performance for cases when even dual GTX 480s are not enough to show 1fps, high quality rendering is far off for me, because I suck at it right now. That doesn't mean I always will, but in order to get better, I need to have the proper tools, the first is the hardware. It doesn't matter if I spend a thousand or so dollars on Maya, if my system can't handle the personal learning edition.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Look, I know I'm a gigantic ass--it says so right in my title--but the point being, in my jerkbag-ley way, that there's no such thing as applications that will use that much RAM, so having so much is just a waste, not only of money but just of completely unused RAM.

You know what you need that kind of RAM for? Crazy fuck-off huge servers. Even the most awesome, badassedly-dedicated rendering machine doesn't need that much. Seriously, 12. Just ignoring money completely, unless you're doing some insane Pixar-type shit, you probably wouldn't even need more than 8.

Hey you're an asshat, couldn't you have made this point clear without this kind of language? it's like you're trying to insult Alexander on purpose. He probably has his reasons for buying that much RAM. Also the reasons above pretty much answered that question already. And you said yourself that you have a fuckload of RAM too so where are you going with this?

Secondly, stating you're an ass doesn't really give you street cred. or an excuse to behave like one. Consider this a warning, if you continue your posts like this, we'll take measures.

kthanks, ~tomas

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Well, I don't think he is planning on doing pixar-type rendering, because it doesn't matter how powerful your PC is, it would take you about a thousand years or so to render enough frames for a movie, not counting all of the other parts that go into making a movie. http://movementarian.com/2008/02/03/so- ... nder-farm/

The amount of RAM isn't really a concern for that anyway. You just need enough RAM to store one 1920 x 1080 image, assuming you are going to do HD. At 32bpp, that's about 8MB in RAW form. Really, the only way I can think of that you need that much RAM is running a lot of instances of the same task or process, like a heavy server. But it's your money :P

Oh, also, if you are going to spend $150 more than the 5870 to get < 20% performance increase, why not spend another $200 or so and get the 5970 and get up to a 100% performance boost over even the 480GTX?

http://www.overclock.net/attachments/gr ... 0-5970.png

 

[Alexander Morou]

Well, I don't think he is planning on doing pixar-type rendering, because it doesn't matter how powerful your PC is, it would take you about a thousand years or so to render enough frames for a movie, not counting all of the other parts that go into making a movie. http://movementarian.com/2008/02/03/so-you-want-to-roll-your-own-render-farm/

My cousin, Steve, has actually created his own Processor Farm (While I'm unaware of the truth of one of his statements, he said at one point he was talking with Pixar for leasing his farm out). This system would be sufficient enough until I can come close to that level. If I even get that far, I'm pretty sure he can assist me in building one of my own. Also bear in mind that some people have been able to make decent quality animations. While it's no Pixar, it's a lot better than what I can do right now.

The amount of RAM isn't really a concern for that anyway. You just need enough RAM to store one 1920 x 1080 image, assuming you are going to do HD. At 32bpp, that's about 8MB in RAW form. Really, the only way I can think of that you need that much RAM is running a lot of instances of the same task or process, like a heavy server. But it's your money :P

It's not all for the rendering of one image, there's the entire suite of programs used to handle the rendering process to begin with. CS4 will likely be used for textures, which can be fairly large themselves, since I'm sure, that in order to get HD quality textures, you start larger and scale down to hide certain artist artifacts that are obvious close-up in normal resolutions. I'll also probably use other adobe products for pre-visualization of scenes or characters/artifacts. While there's not many programs that use a large quantity of memory today, there will be shortly, it's just a matter of time. If you compound the smaller programs that individually use a lot of memory, you can pretty much guess you'll be stressing the system at even 6GB. .NET profiling applications have a tendency to take a few GB to profile some small (but complex) programs I've written, so I can imagine for testing my larger programs, the space will be linear. It's not just a case where 'Oh I want lots of RAM!' I thought about it.

Oh, also, if you are going to spend $150 more than the 5870 to get < 20% performance increase, why not spend another $200 or so and get the 5970 and get up to a 100% performance boost over even the 480GTX?

http://www.overclock.net/attachments/graphics-cards-general/144542d1267750111-5970-vs-gtx-480-vs-5870-5970.png

As for the ATI Radeon HD 5970: From the numerous reviews I've read, two GTX 480 GPUs bests any single 5970 setup (granted: not in every scenario). The GTX 480 is better at data processing, which might eventually become part of what I do. It's somewhat silly to compare a dual GPU card to a single GPU setup, in certain gaming benchmarks the GTX 480 by itself can best the 5970 due to its improved tessellation performance. This performance, you could argue is irrelevant now, but by the time I get competent enough with 3D, tessellation will likely be a large part of the rendering pipeline. Yes it means I'll probably have to learn C++.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Yes it means I'll probably have to learn C++.

MUAHAHA I WIN! XD Just kidding.

I dunno, though. It's your money, but it seems to me the GTX480 is such a minimal performance increase over the 5870 for the price.

 

[Alexander Morou]

One word: Tessellation.

PS:

Yes it means I'll probably have to learn C++.

MUAHAHA I WIN! XD Just kidding.

If the new version of Visual Studio and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 doesn't support Tessellation, that is. ;]

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Hehe, I don't think XNA's gonna be doing tessellation. I could be wrong, but tessellation shaders and compute shaders are really optimizations, and they are really finicky optimizations, because it's really easy for them to actually make things slower. That doesn't really fit in with the idea of a managed language. Of course, it is microsoft, so they may do it just to say they can do it.

 

[Alexander Morou]

True, I just found that XGS targets version 9.0 of Direct X and given the features of DX11 are largely hardware dependent, I doubt we'll see XNA support for it due to the XBox 360 platform.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Right, right. I think that DX11 and it's nifty features don't fit into what MS wants to do with XNA. I didn't even think about the Xbox, that's right. The whole point of XNA is to be able to develop for PC and Xbox at the same time.