My compositing / particle sim build

This is my first go at building a computer myself:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/GCfvcf

I’ll be using it mostly for video / cg composting using AE / Nuke as well as for particle simulations mostly using RealFlow and some blender work as well.
Probably won’t be a whole lot of heavy rendering(high poly / dense scenes) going on, maybe just 2 - 3 times more than what my current 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 can handle.

Would you change anything on that list? Any advice or suggestions?

EDIT: will also be running a Hackintosh on a separate partition if that makes any difference.

if you’re going to be going with a single gpu and don’t plan to add more later on you could probably drop the cpu to the i7-5820k.
it’s quite close to the 5930k in all the benchmarks i’ve seen but has 28 pci lanes rather than the 40 that the 5930k has.

meaning you’ll only get pci-e 3.0 x8 out of a second card if i remember correctly. tests seem to have shown that that wasn’t really a big deal for gaming but the little bit of info i could find seemed to suggest that any sort of gpu enabled computing may very well take a hit on the second card because it only has 3.0 x8 rather than full x16 bandwidth.

the 5820k is about 200 dollars cheaper than the 5930k so you could either just save that money or get a step up on the graphics card to a 980 and end up with pretty much the same price.
honestly speaking i’m not sure the price difference between the 5930k and 5820k is worth the small performance difference it showed in just about every benchmark i saw unless you’re going to be using multiple GPUs.

also, not sure if you’re in a position to wait and see how the AMD cycles patch plays out for their graphics cards in blender since that’s now on the list of targets for the 2.75 blender release, if the other programs can make use of OpenCL or if you even plan on using your graphics card for them if they do but if it could suit your needs and other programs then you may end up with a bit more options for graphics card choice if you can wait… or you could just end up waiting a few months to find out that Nvidia cards are still a better choice (at least for blender). who knows.

Thanks DaedalJS. As you could probably tell I modeled my build after yours and then modified from there. It’s my first build, so I was pretty lost in the beginning and needed some kind of template.
I’ll check out those specs on the 5820k and maybe I’ll swap 'em out. If I can save a few bucks doing that, it’s possible I can even get it sooner :slight_smile:
I don’t think I will be going for any AMD video cards because Nuke seems to only be able to take advantage of GPU accelerated effects with NVIDIA cards. This machine will primarily be a Nuke box with some RealFlow and a bit of blender on the side with absolutely no gaming going on. Whenever I do game, it’s usually on the Nintendo 64 console back at my folks place :wink:

I’m really more worried about processing power and not getting fluid simulations out quick enough.

Have you decided on a final build yet?

the only multi threaded particle benchmark test that i saw had them with only a 45.6 point difference in score which isn’t that big considering they both scored over 900. the 5820k at 922.99 and 5930k at 968.59.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/5 the particle test is about 3/4ths of the way down the page

granted the test they used isn’t with realflow so things may not stack up exactly the same but it should give some sort of idea about how it should perform in comparison to the 5930k.

i was somewhat decently prepared for my first build because i had upgraded my first PC part by part until it was pretty much an entirely different pc inside the case. i guess that could count as my first build but only having to learn about one or maybe a few parts at a time is a lot less to take in and deal with than having to learn it all for an entire build.

i’ve decided to go with the build i put together before but maybe with a few small changes on some of the more flexible parts depending on if there’s anything on sale at a good price and i may have to do more research and revision if some new parts end up getting released between now and then.

i’m really just waiting on the money but now i may also wait to see about the AMD cards. unless something changes a few months isn’t going to hurt me.

Wow… looking at those tests I think I can definitely save a little money by going with the 5820k.
Yeah definitely let us know how your new machine works once you’ve got it all put together, whenever that may be.
Do you know how often new cpus are released? I’m assuming once the new ones come out then the older ones should drop in price a bit.

i think cpu releases mostly just depend on when they’ve made something they feel is ready to release or when they feel like one upping their competitors.
the stuff i’ve learned about that i think should be releasing soon-ish was really more for low power consumption needs rather than high performance so i’m not holding my breath for that.
i don’t know that they’ll really drop prices much with a new release though. after all, some of their older stuff that they’re still selling costs as much or more than their LGA2011-v3 socket stuff. i think they mostly just look at what people will buy their stuff for and go with that.

Hmmm… I just read that both of these cpus will only do a maximum of 64 gigs of memory. The motherboard I picked out can run a maximum of 128 gigs of memory. I’m thinking I can also downsize to a motherboard that has a maximum of 64 gigs. I could stay with the current motherboard but I don’t know if I will ever need 128 gigs and if I do, I would have to get a cpu that can handle 128 gigs and at that point isn’t it likely that the cpu and motherboard will be incompatible?

Forgot to mention too, that I will be running a Hackintosh on a separate partition. Just some extra info in case it makes any kind of difference here.

yea it’s a possibility that the new cpu you have to get at that point would be incompatible with whatever you buy now. maybe even a good chance of that. i have a feeling that you may end up having to get a xeon or some other server cpu to use over 64g memory. that’s going to cost quite a bit more.

i mostly picked that mobo based on the number of good reviews on other sites, sli capability, number of ram slots (more cost effective to upgrade later if you aren’t having to replace what you already have), and price but the msi x99s sli plus looks like a better choice now and it’s cheaper.

Then I might just end up downsizing to save a few bucks in that case!