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New PC build, need advices.


FragGames
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Hello 3Dcoat Community,

It's my 1st post here and sorry if this topic has already been discussed on the forum. Also sorry for any grammar mistake as English is not my native language.

I'm going to assemble a PC to produce game assets in Maya, Mudbox and 3Dcoat and use it in Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5, since my technical knowledge is limited and couldn't find precise answers to my questions on the internet I'd be very thankful if someone of you could help me shine a light on by doubts. The parts configuration I'm going for as of now would be:

CPU: Intel i7 6700K 4.2GHz 8MB Cache
MB: Asus H170 Pro Gaming
RAM: Kingston Fury X 2133MHz 16GB
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 980ti 6GB 2816 Cuda Cores
Storage: SSD San Disk Ultra II 480GB
CPU FAN: Cooler Master Evo212
Windows 7 or 10
plus 2-3 more case fans, 650W psu and of course an adequate ATX case.

My doubts are:

1- I read a lot about Quadros being the best of the best for 3D modeling, but also read a lot about NOT beig the right ones for the kind of modeling that goes into 3D game assets so is the Quadro a must or will the GTX 980ti do fine? 
I also read a lot about Quadros not going well with game engines that prefers gaming-oriented GPUs. 
Is the 980ti an overkill and a 980 (non ti) will be enough?

2- Is 2133 16GB RAM enough? Better go with 32GB? Better go with an higher clock RAM (3000-3600MHz)?

3- Is the i7 6700K enough to not experience slowdowns (specially in high division levels in Mudbox or when building very mesh-populated scenes in the editor or baking big maps in 3Dcoat) or should I look at 6 cores CPUs?

4- Any issues with Win10? What about Win7?

Thanks again for your help, I'm just willing to make sure I'll be spending this (quite a lot of) money on the right equipment.

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The more RAM (CPU AND GPU)  the better , i have 32 and i need a bit more , if you go with 16 forget 8k texturing especially in 3D Coat and MARI. 

 

 

I have 980 and it runs perfect in Unity 5 , 3D Coat  , MARI , etc etc, on VR you need the TI or even better the new 1080 if you can wait , if your scenes are very heavy in Unity 5.

 

Drop Quadros , drooped them several years before.

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The more RAM (CPU AND GPU)  the better , i have 32 and i need a bit more , if you go with 16 forget 8k texturing especially in 3D Coat and MARI. 

 

Of course I can add more RAM afterwards if I see I need it (the H170 supports up to 64GB) while the GPU is a "milestone" purchase in the new build.

 

 

I have 980 and it runs perfect in Unity 5 , 3D Coat  , MARI , etc etc, on VR you need the TI or even better the new 1080 if you can wait , if your scenes are very heavy in Unity 5.

 

 

I'll wait for the 1080 to be out but looks like in Italy it will be sold in the Founder edition only and at a 799 EURO price point. At least I can hope in a price drop on the 980ti.

 

 

Drop Quadros , drooped them several years before.

 

 

What kind of issues did you had with it?

 

Thanks for the reply!

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You'll want way more ram then that. 16gb is entry level these days, and many artists and studios are now using 64gb (which is what your motherboard maxes out at).

For the GPU, either get the 1080 or 1070. Compared to the the 980ti; both have more vram, better performance, and the 1070 will actually be cheaper too.

6700K cpu has the best per-thread performance of anything on the market currently, so don't worry about that.

Everything else looks fine.

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From what I read, Asus H170 Pro Gaming motherboard has four DIMM banks and a dual channel support. Hence, if you want 16GB RAM working in a dual channel, you'd need to buy two 8GB RAM dices. But this would leave you with only two more free banks, preventing you from an easy upgrade to 64GB without ditching old modules first.
Hence I suggest to buy 2x16GB of RAM so the only thing you would have to do if you decide to upgrade to full 64GB, is to buy the same set of RAM modules again.

Aside of a single SSD disk, I recommend some high capacity HDD drives because what you will find is that 3D-Coat's project files very quickly eat up disk space, especially when you use incremental saves.

2- Is 2133 16GB RAM enough? Better go with 32GB? Better go with an higher clock RAM (3000-3600MHz)?

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Breaking-the-Hype-of-High-Frequency-RAM-142/

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From what I read, Asus H170 Pro Gaming motherboard has four DIMM banks and a dual channel support. Hence, if you want 16GB RAM working in a dual channel, you'd need to buy two 8GB RAM dices. But this would leave you with only two more free banks, preventing you from an easy upgrade to 64GB without ditching old modules first.

Hence I suggest to buy 2x16GB of RAM so the only thing you would have to do if you decide to upgrade to full 64GB, is to buy the same set of RAM modules again.

Aside of a single SSD disk, I recommend some high capacity HDD drives because what you will find is that 3D-Coat's project files very quickly eat up disk space, especially when you use incremental saves.

 

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Breaking-the-Hype-of-High-Frequency-RAM-142/

 

 

 

So higher frequency RAM is not a must and doesn't necessarily equals dramatic performance improvements.

 

The only RAM I can find on Amazon Italy is in 4GB or 8GB modules, so the max I can make is 32GB with 4 x 8GB modules

 

Sure I'll throw a 1 or 2 TB HDD in there, just not right away to keep the budget under control.

 

Thanks for the infos.

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Not sure if it's been mentioned or not yet, but is it worth holding off until the GTX 1080 or 1070 come out? Pretty beasty cards for quite a nice price range.

 

The only other thing I'd echo in this thread is the extra HDD's, even relatively small projects in 3dc can stack up the GB's, especially if you're saving recursively (iterations/multiple files). I've gone with a 256(ish) SSD for OS and other bits and bobs, then another 512 SSD for current working files and important software installs, and then a 1TB high speed non-SSD as an archive of sorts, old work files and completed projects usually end up on there.

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Not sure if it's been mentioned or not yet, but is it worth holding off until the GTX 1080 or 1070 come out? Pretty beasty cards for quite a nice price range.

 

So far looks like the 1080 will be on the 799 Euro mark in Italy and that's way beyond my budget for the GPU only but I'll wait for it anyway.

 

 

The only other thing I'd echo in this thread is the extra HDD's, even relatively small projects in 3dc can stack up the GB's, especially if you're saving recursively (iterations/multiple files). I've gone with a 256(ish) SSD for OS and other bits and bobs, then another 512 SSD for current working files and important software installs, and then a 1TB high speed non-SSD as an archive of sorts, old work files and completed projects usually end up on there.

 

 

I'll install a 500GB SSD for system, apps and currently-working-on files and then add a 1-2 TB HDD as an archive.

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Of course I can add more RAM afterwards if I see I need it (the H170 supports up to 64GB) while the GPU is a "milestone" purchase in the new build.

 

 

 

 

I'll wait for the 1080 to be out but looks like in Italy it will be sold in the Founder edition only and at a 799 EURO price point. At least I can hope in a price drop on the 980ti.

 

 

 

 

What kind of issues did you had with it?

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

 

Mainly drivers and compatibility with software , and a second important was that my pocket didnt like it either ....

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So higher frequency RAM is not a must and doesn't necessarily equals dramatic performance improvements.

IMO, it doesn't matter much. Go with RAM that you think that is most reasonably priced, and comes from a manufacturer that you trust. The more RAM you have available, the better, because there's no such thing as too much RAM, especially in our business. :)

 

The only RAM I can find on Amazon Italy is in 4GB or 8GB modules, so the max I can make is 32GB with 4 x 8GB modules

 

I'm not sure if Amazon is the best place to buy electronic parts. Don't you have Italian Internet shops that sell computer parts countrywide?

It's only my personal opinion, but global corporations, like Amazon, are "bleh".

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I'm not sure if Amazon is the best place to buy electronic parts. Don't you have Italian Internet shops that sell computer parts countrywide?

It's only my personal opinion, but global corporations, like Amazon, are "bleh".

 

In Italy Amazon has the best prices on PC parts, some other eBay or else stores may have, on occasion, some good offers but looks quite shady most of the time. Also since I'm buying pretty expensive stuff I prefer to take it from a store that has a great customer support in case anything goes wrong (I don't know how Amazon support is in other countries but I had solely extremely positive experiences with their support so far).

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The only one that is actually sold or even only shipped by Amazon is the Ballistix one, the Corsair and G-Skill ones are sold and shipped by other stores outside of Amazon circuit and support. If the Corsair one was available directly from Amazon it would be a no brainer. Never heard of Ballistix but that's my fault for not being well informed enough, I'll take a closer look at it. Thanks for the links btw, I'll keep looking for it, maybe between now and when I'll buy the parts Amazon will make some of it available through them. 

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To be frank and honest, I would try to hold off on upgrading for another 6mos or so, because AMD is supposed to FINALLY release it's ZEN model CPU's, which are supposed to be a game-changer...or at least make Intel get off it's duff and actually try to work for it's lofty position. The CPU competitive landscape has been relatively dormant the past 5+ yrs. The only real advancements have been in power efficiency and little else.

 

Maybe AMD threw in the towel, publicly a few years back, knowing they had bad architecture to work with...in the PileDriver series....and it is hard to make large, sweeping changes. I can take years. So, I think AMD lulled Intel to sleep while they were working on a major overhaul. Samsung is supposedly involved in AMD's new architecture, so that is VERY, VERY promising, indeed. In fact, it has a lot of people speculating that the corporate giant might merge or acquire AMD, altogether.

 

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_to_start_producing_chips_for_amd_in_2016-blog-15658.php

 

At any rate....in terms of CPU competition, the game should be on once those ZEN chips hit the market. Supposedly 16cores for the desktop (and with hyper-threading for 32 threads!) and even more for the server chips. Let's hope they have learned from their past architecture mistakes and capitalize on them. If so, I think the whole CG community stands to benefit, as competition should heat the performance war back up.

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