[bigglebowski]

Helping a friend build a pc to be used as a graphics design workstation. I see most of the prebuilt models for sale for that market are using xeon, ecc ram and pro grade graphics cards. She says the projects she works on would be considered mid level in complexity and her budget was around $1800.

I was all set to go with a build on xeon e3 socket 1155 when I noticed that the xeon e5 socket 2011 had a much greater upgrade path for the future. Best I can tell these chips are fairly new maybe just a few months old. On newegg there is only one brand of mobo for "workstation/server" board which is supermicro. In fact only one model really looks to be used as a workstation pc that fits in an atx case and has features that are less server like. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182336

Was going to use this chip as its the most affordable 6core: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117269

video: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133382

ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161555

Ive built many machines over the years, but I never really messed with workstation grade components, nor started to build one where a cpu series is fresh on the market like this xeon e5 cpu/mobos.

Any thoughts

 

[Cholly]

Why limit your search to "workstation"? Expand it to one that supports the Xeon motherboards" and you'll find quite a few by Asus and Supermicro that will probably fill the bill.

 

[bigglebowski]

Why limit your search to "workstation"? Expand it to one that supports the Xeon motherboards" and you'll find quite a few by Asus and Supermicro that will probably fill the bill.

Right now for socket 2011 for xeon e5 chips, supermicro did seem to be about the only one. Certainly ASUS makes boards for socket 1156, or for i7 socket 2011. Honestly the supermicro I linked to does seem to be an amazing board just wondered if anybody had built one yet or had any advice otherwise. Debating about going with a dual cpu board but the budget will only allow to populate one of the sockets now.

 

[P Smith]

I've seen a lot of recommendations from CAD mfgs about cards when support such workstations, no big fan to follow - to expensive for same parameters as consumer grades, with little (mostly wording) pro arguments... And the mentioned video card has bottleneck for video processing: "128-bit GDDR5". I wouldn't recommend it... At least 256-bit if not 384-bit memory bus.
As for CPU/RAM size (ECC is always good to have, but expensive part of w/s) - it would depend of SW and comprehensibility of projects.

 

[bigglebowski]

I've seen a lot of recommendations from CAD mfgs about cards when support such workstations, no big fan to follow - to expensive for same parameters as consumer grades, with little (mostly wording) pro arguments... And the mentioned video card has bottleneck for video processing: "128-bit GDDR5". I wouldn't recommend it... At least 256-bit if not 384-bit memory bus.
As for CPU/RAM size (ECC is always good to have, but expensive part of w/s) - it would depend of SW and comprehensibility of projects.

Do not disagree with you on gpu, but the budget is keeping her out of cards in that price range (384 bit is $4000) 256 was more reasonable but still over. Not too many choices in the "pro" graphics category and she insisted nvidia over ati. Thought process was to get this setup now and upgrade gpu first then cpu since the rest of the rig looks like it should hold up for some time. Based on a few systems she showed me, this is above and beyond most in her budget.

 

[P Smith]

I would check targeting SW's driver list; perhaps consumer grade video card (not just GPU chip) would fit the budget and HW recommendations.

 

[bigglebowski]

I would check targeting SW's driver list; perhaps consumer grade video card (not just GPU chip) would fit the budget and HW recommendations.

Thats what i did mainly at autodesk and about all they said were the ati firepro or nvidia quadro. All else were much lesser cards. Either way the system will be better than what she has now.