Need a machine for 3D animation / vfx

[shocksalot]

I am a university student and as the title says i am need of a power house machine for 3D animation and vfx work. i mostly use Maya and Nukex. Im thinking a six core i7 will be great for those nasty render times.

ive mananged to graft a budget of £1500

heres the possible spec:
Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 932 FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-970 (3.20GHz) 6.4GTs/12MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM)
12GB KINGSTON HYPER-X TRI-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (3 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
2GB AMD RADEON™ HD6950 - 2 DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable
Free Item
FREE Total War Shogun™ 2 with any AMD® Radeon™ Graphics card!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)
Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1
Price: £1,487.00 including VAT and delivery.

thinks its worth the extra £10 to get a Coolit liquider cooler?
(also noob question: does the Coolit cooler have to be refilled?)

all critique welcome, feed me your thoughts :turned:

 

[Rakk]

I would only bother going for the ECO Coolit if you are planning on overclocking, otherwise it shouldn't be needed.

If Maya and Nukex utilise CUDA cores then a NVidia card would be better (personally I've no idea whether they do or not, but a lot of picture/video editting software (quite probably including those two of yours) utilises the CUDA cores of NVidia).

Also do you need Win7 Professional rather than Win7 Home Premium?

 

[Teaz]

no. the coolit eco is a maintenance free cooler so you dont need to refill it with water or do anything it would allow alot more space if you went for the eco instead of the titan to get better airflow as the titan is a big chap but in some cases the titan has better cooling but not big.

i dont think maya supports cuda when i last heard or check but i think nukex does to an extent so the gtx570 or 560ti's cuda could benefit. usually in general alot of vid editing software supports cuda as rakk said.

apart from that the spec is good although you may want to swap the drives around to make the 1TB drive as the storage

 

[shocksalot]

Well i was thinking liquid cooling might be usfull considering im gonna have to render out large scenes, this means the processors will be running at 100% cap for long periods of time.

Rakk your right i didnt notice the OS, i will upgrade this =)

Also im 99% sure that maya dosent use CUDA, however turns out some Nuke plugins do make use CUDA, so what do you think about switching the 6950 to a 2gb GTX560? (not the GTXti, need to keep to the budget lol).

Teaz: thank you for the advice, i will swap over the hard drives as you recomended.

:turned:

 

[shocksalot]

RE design:
majour changes: 24gb RAM / liquid cooling (still debating this)/ slightly smaller case / Nvidia GPU

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-970 (3.20GHz) 6.4GTs/12MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM)
24GB SAMSUNG DDR3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz (6 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£49)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,575.00 including VAT and delivery.

im £75 over budget but i think its worth it. think the mid range case will be ok? ive heard good things about the HAF

 

[Rakk]

Rakk your right i didnt notice the OS, i will upgrade this =)

It was actually more of you had Professional selected, but do you actually need it, or will Home Premium suffice, though since you've gone for 24Gb of RAM, you will need Professional to access all of that anyways

 

[Teaz]

If you need the 24gb ram then go for it and you cant go wrong with the liquid cooler so you may hold onto it. 75 over budget but worth the spend in my view if you need it all nothing to change apart from getting the new 750gb caviar black drive for the same price as the 640gb as its been replaced. a bonus for you, you could say