Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
Just out of interest, I was wondering what was the most incredible, powerful, and/or most expensive system that PCSpecialist has ever built. Spec? Photos? Please?!
What is the most powerful/most expensive system PCS has ever built?
- Thread starter Hello Paul
- Start date
JUNI0R
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
The most expensive PC that actually works on the standard PC is configurator about 7.5K if the parts were in stock. I'm sure you could go higher on the Water Cooled route and they also do servers which can reach into the 10's of thousands easily, I got one up to 60K before I got bored 😂
Realisitically PC's that expensive aren't common and I'd highly doubt anyone has done that with the configurator and gone ahead with a purchase, although you never know. That said, I have seen a few £3,000ers recently
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
My £3900 system is about to start being built by PCSpecialist in a couple of weeks! 😆 (And that doesn't include the graphics card because sadly graphics cards don't actually seem to exist any more).
JUNI0R
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
passes out
Can we see the spec? I think you might be close to taking the crown 😂
How to Post Your Specification to the Forum - Check this Spec
Just a first note, if you've been provided this link, don't amend your first post as it won't update the queue, please add an additional comment to the thread, that way it will go back to the front of the queue. Otherwise we don't know it's been updated. When creating a forum post looking to...
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
Hmmm....I guess prices fluctuate up and down or something? This is the exact spec I went for, except last week I paid £3921 for it. And I'm sure I originally specced the 2TB Samsung 980 PRO M.2 as my system drive, but my order says it's the 970 EVO PLUS. If I change this spec to the 980 PRO, it's still "only" £3906; a tad less than my ordered system with the 970. I think I need to contact PCSpecialist and find out what's occurring.
I also wanted 128GB RAM, but it seems that's not available in 3600MHz flavour, so I've settled for 64GB for now.
Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 XL BLACK QUIET TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32 Core CPU (3.7GHz - 4.5GHz, 147MB CACHE)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG ZENITH II EXTREME ALPHA (DDR4, Wi-Fi 6, CrossFireX/SLI) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (8 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1200W HX SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® PLATINUM, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i RGB PRO XT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 18 working days
Price: £3,808.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-trx40-pc/VwPHN4jUM7/
I also wanted 128GB RAM, but it seems that's not available in 3600MHz flavour, so I've settled for 64GB for now.
Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 XL BLACK QUIET TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32 Core CPU (3.7GHz - 4.5GHz, 147MB CACHE)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG ZENITH II EXTREME ALPHA (DDR4, Wi-Fi 6, CrossFireX/SLI) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (8 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1200W HX SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® PLATINUM, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i RGB PRO XT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 18 working days
Price: £3,808.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-trx40-pc/VwPHN4jUM7/
Yes prices change on a daily basis, you pay what you paid when you ordered though - the price you paid does not change.
Whilst many things do go down in price some go up you wouldn't want it to go up after you ordered now would you, so it doesn't go up or go down once you've ordered
If you change something on your order and it goes down in total, just accept it
If the whole build is cheaper when you configure it then to get it at todays slightly cheaper price you would I believe need to cancel and reorder - putting you at the back of the queue again.
JUNI0R
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Wow that is one insane system. What will it be used for? Pls don't say gaming 😂 Also prices change daily especially now, it all depends on the parts you use, and their supply/ demand. I think a mod said they saw the price of a system increase by £100 overnight
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
Haha no, not gaming! I do motion graphics and visual effects (After Effects, Cinema 4D) and editing (Premiere Pro). This is me: https://paulroper.com/ (needs updating, but I never get around to it!)
My current system is based around an overclocked (4.5GHz remains cool and stable) Intel 3960X with 64GB RAM and an 11GB Nvidia GTX1080Ti. I'm planning to transplant the graphics card to my new system, and going to try reinstating the vintage GTX580 and Quadro 4000 cards that were in the system when I had it built about 6 years ago. When "buying a graphics card" becomes a thing again at some point in the future, I plan to get a 24GB RTX3090 for the new system and put the GTX1080Ti back in the old system. The 1080Ti often runs out of VRAM if I'm rendering something in After Effects and want to use Premiere at the same time hence wanting that lovely 24GB!
A few weeks ago, the water-cooler on my existing system died, just when I had a load of jobs booked in. I'd been considering getting a new system, but was trying to hold off until this CPU and GPU nonsense calms down a bit. Luckily a local computer shop swapped out the faulty cooler for a new one while I struggled on doing After Effects jobs on my hopeless MacBook Pro. But it reinforced my need for having a backup PC in case something like that ever happens again. As well as the fact that my current system isn't really up to the task of editing 4K (and sometimes 8K) footage into a 4K timeline in Premiere Pro.
SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
I would strongly recommend ordering basic RAM and sourcing some ECC RAM yourself as I don’t believe PCS offer it, but on a system like that it would be hugely worthwhile.
JUNI0R
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
This is incredible! I'm studying graphic design at uni and we've done a bit of text based motion graphics, (nothing portfolio worthy sadly) it's super fun, but can be very frustrating 😂 As a car nut and a massive PC fan, seeing all the automotive work on your portfolio makes me very jealous, you must love the job, apart from when your PC breaks 😂
Congrats on the new PC, I'm sure it'll be a beast!
Bhuna50
Author Level
Wow - excellent portfolio - I was so taken in by your work, I just realised I spent about half an hour or more watching everything on there.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
Only ONE drive? At that price I'd want at least three: a fast M.2 NVMe for Windows and programs, a moderate M.2 ACHI for games/scratch drive/high performance data (possibly even two of these if the board allows to separate games and high performance data from the scratch drive) and a SATA SSD for all other data - and even an HDD for archival stuff.
Stephen M
Author Level
With current wait times there may be someone whose rig cost 5 pounds, 14 shillings and sixpence
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
Phew - now it's public, we can talk about Adobe After Effects' new multi-frame rendering (which I've been using enthusiastically on Adobe's confidential beta programme for a while now before it passed to the public beta). It totally changes the game regarding speccing an AE machine - it always used to be "no point going multi-core, just get a few very fast cores". But now AE renders multiple frames simultaneously (currently limited to 8 frames at a time, but should be more in future) and soon the previewing process should be multi-frame rendery too.
So I'm back to speccing up a machine again. New benchmark results for this version of AE are beginning to appear - most of the existing ones - i.e. anything older than a couple of weeks - are now probably irrelevant (eg. https://www.aebenchmark.com/#table ). But Puget Systems have done some good testing: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...me-Rendering-in-After-Effects-18-1-BETA-2096/
Plus there's Adobe's forum with some results from a test project they posted - would be interesting to get as many results posted on there as possible: https://community.adobe.com/t5/afte...hreading-you-ve-been-asking-for/td-p/11885358
Interestingly, all these results seem to still quite like the processor I've been considering all along: the Threadripper 3970X 32 core, which is reassuring (Puget recommend the 5900X and 5950X, but they don't actually exist in real life so we can eliminate those).
But I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on various options...
Max. memory: am I right in thinking the non-Threadripper AMD CPUs only support up to 128GB RAM? While I don't need more than 128GB at the moment, it'd be nice to have the ability to upgrade in future.
Why does PCS only offer 16GB RAM sticks as a 2x16GB = 32GB option? Why can't I spec four or eight 16GB units? (I'm planning to spec the system with just two 16GB and buy some elsewhere probably).
I can't seem to find a motherboard on PCS that supports Thunderbolt. Clients often send me Thunderbolt drives, and I assume this would be faster than USB3...or am I wrong?
If I wanted to go the Threadripper Pro route, why is the RAM for these machines (on PCS) only 2666MHz?
Any ideas on when the "pre-order only" ASUS® PRO WS WRX80E-SAGE SE board might be available? It seems to be the only one PCS do for the Pro processors.
So I'm back to speccing up a machine again. New benchmark results for this version of AE are beginning to appear - most of the existing ones - i.e. anything older than a couple of weeks - are now probably irrelevant (eg. https://www.aebenchmark.com/#table ). But Puget Systems have done some good testing: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...me-Rendering-in-After-Effects-18-1-BETA-2096/
Plus there's Adobe's forum with some results from a test project they posted - would be interesting to get as many results posted on there as possible: https://community.adobe.com/t5/afte...hreading-you-ve-been-asking-for/td-p/11885358
Interestingly, all these results seem to still quite like the processor I've been considering all along: the Threadripper 3970X 32 core, which is reassuring (Puget recommend the 5900X and 5950X, but they don't actually exist in real life so we can eliminate those).
But I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on various options...
Max. memory: am I right in thinking the non-Threadripper AMD CPUs only support up to 128GB RAM? While I don't need more than 128GB at the moment, it'd be nice to have the ability to upgrade in future.
Why does PCS only offer 16GB RAM sticks as a 2x16GB = 32GB option? Why can't I spec four or eight 16GB units? (I'm planning to spec the system with just two 16GB and buy some elsewhere probably).
I can't seem to find a motherboard on PCS that supports Thunderbolt. Clients often send me Thunderbolt drives, and I assume this would be faster than USB3...or am I wrong?
If I wanted to go the Threadripper Pro route, why is the RAM for these machines (on PCS) only 2666MHz?
Any ideas on when the "pre-order only" ASUS® PRO WS WRX80E-SAGE SE board might be available? It seems to be the only one PCS do for the Pro processors.
SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
I wouldn't recommend threadripper if single core is important, as Puget suggest, 5900x or 5950x would be far more appropriate for all out performance. Threadripper is old Zen 2 (yes, even the new pro ones) so are far lesser overall performance, they're handy for cores, but single core performance sucks.
Regarding Thunderbolt, currently only B550 supports it on a modular internal header, you have to buy the thunderbolt board separately for about £100.
But I wouldn't recommend B550 for either the 5900x or the 5950x, you'd really want X570 for the extra VRM capacity.
X670 is due out shortly, that is very likely to include thunderbolt and personally, I would wait for that if you're able to hold off.
But definitely NOT Threadripper, it's not at all suited to your uses.
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
I'd love one of those but I'd pretty much eliminated the 5900X & 5950X due to their seeming non-availability - unless anyone has any news on the possibility of their impending appearance? Also, am I right in thinking the max. RAM these processors can address is 128GB? (I don't need that much RAM at the moment, but I'm trying to future-proof this purchase as much as I can).
(I'm currently editing some 8K RED footage into a 4K timeline on my 6-core Intel i7 3960X 4.5GHz system - it puts up a brave fight in the face of what I throw at the poor thing!)
(I'm currently editing some 8K RED footage into a 4K timeline on my 6-core Intel i7 3960X 4.5GHz system - it puts up a brave fight in the face of what I throw at the poor thing!)
SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
Both those CPU's are shipping as normal and have been since release. It's just there's a bit of a queue for them.
Yes, the max RAM on X570 would be 128Gb. You would never need more than that, if you did you'd need a server, not a computer.
Mndlssomssn
Member
Holy cow AE is going to support multi cores? I just ordered a new build and now I render on gpu with redshift I wasn't sure where all the threadripper power would be used but this is great news!
Hello Paul
Bronze Level Poster
Yep! Download the public beta version from the Creative Cloud app, and multi-core rendering is there already! Out of interest, what's the spec of your new build? I'd love to get a 5950X processor but might opt for a slower, more expensive 3970X just because of the shortage of the 5950X.