If you could build your ideal PC right now...

[James Jetel]

What would the build look like for an office/home rig, using currently available components?

The mac pro is so far away...
I'm totally fishing for advice.

 

[Dermot Shane]

What would the build look like for an office/home rig, using currently available components?

The mac pro is so far away...
I'm totally fishing for advice.

z840 or a SuperMicro chassis / dual 2687w's / 256g / cubix expander with 4 x Titan Xp's// SAS hba
is where i would start

 

[Aaron Lochert]

I'm probably going to be building a new PC soon based off the Core i9 7900x, combined with the GTX 1080 I already have.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

I'm probably going to be building a new PC soon based off the Core i9 7900x, combined with the GTX 1080 I already have.

I was about to say the same. I'll add total of 4 GTX 1080 Ti s to that mix.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

z840 or a SuperMicro chassis / dual 2687w's / 256g / cubix expander with 4 x Titan Xp's// SAS hba
is where i would start

I have a superMicro workstation but next time I think I go with a hp since they go a step further with making custom drivers (correct me if I'm wrong), plus at better support I hear. That said, I could go back to Mac if they drop a new Mac Pro.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

I was about to say the same. I'll add total of 4 GTX 1080 Ti s to that mix.

If you're gonna rock 4 1080 TI's, I feel like you shouldn't stop at the 7900x, you should go for the 7980XE.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

not enough pci lanes in the consumer chips to do 4-1080ti at x16. Gotta go to Xeon and a board like the supermicro x10drg-q

 

[Marc Wielage]

z840 or a SuperMicro chassis / dual 2687w's / 256g / cubix expander with 4 x Titan Xp's// SAS hba
is where i would start

That would be a really great system. Not cheap.

I demand a couple of i9 processors and 8 x Quadro P6000s! :laugh:

 

[Chad Lancaster]

i9 are only single processor capable.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

not enough pci lanes in the consumer chips to do 4-1080ti at x16. Gotta go to Xeon and a board like the supermicro x10drg-q

Look into MSI (for Intel i9) X299 SLI PLUS. Has 4 PCI 16 slots. And Intel® Core™ i9-7900X X-series Processors can handle up to 44 PCI Express lanes (http://ark.intel.com/products/12361...-series-Processor-13_75M-Cache-up-to-4_30-GHz). That is more than their current top of the line Xeon can handle (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/xeon/e7-processors/e7-8890-v4.html).

 

[Chad Lancaster]

Look into MSI (for Intel i9) X299 SLI PLUS. Has 4 PCI 16 slots.

read the detailed specs. A lot of manufacturers do this..it may be a x16 slot but what it actually operates at depends on the setup.

from their page..
- Support x16/x16/x8 mode with the 44-lane CPU.*
- Support x16/x8/x4 modes with the 28-lane CPU.*
- Support x8/x8/x0, x8/x4/x4 modes with the 16-lane CPU.*

 

[Chad Lancaster]

Neil, xeon workstations tend to use e5 v4 chips

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

We have a couple of clients who require distributed mass scale renderings on demand. We currently use this setup for in-house visualizations (http://www.nvidia.com/object/visual-computing-appliance.html) with our HPC (Intel Hi-Performance Computers). Not an inexpensive device. However, we regularly buy 100k ~ 200k core render slots from our core cluster providers depending on the project. I don't know how or "if" you do large scale renderings but if you are into things of this nature, it may be a viable option. You could negotiate real attractive render node per minute pricing when you get in to large scale cluster render options. Some of them are as low as $0.002/render minute/core (depends on application licensing, time of the day, your willingness to handover clusters when they demand etc).

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

Neil, xeon workstations tend to use e5 v4 chips

The do. But Intel's next up from E5 is the current E7 series. Pricey though. And Supermicro has a solutions for them guys (https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10QBI.cfm). Looks like we need to check on this one too.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

I'm waiting on more of the x11 boards as they've told me they will have a TB3 AOC for it.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

I don't know why these MBs do not have Thunderbolt connectors. I think Intel developed that technology.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

on the new x299 they don't have them because intel didn't give the manufacturers time before computex. a few of them support add on cards tho.

 

[Dan Kanes]

AMD Epyc if it can be setup as a workstation...

 

[Thomas G]

maybe check out hackintosh options? Basically being able to work on windows and always having the option to go mac with minimum issues. Limits choices a bit but not as much as most think.