A little overwhelmed, looking for optimal Blender

It looks like DS only carries the hot (and pricy) E5-2687W for Xeon chips. I don't see ECC memory as an option in their configurator; you may need to talk to them about that. You do want to go with the M5000 GPU...it has support for ECC in the DRAM similar to the M6000, but significantly cheaper (but only around 2/3's the M6000 in nearly every way)

Configuration URL:     https://www.digitalstorm.com/configurator.asp?id=1275726
Specifications:
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Corsair Obsidian 550D
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 3.1GHz (9.60 QPI) (25MB Cache) (10-Core) (Ultimate Performance)
Motherboard: ASUS X99-E WS (Intel X99 Chipset) (Workstation Class)
System Memory: 32GB DDR4 2666MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series
Power Supply: 500W EVGA SuperNOVA
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Optical Drive: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD (250GB Samsung 850 EVO)
Storage Set 2: 1x Storage (2TB Western Digital/Seagate/Hitachi)
Storage Set 3: - No Thanks
RAID Config: - No Thanks
RAID Card: - No Thanks
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Graphics Card(s): 1x NVIDIA Quadro M5000 8GB (Outputs: 1x DVI-I DL ; 4x DisplayPort 1.2; 1x Stereo)
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
HPC Processor: - No Thanks
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Digital Storm Vortex 120mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler (High-Performance Edition)
H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a custom HydroLux liquid cooling system selected
Chassis Fans: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Airflow Control: - No Thanks
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
LaserMark: - No Thanks
Boost Processor: Standard Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 Automatic Overclocking
Boost Graphics Card(s): - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Boost Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
Boost OS: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-Bit Edition)
Recovery Tools: Windows Recovery Toolkit (Bundled with Windows CD)
Virus Protection: FREE: McAfee AntiVirus Plus (1 Year Service Activation Card) (Not Pre-installed) ($35 Value)
Office: - No Thanks
Game: - No Thanks
Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: - No Thanks
Keyboard: - No Thanks
Mouse: - No Thanks
Portable Gaming: - No Thanks
Branded Gear: - No Thanks
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 10-15 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: Life-time Expert Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty (3 Year Labor & 1 Year Part Replacement)

If you don't need to absolute reliability, stability, and accuracy of a workstation class processor and memory, you can change the motherboard, swap the CPU for an i7-5820K (have DS overclock it to compensate for losing 4 cores), and go with standard RAM. That can drop the price of the machine down significantly.

You want to prioritize the quantity of RAM over speed of it. Video editing, especially high resolution, takes up a ton of RAM.

Thanks for the build recommendation! I just had a few questions to gain a little more insight:

Is there any particular reason, other than price, you recommend the Slade instead of the Aventum II? I've heard the Aventum has better cooling and airflow...is that true?

In terms of GPU, in looking at 1x GTX Titan X 12GB or even 2x GTX 980 ti vs the Quadro M500, it seems the GTX is much faster (at least in terms of benchmarks) and cheaper. Is there any particular reason you recommend a Quadro? Is it a reliability factor?

quadro's have some under the hood work station specific tweaks done to them that make them a little better for rendering, but to be completely honest, you aren't going to have any issues with a more gaming focused Titan or 980ti.  same goes for the Xeon vs. X99 based system. 

if this rig were never to be used at all for gaming, then build more towards the work station (xeon+quadro based system).  if you think you might game on it some with mostly rendering workloads then choose the X99+GTX based system. 

as for total system cooling, the Aventum III (Aventum II discontinued) will be unmatched by anything else DS offers.  of course, it will be unmatched in price as well


Edited by db188 - 04 Sep 2015 at 4:19pm

For your needs, the Slade is perfect. You don't really need an AVENTUM. The AVENTUM is best served for dual socket configurations or systems with 4x GPUs, or liquid cooling configs, etc...

i noticed that DS has the K5200 on clearance sale.  that should be more than sufficient for high end rendering work.  however, if you're doing large modeling work clock speed is king and the core I7 is still decent for rendering.  i've seen benchmarks favoring a fast oc'd 6-core over all of the Xeons on a mainstream K2200, at least in 3DS Max and AutoCAD. 

also, why no 10-core Xeon, Alex? 


Edited by db188 - 05 Sep 2015 at 3:35pm

Originally posted by Alex NVIDIA does not like us doing this on them.

That's what I assumed That and the assumed risk for changing the cooling on the $5000+ GPU would be quite high. The M6000 are still fairly power hungry as they are fully unlocked GM200 chips.

Even being fully unlocked, the GM200 chips are not hot running cards. Air cooling is plenty.