Argh... i'm starting to feel like a box of corn flakes the way I seem to keep 'changing my mind' but I keep learning unexpected things, or the economics change. I feel I must profusely apologize for spamming up the board to pick brains but you guys have the knowledge I lack and sometimes I don't give good advice it's proper credence the first time around because I don't know whose right.
Here I was set on the Quanta Windmill (dual LGA 2011) and now that i'm nearing the time to buy the prices on boards and 'most relevant cpus' are up 50% with horrible '72hr only' DOA warranties as good as it gets. I feel like I missed the boat and it no longer makes sense chasing it. My budget for upgrades was fixed - my needs haven't reduced.
I had to remind myself "my TOP goal is to have enough RAM in 3-6 available computers" and although I want to be "future ready" to some degree that was mostly in reference to planned expansion in a known direction rather than unplanned. Like editing 4k video now, later 6k and hopefully 8k will happen but this is mostly a kick in the RAM - will CPU differences really matter that much from Nehalem to Ivy Bridge for instance at similar 3.3ghz speeds if they both have 96gb or 128gb of RAM? Are the additional hassles of the Windmill boards (quirky setup, very limited pcie slots, wierd PSU hacks needed, only two SATA drives) even worth putting up with?
I've eyed used workstations but $50 shipping costs make me balk a bit too... some good deals but 6 computers makes that $300 of shipping... why am I shipping heavy cases around when I mostly just need the motherboards I mean? I was ready to build custom wood cases for Windmills, i'll do the same for oddball mobos with otherwise good features in things like SSI EEB form factors if I have to.
My stated workloads over the next ~6-7 years are not expected to change - Adobe CC (incl Premiere and AfterEffects), 3D Studio/Maya, some game development for Unity/UE4 including VR headset stuff being the most demanding. Looking for Intel 5520 based motherboards instead of the X58 stuff is showing me 9/12/18 dimm slots of the cheap DDR3 I want to use and even stock speed Xeons of certain models seem fast enough. Not perfect, but I don't want to spend 2-4x as much for 30% more performance. When 2x the money doesnt double the performance my interest wanes.
Seeing industry standard PCIe 2.0 x16 slots means modern GPU's which still don't really bottleneck at those speeds - a 1070 GTX probably run modern VR decently with a 3.3-3.6ghz pair of quad cores even of the Nehalem generation, or are there some unexpected featuresets which make a 10x benchmark difference on newer programs i'm not aware of?
Here I was set on the Quanta Windmill (dual LGA 2011) and now that i'm nearing the time to buy the prices on boards and 'most relevant cpus' are up 50% with horrible '72hr only' DOA warranties as good as it gets. I feel like I missed the boat and it no longer makes sense chasing it. My budget for upgrades was fixed - my needs haven't reduced.
I had to remind myself "my TOP goal is to have enough RAM in 3-6 available computers" and although I want to be "future ready" to some degree that was mostly in reference to planned expansion in a known direction rather than unplanned. Like editing 4k video now, later 6k and hopefully 8k will happen but this is mostly a kick in the RAM - will CPU differences really matter that much from Nehalem to Ivy Bridge for instance at similar 3.3ghz speeds if they both have 96gb or 128gb of RAM? Are the additional hassles of the Windmill boards (quirky setup, very limited pcie slots, wierd PSU hacks needed, only two SATA drives) even worth putting up with?
I've eyed used workstations but $50 shipping costs make me balk a bit too... some good deals but 6 computers makes that $300 of shipping... why am I shipping heavy cases around when I mostly just need the motherboards I mean? I was ready to build custom wood cases for Windmills, i'll do the same for oddball mobos with otherwise good features in things like SSI EEB form factors if I have to.
My stated workloads over the next ~6-7 years are not expected to change - Adobe CC (incl Premiere and AfterEffects), 3D Studio/Maya, some game development for Unity/UE4 including VR headset stuff being the most demanding. Looking for Intel 5520 based motherboards instead of the X58 stuff is showing me 9/12/18 dimm slots of the cheap DDR3 I want to use and even stock speed Xeons of certain models seem fast enough. Not perfect, but I don't want to spend 2-4x as much for 30% more performance. When 2x the money doesnt double the performance my interest wanes.
Seeing industry standard PCIe 2.0 x16 slots means modern GPU's which still don't really bottleneck at those speeds - a 1070 GTX probably run modern VR decently with a 3.3-3.6ghz pair of quad cores even of the Nehalem generation, or are there some unexpected featuresets which make a 10x benchmark difference on newer programs i'm not aware of?