Workstations
UE 5, VR, and 3D Rendering Workstation
Commission to deliver the most performant workstation possible on a $3K budget in Unreal Engine 5, Virtual Reality, and 3D rendering. With an i9-13900K, an RTX 4090, 64GB of RAM, and a 2TB Gen 4 NVME SSD, top-tier performance was a given. Even so, extensive tuning was necessary to ensure decent thermals and noise were achieved without holding back any component.
X399 Threadripper Dual-Boot Workstation
Commission to deliver a crazy amount of CPU multicore performance, memory bandwidth, and storage on the X399 Threadripper platform. At the heart is a TR 2970WX with twenty-four cores and fourty-eight threads unleashed with PBO to achieve 10% more performance than stock with 4.2GHz boost clocks and sustaining 3.8GHz during multi-core torture. It's paired with 128GB of quad-channel, triple-rank DDR4 with tightened timings to achieve DDR5 levels of memory bandwidth. The Threadripper's PCIe lanes are put to good use with Windows 11 installed on the 2TB Raid 0 array of four 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME SSD's which combine to deliver PCIe 5.0 NVME speeds. For Kali Linux, an additional 4TB of NVME SSD's are present, as well as seven 4TB hard drives to make a total of 34TB of local storage. Finally, for encoding and CUDA acceleration, the RTX 3070 MSI Ventus 3X OC boasts a 10% boost to its VRAM and a 5% core bump to achieve 3070 TI performance.
Ultra-Budget X58 Adobe Suite Workstation
This is my favorite kind of job. The best computer hardware $ could buy in 2010, $200 budget, fix it and make it faster. X58 Sabertooth motherboard, top of the line i7-980X with six cores and twelve threads, maxed out 24GB DDR3 in triple channel (6x4GB).
Affordable Ableton Music Production and PLS CADD Workstation
Commission to deliver responsive music production in Ableton, good performance in PLS CADD, and smooth 1080p gaming on a $600 budget. Unlike other CAD/CAM applications that prefer hardware acceleration and many CPU cores/threads, PLS CADD more wants as much fast system memory as possible backed by excellent single-core muscle. Ableton isn't CPU demanding, but its experience does benefit significantly from minimal system latency and low memory latency.
Audiovisual Production on a Budget
Budget workstation commission to deliver solid music production (Ableton), Photoshop, and Premiere editing performance on a limited budget. With Adobe apps utilizing the iGPU of 6th gen processors as an additional hardware encoder via Quicksync Acceleration, the i7-6700 unleashed from its power limits for infinite turbo was a perfect fit. Its eight threads boosting up to 4GHz were plenty to push 64 duplicated tracks in Ableton before any hiccups occur, double of what the Macbook M1 Pro achieves.
Ultra-Budget Workstation for CAD / CAM
Commission to deliver a CAD/CAM workstation on a $300 budget. At the heart is an FX-8350 with all eight logical cores overclocked to 4.55GHz and kept cool by a Corsair H90 140mm AIO. The RAM, HT Link, and North Bridge are all locked at a synchronous 2.6GHz. The result is single and multi-core performance on par with hexacore Ivy Bridge Xeons. Paired with a GTX 960 optimized for compute and a 512GB SSD, this rig CAM do it.
CAM Workstation for Baseline Design
CAM workstation commission for local small biz Baseline Design (https://www.baselinedesignco.com/). The goal was the most performance possible in Autodesk, Enscape, and Adobe Suite for under $1k budget.
Intel Arc Alchemist Resolve Rig
Commission to deliver an excellent Photoshop, Resolve, gaming, and music production experience for less than $1k.
For music production, minimal latency is key. This makes the monolithic architecture of Rocket Lake paired with DDR4 preferrable over AMD's chiplet designs and the hybrid architectures of 12th/13th/14th gen Intel, which increase frequency and IPC at the cost of core-to-core latency by moving the I/O die to separate silicon. Additionally, while DDR5 boosts bandwidth, this comes at the cost of bolstered latency. The i7-11700F with 8 cores and 16 threads unleashed from their PLIM boost up to 4.9Ghz and achieve the necessary single-core performance for this task while delivering excellent multi-core for photo/video editing. It's paired with 64GB of dual-channel, dual-rank 3200MHz RAM with timings tightened from CL22-22-22-42 to CL18-19-19-38.
Overclocked 12th Gen CAD Workstation
Commission to deliver the most price-to-performance CAD workstation possible. At the heart is an overclocked i7-12700K (5GHz P-cores, 3.8GHz E-cores, 4GHz RING) paired with 64GB of dual-channel, quad-rank DDR4 overclocked from 3200MHz to 3333MHz in Gear 1 with tightened timings. Everything comes together with an RTX 3060 TI packing 8GB of Samsung GDDR6 overclocked to 3070 bandwidth and a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVME SSD to make a performant and capable workstation.
Alienware Area-51 R3 Threadripper Edition
Found the perfect home for this refurbished and upgraded Alienware. With a new clients' quad-core i7-4790 no longer up to the task of their ever-growing 3D modeling and animation projects, this 16-Core TR 1950X finally gets to do what it was designed for: shredding through Cinema4D and Blender renders. Paired with an RTX 3060 for its stellar CUDA acceleration and 12GB VRAM buffer, 64GB of Quad-Channel DDR4 memory locked at 3200MHz in a 1:1 ratio with the infinity fabric, 1.5TB of SSD storage, and 8TB of hard disk storage, this is a true workstation, with an R7 240 from my shelf needing to be slotted in for my client to use all six of his monitors.
Budget Adobe Editing for FRVS
Thank so much to Front Range Vital Signs for letting us spec and build their new workstation! Specifically designed for their use of Photoshop and Illustrator, we were able to squeeze in an i7-8700, a GTX 1050 TI, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB HDD to backup the two 1TB NVME SSD's they provided. The Fractal Design Define R5 is perfect for their understandably dusty workshop, featuring noise-dampening mesh filters on the side, top, and front intake, ensuring the longevity of the build. The i7 not only sports excellent single-core and multi-core performance, but also an iGPU for Quicksync Acceleration in Adobe programs. The OEM GTX 1050 TI we pulled from a golf simulator may not look like much, but its 4GB of VRAM and CUDA acceleration surpass the software's recommendations. Finally, with an upgrade cooler that let us unleash the i7's power limits, tuned memory timings on the dual-channel 32GB kit, and plenty of both NVME and backup HDD storage, I'm really happy that this wonderful business finally has a design workstation that'll help them do what they do to their best!
Budget CAD for Baseline Design
When a client let me know one of my $500 gaming systems was better specc'd than the $800 Dell workstations they were looking at, it was time to do this commission. Built for peak performance in Autodesk/Autocad, Revit, and the Adobe Suite, this system manages to exceed the recommended specs of each of these programs on a tight budget. With a Ryzen 7 Pro 1700X overclocked to 3.775GHz on all cores, the 25MHz loss to single core boost is far outweighed by the 275MHz increase to all core frequency for these production apps. Benefitted further by 32GB of 3GHz dual-channel RAM, and a 1TB NVME SSD, the package comes together with an EVGA Classified GTX 770 4GB for CUDA acceleration, hardware encoding, and Shader Model 5.1 support.
