Building a new pc for 3d modeling and 2d art

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1

Hi there I’ve been toying idea of building an Art workstation.
I’m currently in the middle of trying to do designs for a game I’ve been working on.
I use only blender for modeling and plan on using the blender game engine.
For texturing I use Photoshop
And for Character and set designs I use a program called Manga Studio (I like the line art quality much more than PS)
For my tablet monitor I use a program called Lazy Nezumi Pro to smooth out my line art.
I would love to move to Linux but neither of those last two programs work on it.

The specs for my current PC are:
FX 8350
Asus Sabertooth MB
32 gb ram
128 gb ssd
1 tb internal hd
4 tb external hd
asus strix gtx 980
Windows 10

What I’m looking at:
I7- 5930k
ASRock X99M Extreme4 Micro ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard or Asus X99-M WS Micro ATX LGA2011-3
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (I will upgrade to a full 64 gb in the future)
Mushkin Atlas Vital 480GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive
2x Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB STRIX

Budget is $2000 to $3000 and I will be reusing the 980 in my current system for the new. And replacing that 980 with a 390x which will not be figured in the budget for the new system.

This is the first time I’ll be building a task specific PC. Usually I just go with the lowest price fastest system I can build.
I have done a lot of research before choosing the parts I have. But I wanted to hear an opinion from experience.
What I was wondering was for what I’m describing does this sound like a good system for what I’ll be doing.
I’ve heard from sources that single thread performance is more important for single thread modeling. Is that true?
If so is there a better processor for this build.
I know that AMD cards are now working with cycles rendering. (Yes I know that cycles is not used in the blender game engine but I still like to render some of my work.) Does any one have any experience with this? Might it be a better idea to go with AMD for this workstation or stick with Nvidia?
Also Work station graphics cards are they honestly worth it. I’ve been looking into the FirePro w7100 does any one have any experience with this card?
Or would I just be wasting my money and should just make some minor upgrades to my current system. (building PCs is fun but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.)

Thanks

2

Honestly, save the money and get the strongest AMD CPU that your motherboard supports and you should be fine, but if you really want a never pc…

the only thing you should do, if you decide to, is change the motherboard, CPU and the ram.

dont go too crazy thou, dont get a processor with the k on the end, which just means you can overclock it.
if the programs you are using support hyperthreading, go with an i7 4790,if not go with an i5 4690. you dont have to go with the latest series, as it is a 5-10% increase in speed over the last generation.

the motherboard thou, take something to a 100$. nothing too crazy, as there are virtually no differences between a 100$ and 500$ motherboard, that you will care of.

ram, 32gb max.

reuse the drives, case, psu and gpu.

Now, I recommend a partial system upgrade every 4 years and complete upgrade every 6. so, for the future, change the things mentioned above and you should be fine and never spend more than 1000$ on components, unless you know why you need them and are your bread and butter, only then you can justify purchasing a 3000$ computer.

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I would think your current PC should perform quite well, especially if you’re modelling for a game rendered in real-time. If your PC can’t handle the models, the average gamer’s PC would likely have a heart attack.

I’ve currently got an FX 8150 with 8GB of RAM and an ancient nVidia 460. My CPU is the last thing I plan on upgrading. I need a new for the newest AAA games, and I’d like more RAM one day, but my setup handles Blender quite well.

If you want to run Linux, I’d stick with nVidia cards. nVidia’s proprietary Linux drivers are much better than AMDs. I run Linux as my main OS and have had a lot of trouble with AMD drivers, where as the nVidia drivers usually “just work” and almost never give me problems.

Building PCs is fun. If you’ve got the disposable income to drop several grand on a PC just cuz you want to, go for it. But if you’re trying to find a way to justify it, I think your current rig is plenty good, save your money.