10k to spend on a rig

[ubermuffin]

Have been looking into a processing rig for a few months now. I've taken the time to dig through all the post over the last few months to see what people have been coming up with rig wise for their scanning needs. It seems there are many opinions on the matter for sure.

What I want is something capable of 256 megs of ram, 4 video cards and whatever the best processors that can go into the  motherboard that can handle those specifications.

Does anyone have any suggestions when it comes to brands of motherboards. It seems you want to start at the best motherboard available then branch out from there.

Thanks for any info!!!

[Marcel]

4 GPUs make little sense. The Dense Cloud reconstruction  is 50% CPU limited on large scans (the depth map filtering phase), so your speedup will be limited compared to 2 GPUs. You'll gain something like 25% of processing time (and installing 4 hot GPUs comes with some overheating issues as well).

[ubermuffin]

this seems like a good place to start.

https://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_Workstations/Z9PED1610GDUAL/specifications/

so 2 Video cards seems like enough then. With all my research it really seems like having enough RAM is the biggest advantage.

about 8 months ago Radeon cards were the best for photoscan. Does this still hold true? or are nvidias ok now?

[Marcel]

Both are good, AMD being cheaper (and nVidia using less power?) Check the GPU thread for more info.

[andyroo]

I don't know where in the world you are, but in North America, I am a fan of Dell Xeon-based systems. I am running a T7500 w/ 192GB, but if I had 10K I would look for a T7600 or T7610 at one of the off-lease sites or Dell outlet. They're dual-CPU and the inventory changes pretty frequently on the outlet site. The 7610s can do up to 512GB of 1866MHz, but they only take ECC so it's $$$.

I've always liked the cases. They're roomy and easy to work on. And it's got a 1300W Power supply which is nice...

Last I looked here there was a whole lot of discussion on Xeon vs i7, and i7 was better for single models with Xeon better for multiple reconstructions at the same time, but I think for that much RAM you'll need a multi-cpu system.