I am about to build my first workstation which will be Houdini orientated, I did an extensive research on hardware and I though it may be useful to share it for people who may be in the same place. Also I would like to submit a couple of question which I didn't manage to answer myself.
First of all, lets start with my build. Because currently I am not in a place to spend a large amount of money in a super workstation, I have designed two different builds, the first one "budget workstation" is going to use few hardware which I am currently own and it will build on top of those and keeping in mind the second build "ultimate workstation" as an update which may come next year. Why not waiting until have all the money? Because my current pc it's so slow, which is impossible to do anything with houdini.
here is the hardware of the two builds:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZAVK_vq2cCobbnTsV2ryMokLOaKSBBpK48gX8xX8H74/edit
Questions:
1. What is best combination of nvidia? (one for OpenCL and the other for display)
2. Tesla C2075 and GTX 680 can be in the same setup?
3. Is it true that is better to go with the best (Noctua) air cooling than a cheap (Hydro Series™ H60) water cooling?
4. Any suggestion?
Please share your experience on the listed hardware or your own setups.
cheers