Bang for buck

[Joelaff]

@Lenstudio

I think a 5820x system is a much better bang-for-the-buck value compared to the 5960. The 5960 (8 cores) will certainly render faster than the 5820 (6 cores), probably about 25%, but costs about 3x as much. Plus the per core speed is a little bit faster on the 5820 at 3.3 ghz compared to 3.0 on the 5960 so single threaded operations will be a bit faster on the 5820 (forgetting about overclocking at the moment). You can build a decent 5820 system for about $1000 dpending on how much ram you want to throw in it but your basically lookiing at an additional $650 to bump it up to the 5690.

Hmm… It may very well be more bang for the buck.

How overclockable is the 5820k (is there an x model?)

I am a big fan of overclocking. We have been use overclocked render nodes in the farm for years without “wearing out” or degrading the life of the chip (at least not within its useful lifespan of about 3-5 years tops). In fact, a few of the nodes have really been abused, with temps hovering right at 95-98C for days on end. (That is crazy hot. The chips self throttle at 100C. It is much harder to cool rackmount machines, and a single loop of watercooling for all the render nodes is a great idea, until it fails and you lose your entire farm.) They run fine years later.

Once you get your overclock stable there is no reason not to overclock. If that reason is “it voids your warranty” then maybe you should build your own machine without such an absurd policy…