Hello, I am new to houdini and i want to build a workstation for mostly simulations in houdini. This is my build:

Asus X99 Deluxe Motherboard
i7 5960x cpu
32 gigs ddr 4 memory (8 gig sticks)
geforce gtx780 6gb (i allready have it)
Sirtec 1600 watt (i allready have it)
NH-D15 CPU cooler
SSD: samsung 840 pro
Nanoxia Deep Silence 6 Case

I am planning to overclock the cpu to at least 4.0 GHz

My budget is around 3500$.
Any advice?

Thanks

another build i am thinking about is:

CPU:xeon E5-2630 x 2
32gb ECC RAM: Kingston ValueRam DDR3 Single Rank
Asus Z9PE-D8 WS
Case: Nanoxia DS6
SSD: samsung 840 pro
GPU: GTX780 (i allready have it)

is it with indie license?

when you only want to have 32gb ram you could make one system for just simulation and rendering and one bigger system where you work on and with more ram, cpu…..

for 1000$ you can build a system with the intel 4790K, 32GB Ram; SSD Storage.

the rest of the 2500$ you can use for a workstation with the 2011 socket and at least 64gb ram.

I currently use the educational licence. Just learning. I wouldn't buy 2 systems. Based on my budget i would end up with 2 bad systems. I just want to know which way should i go. i7 5960x octo core or xeons… Some people say that unless i afford to buy 3.0GHz + xeons, i should rather get the i7.

The main restriction with the i7 vs. Xeons is that that i7 5960 is artificially limited to 64GB of memory, while the Xeons are only limited by the number of RAM slots and available DIMM sizes. Granted, you'd have to do some pretty wild simulations to need more than 64GB, but I thought I'd point that out.

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.