T-U has some particularly good, practical feedback here (e.g. liquid cooling is *not* always quieter, and if you're not overclocking it's generally unnecessary), and likewise Zaxxon with the 6 core, 32+GB recommendation. As far as I understand Skylake is not going to bring any major speed improvements any time soon (not until next year, I think, more cores, etc.), and while it may drive prices on older CPUs down, it may not be worth waiting for, especially if you've got paying work coming in steadily on which you could really use a faster machine.
SSDs are more expensive than HDs, but not crazy expensive in general, and regular, large HDs are insanely cheap these days. So the best thing to do, generally speaking, is get an SSD of say 256GB and then a larger "data" drive to stick all your work files on. This will make OS boot times and application start-up very fast, without making your system cost too much. Crucial, Samsung, Intel, or Sandisk SSDs are my recommendation.
http://www.techspot.com/review/999-consumer-ssd-roundup-2015/page6.htmlAlso don't forget to check out the TG3 benchmark results to get an idea of the performance of your planned hardware upgrade. The results don't include price of the CPU, but you can look that up for CPUs that look promising. Something that might be useful and instructive given T-U's approach (aiming for twice the speed) is to run the benchmark on your current machine and then look for a result that is half the time:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eX9Ltn3_9BjsamA0Pxeflv5AKrjkgViEY8VuetB8e3k/edit#gid=1964613224In my case, with an i7 2600k at stock speed, I have a render time of about 10 minutes. Half that time looks like it could just about be achieved with a single i7-5930K, or certainly with a i7-5960X. The 5930k is about $580, a bit pricey, but since it's the heart of your system, the absolutely most important part for best TG performance, it is probably worth it. The 5960x is more like $1000, not really justifying nearly twice the price for maybe 10-15% better performance. If $580 is still a bit too much, the 5820k is only about $390, about $50 more than the 4790k and with a respectable performance margin (again, reference the benchmark results), not too much slower than the 5930. All this changes if you overclock, which is actually surprisingly easy these and not very risky these days, especially for mild overclocks.
As you know the graphics card doesn't affect TG render time. It helps with being able to view complex objects and large populations in the 3D preview, but it's generally not worth spending a ton of money on.
- Oshyan
