Building a Graphics Workstation 101

1

3h 0min
$197.00

Premium courses are not included in the HQ PRO subscription

Summary

“Building a Graphics Workstation 101” is a hands-on, 3-hour workshop designed to teach you the fundamentals of assembling a custom graphics workstation from start to finish. Led by Elburz Sorkhabi, co-founder of The Interactive & Immersive HQ, this course covers everything from selecting the right parts and planning your build strategy to installing each component correctly and implementing effective cable management. You’ll learn how to optimize your setup to match specific project needs, gain the confidence to troubleshoot and maintain your system over time, and explore how offering custom-built servers can become an additional revenue stream for your studio.

Instructor

Elburz Sorkhabi, Co-founder of The Interactive & Immersive HQ

Course Benefits

  • Cost Savings & Hardware Flexibility: Build a more powerful system at a lower cost than buying from big-name vendors, and choose components tailored exactly to your needs or the needs of your client. Pay only the cost of the parts, shop around for the best prices, and pay no additional markup fees to get the best system possible. Elburz’s build in this workshop is more than 30% cheaper than the same build from a big-name vendor!
  • Deployment Speed: Some projects move so quickly from green-light to deployment that you might not have enough lead time to order a system through a vendor that might take 3-6 weeks. In this 3-hour workshop, Elburz builds a workstation from start to finish and if you include fast shipping options available, you could have a full workstation built and ready to deploy in a few days instead of a few weeks.
  • Customizable Solutions: Adapt cases, cooling systems, and hardware expansions to fit unique project requirements or challenging installation environments. Need multiple GPUs, various types of video inputs/outputs, high-performance audio interfaces, more USB busses or network interfaces to plug in tons of sensors? These things can quickly drive up system costs, create long lead times, or not be possible when you try to buy a server from a big-name vendor. If you build the server yourself, these things are trivial additions.
  • Long-Term Maintenance & Troubleshooting: Know every detail of your workstation’s build, making repairs and upgrades faster and more efficient in the future. This applies to both systems you install for clients at permanent installations, systems you rent to clients for events, or systems that you use in your studio!
  • Additional Revenue Stream: Offer custom-built servers to clients as part of your installations, delivering perfect-fit systems while boosting your studio’s bottom line. You can additionally offer warranty to your clients for your time to maintain and repair the system in the future creating more revenue opportunities.

Course Contents

  • Review of parts lists & specification: Understand why each component is chosen for this build and how to match the hardware to project requirements. Elburz reviews his client’s requirements and talks about each piece chosen.
  • Prepare the tools you need for building a server: Gather the essential tools and materials to streamline the building process. You’ll need less tools than you think and Elburz ensures you don’t overspend on tools you don’t need.
  • Understand the general strategy and steps: Learn the overall workflow before diving into the build, ensuring you have a clear plan of which parts should be installed in which order.
  • Learn to Install the power supply (PSU): Secure the PSU in the case with proper orientation to maintain optimal airflow and cable management.
  • Learn to Install and power the motherboard: Position and seat your motherboard correctly, then connect it to the power supply as well as understand the ins and outs of the different connections/pins/slots and more of a motherboard.
  • Understand How to Replace the chassis fans: Upgrade to better and quieter fans that improve airflow while reducing noise. This small cost can have great benefits for systems that are within hearing distance of the user.
  • Learn to Install RAM: Insert memory modules correctly and learn how to optimize RAM configurations for your motherboard.
  • Learn to Install the M.2 SSD storage: Mount SSDs onto the motherboard and understand how multiple smaller drives can be more advantageous than a a single large storage option. Elburz covers how and why he decided upon his storage configuration.
  • Learn to Install the CPU and CPU cooler: Avoid pitfalls when placing your CPU, applying thermal paste, and mounting the cooler. This is the single most stressful part of the workstation build and understanding the process before you get started is critical.
  • Connect the front panel ports and LEDs: Wire up your case’s front ports and status lights to the motherboard for functionality and monitoring.
  • Learn to Install the GPU: Place your graphics card in the ideal slot for performance and ensure it’s powered properly. GPUs have large power requirements and understanding how they’ll interface with your PSU is critical to get the best performance and not burn out your power supply or GPU.
  • Learn to Install additional PCIe cards: Add specialized hardware based on your project’s input/output needs. In this workshop, we install an additional Blackmagic Decklink Quad 2 for video inputs and outputs.
  • Implement basic cable management: Keep your build tidy, secure, and easy to maintain with strategic cable routing and bundling.
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