Hi, Newbee question, top spec for $2500

[wr_uk]

Hi

At the moment I live in the UK but will be emigrating to the States in early September and want to make the most of the £-$ rate and buy a good spec PC but I need some advice on what exactly to buy. I will be running Maya (which is a 3D package).... I have a fair idea of what I want ....good quality graphics and render power and I have a budget of around $2500.

The question is... I know a bit about the hardware.. i've installed graphics cards.... reinstalled operating system... and RAM etc. I would very much like to build my own PC as I've been told this could save me quite a bit of money but I'm a bit unsure of what component is compatible or works best with other components! OR do I just buy a 3D high spec from dell?

The kind of spec I guess I'm looking for would be somthing like:
dual core processor
768MB Nvidia Quadro Graphics card
250-500GB SATA storage
20" digital Widescreen Flatpanel Monitor (probably Dell)

Is it worth looking at quad core processors and Quad Mon Config for the graphics card... and what about raided Hard drives?

Also what about 64 bit machines?.... I know Maya will already run on on this.

I just want to get the best possible spec on the budget I have for quality graphics and Highend rendering.

Will I need some kind of cooling system when creating lots of renders?

Can anybody guide me here?

Is there anybody on the forum from the Seattle area who knows somebody who builds to spec?

Any help much appreciated!

thanks

Wayne

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Quad monitor configuration with a single graphics card would in your case mean Quadro FX 4500 X2, it would have 2x512 MB of RAM (see the Quadro comparison here)

If you want lot of screen estate, an alternative could be one or two 30" monitors (with 2560x1600 resolution each), although those are still quite expensive, wouldn't fit into your budget.

I recommend RAID 5 for that kind of work, so it would require at least three hard disk drives. RAID 0, while it might be faster, provides no recovery if one drive fails. See more information about RAID here.

The standard cooling you get with (boxed) CPUs and graphics cards should be adequate, they're designed to cool the parts enough even in high temperatures. The noise level might be a concern however.

 

[kpo6969]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/cto_xpsdt_710?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

This may or may not help you, but at least give you an ideal of what Dell has to offer. From here you can spec out what you need and get a ballpark figure. This is for the XPS 710(formerly top line). The XPS 720's just were released so this could give you more bang for the buck.

 

[jbaker2345]

In my personal opinion do not go with Dell I have had 3 through them and each one has torn up around the same time about a year after I get them that is why I took and built my own computer. If you want real good deals go to mwave.com and look for the bundle specials and then choose what you want on the mobo as far as ram processor size etc.. and they will even assemble the mobo and processor with fan, ram and even test it for you as well then ship it out fully assembled. I got a MSI 975X PLATINUM V.2 INTEL 975X CHIPSET ATX FORM FACTOR and CORE 2 DUO E6300 1.86G (1066Mhz)
MWAVE 2GB DDR2 667(1GB x 2) and had it tested,assembled all for around $450. It is Crossfire compatible so i also bought one more pciex16 video card
from Ati which mine are x1900's. Spent in total around $650 for everything. Hope this helps.

 

[kpo6969]

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/cfgc2d.asp?v=d
build your own site

To the previous poster, I supplied a link for Dell so the origional poster could get an ideal, this was not a recommendation. At least a link was supplied. This link above is a build your own set-up also. If someone has a $2500.00 budget what use is a $650.00 pricepoint.
Your issue with 3 torn up systems after 1 year each sounds like somethings up. Like maybe o'c ing when the Dell bios locks you out of doing that except for XPS?

 

[jbaker2345]

To the last poster(kpo6969). Never oc'd the systems it was some kind of security issue and Dell support would not help me fix them they just wanted to charge me to fix them. Don't get me wrong though some Dell computers are good I just had to be the one to get the bad ones that is why i prefer to build them myself.