Best Sytem for CS3

[David Bogie]

Your best bet is to follow the recommendations at adobe.com for CPU and graphics cards. After that, you just throw money at it. Your criteria are mutually exclusive, however.

Of all the PC owners I know doing After Effects, they built their own boxes so tech support is self-administered and price was never an issue at all, the only goal was performance. These are geeks, everything was carefully researched and vetted over several weeks of combing graphics and homebrew forums.

For off-the-shelf systems, HP is tied with Dell at the local university. Tech support form HP tops Dell but only for that customer class.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Jason Demek]

Check out this HP. You can customize it to fit your needs.

https://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=desktops&a1=Category&v1=Entertainment+powerhouse&series_name=d5000t_series

HP is really great with customer service. In my honest opinion don’t go with a dell. They’re cheap but poor quality. The only good one is the XPS and I’ve heard horror stories about them. Just remember you get what you pay for. Don’t sell yourself on something just because of the price.

Best of luck

Jason Demek
Editor/Animator/Director
CW21 – Birmingham, AL

[Hank Daquilla]

Thanks for the responses. If anyone else has an opinion I’d like to hear them. My background is primarily with macs, new job they use pcs, we are currently using a 4yr boxx w/medeas for storage. Looking to set up a 2nd edit station CS3.

thanks

[Gabe Cotto]

In all honesty, if I were you, I would persuade them to make the switch from PC to Mac. Simply put, PC’s tend to be more problematic and which can cause you to lose money in the long run. My current shop is in the process of completely wiping out our 3 HP workstations and doing a clean re-install of, Windows XP, Adobe CS CS3, and Avid MC. Our HP’s are less than 6 months old. At home I’ve been rocking a Power Mac G5 that’s 2.5 years old and its been more reliable then my employer’s relatively new HP work stations.

You can get a low end Mac Pro for under $2,500 at the Apple website, and then pump some money into it to buy more RAM and more HD space at OWC. Don’t let the powers that be at your work give you the excuse they don’t like Macs. That usually just means they don’t want to learn how to use a new OS. I will be leading the conversion from PC to Mac at my shop the next time we upgrade. Good luck with your search. But remember this.

“there are two types of editors in the world, Mac users and PC repair specialists.”

“Auto save is life.”

[David Bogie]

If they’re committed to the Windows platform, you want a box someone else can help you fix! So get your existing geeks to spec the box and add a killer card with OpenGL support and a boat of RAM.

But, yeah. I’m with Gabe Cotto, buy the Macintosh. If efficiency is an issue, buy the Mac. What you spend in premium hardware costs (which is only about 10% these days) you recover easily in reduced tech support and ease of application installation. However, if you must integrate into an existing, firewall-protected Windows-only network, again, make your existing tech people spec the box. They get to play in the game that way, it’s not the “toy for the video boy.”

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”