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building a workstation on a budget…
Okay so I am going to be building myself a new workstation, on a budget of around $1700 with a possible $500 – $800 to throw in further down the road.
My question is, what is crucial to have for an After Effects CS3 station that dabbles in Cinema4D every once in a while. What should I get now with the $1700 on my budget and further down the road what should I upgrade to, and what are the most pertinent things.
I am really hoping to get dual processor machine with 2-4 cores each and 8 gigs of RAM. Also this will be a Windows XP machine. In my workstation right now I have 4 GB of RAM and a QuadroFX540 graphics card, as well as 2x250GB SATA2 HDs and 2x500GB external MYBOOK HDs.
What should I keep and put in the new machine and what should I upgrade and get whole new parts…
Oh and monitors arent an issue, I have those as well…
Thanks everyone!
Toph.Topher Welsh
Head Editor & Motion Graphics
http://www.scout.com -
3 Replies
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I believe you will be frustrated at that price point. Long Render times mainly.. I have been on this quest for sometime. In fact just recently made a huge decision to go all Mac. I ahve been PC for 15 years. Tired of fighting with little things that cost time. Time is money. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of PC machines doing fine but for me, after MUCH MUCH MUCH thought research and comparisons I am switching. I current run a dual core AMD 6000 with 4 gigs of ram. I wait forever to render.. I am tired of that. But I am about to invest around 10k that includes mac pro and macbook pro. Again it can be done in your price range but I can also go from Birmingham AL to Atlanta on a bicycle, but its going to be a long ride. In my opinion, and there are guys on this forum that have forgot more than I will prob ever know, you must have at least a quad core, with at least 8 gigs of ram. Hard Drives are not as important unless you are doing uncompressed HD. PROCESSOR and RAM make the world go round.
Just my input.
Reggie Spires
Magic City Group -
I think you won’t get what you want for 1700dollar.
For a dual processor+dualcore you would need a high-end motherboard, Xeon processors ,ECC-Ram (8GB will cost quite a lot), and a good power supply.
What machine are you running on now and what speedincrease do you expect ? A Quadcore can perform as good as 2 dualcore…
Working SD or HD ?cya,
Jan
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[Jan Sherlink] “I think you won’t get what you want for 1700dollar.
For a dual processor+dualcore you would need a high-end motherboard, Xeon processors ,ECC-Ram (8GB will cost quite a lot), and a good power supply.
What machine are you running on now and what speedincrease do you expect ? A Quadcore can perform as good as 2 dualcore…
Working SD or HD ?cya,”
Right now I have an early dual core system that i got around 3 years ago… before the Core2Duo’s came out. i have 4x1gb sticks of RAM and dual 2.6 Pentium D’s Not sure what the motherboard is… I bought it for school before I was into After Effects, when I was working in Avid doing only editing.
I just need something that is going to be able to handle HD footage within After Effects, that I can run high end AE projects on. I know I am going to need the 8GB of RAM and at least a quadcore.. I just dont know which brands are cheaper…
I mean like I said, I am going to have some more money coming my way from my existing computer, once I can sell it.
Reason I ask, is a power surge fried one of my computers and im gettin 1700 bucks back from insurance for it to buy a new one.
Topher Welsh
Head Editor & Motion Graphics
http://www.scout.com
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