Workstation for After Effects

[Don Huckleberry]

Hi,

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you are not comfortable with upgrading computers or don’t know anyone who can do it for you – you might want to stop right reading right now…but if you are on a tight budget or want to get more for your money – please read on!!! Also, some people think it’s not a big deal to pay extra for a “turnkey” system. If you think along those lines, then my recommendations are probably not for you — but money talks.

I put your specs in the HP online configurator and pasted the numbers below with the current 20% discount for small biz. You might have been quoted a different number, so please take that into account on your own. I have worked for both a major university and a major media company and we would routinely get at least 40% off but I doubt you have that buying power – but it doesn’t hurt to push your salesperson for a better deal anyway. You might even configure a workstation with Dell just to get comparable pricing and make them fight over your quotes, we did that all the time.

I build all my personal machines, but have worked with Apple, Dell and HP workstations professionally and there is something to be said about not having to troubleshoot individual parts when building a system. I should know, because I am trying to build a system because I just got CS5.5 on that crossgrade and took all my parts back to Frys because the system was unstable…very frustrating. You can save at least 1/2 if you do this, but there are support issues and headaches that go away if you buy a stable workstation from Dell/HP/Apple.

A hybrid solution can involve a “barebones” setup with the case, power supply, motherboard, CPU/heatsink, base ram and OS then upgrade the video card, memory and disc – all of which are very easy to do. If you aren’t comfortable with doing it, you should be able to hire someone to just install the pieces and still save a lot of cash as you will see below. Your warranty on the base system will not be voided and you can run tests on your memory and disc to make sure the upgrades are not defective.

Lastly, think of memory as the soft drink at a restaurant – the highest profit margin item. The cup cost more than the drink if I remember and it’s like 1000% markup or something. So that’s where you will save most of your money – and the ram I specd is direct replacement from Kingston – not a “generic” brand – but ram is weird anyway, coming from all kinds of sources with re-branding and all – there really isn’t a “generic” ram at this level. Also, with the flooding in Thailand – HD pricing is wierd but the sweet spot for a 2TB 7200 rpm drive with 32MB cache should be around $100 so you should be able to get 4x the space for ~70% the price (the numbers below are still just 500GB but I highly recommend against them because the cost/MB is bad). I would get 4x2TB drives and make 2 RAID 0 software striped arrays for your read/write drives (all internal). Of course the RAID 0 doubles the chance of failure, but it increases overall throughput and render times will decrease because the I/O on the disk will be better. You could add an external RAID later and then re-stripe the 4 internal as a RAID 0 or even RAID 5 for redundancy so you can worry a little less. Also BD burners have dropped sooooo low – that HP price is ridiculous.

With the savings, you could buy an external RAID, nicer video card, additional monitor, or upgrade your CPU – doing AE, you might want to get 2x4core (for 16 threads) – of course, that modifies all the numbers too.

———-
Your Configuration

HP Z800 Workstation (case, power supply, motherboard, CPU+heatsink, windows 7 pro $2,845.00
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit $0.00
HP Z800 1110W 89% Efficient Chassis $0.00
HP Z800 Localization Kit $0.00
Intel® Xeon® E5645 2.40 12MB/1333 6C CPU-1 (LOWPWR) $0.00
HP Air Cooling Solution (Must order Heatsink with this item.) $0.00
HP 1x Standard Heatsink Thermal Kit (Required if Air Cooling Thermal Kit selected and processor is LOWPWR. Not supported with two processors.) $0.00
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2.0GB Graphics $999.00
HP 24GB (6x4GB) DDR3-1333 ECC 1-CPU RegRAM (Supported only with Single Processor) $1,560.00
HP 160GB SATA 10K SFF 1st HDD $0.00
HP 500GB SATA 7200 2nd HDD $140.00
HP 500GB SATA 7200 3rd HDD (Second drive must be SATA) $140.00
HP SATA Blu-ray Writer 1st Drive $399.00
HP RAID 1 (Mirrored Array) Configuration
Total before discount $6,083.00
Total with 20% disc. $4,866.40

Base HP with 3rd party upgrades
HP Z800 Workstation $2,845.00
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit $0.00
HP Z800 1110W 89% Efficient Chassis $0.00
HP Z800 Localization Kit $0.00
Intel® Xeon® E5645 2.40 12MB/1333 6C CPU-1 (LOWPWR) $0.00
HP Air Cooling Solution (Must order Heatsink with this item.) $0.00
HP 1x Standard Heatsink Thermal Kit (Required if Air Cooling Thermal Kit selected and processor is LOWPWR. Not supported with two processors.) $0.00
NVIDIA Quadro 600 $170.00
Kingston 24GB (6x4GB ECC) KTH-PL313K3/24G $314.00
HP 160GB SATA 10K SFF 1st HDD $0.00
500GB SATA 7200 2nd HDD $100.00
500GB SATA 7200 3rd HDD $100.00
SATA Blu-ray Writer 1st Drive $60.00

HP total $2,845.00
with 20% disc $2,276.00

upgrades $744.00

total $3,020.00

savings $1,846.40

Hope this makes sense. Sorry, but I would have done a Dell myself for comparison, but it’s getting late!!! I threw this in an excel spreadsheet, so I hope the numbers are right – it is late and I might have grabbed the wrong cells in my calculations. Please ask for clarification if something doesn’t make sense.

Or just buy the system, it’s all good!!!

Don

[Brian Betz]

Wow Don! Thanks for all the info and a Happy Thanksgiving to you! Your raise some great points and I am going to be thinking the all over the next few days. I probably would not build my own, but I was thinking of buying less now and doing some upgrading later. I also think you had an excellent suggestion to contact Dell and see what a
equivalent system might run. Thanks again!

Brian