HI i have a friend who is a third year digital animation student. He uses programmes such as 3DS Max for animating and modelling, as well as video and photo editing programmes but he wont be over clocking. He has up to £1000 to spend and wants to build a new pc. What spec would you reccomend? The budget wont include a monitor however.
Animation computer spec help
- Thread starter Alex40k
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I have looked into it a bit and have basically come up with a spec which is very similiar to mine (a gaming rig). Q6600, P35 chipset mobo, will he need more than 4GB of ram and which would you reccommend? Also is a good GPU needed for this type of thing?, would a 8800 GTS 320mb suffice if so?
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I actually had a tough time spending all that money. 
This GPU should be more than sufficient. If he really wanted to go first class he could opt for a Quadro but OcUK doesn't stock professional-level graphics. The quad should really help rendering times. I could have opted for a Q6700 but I don't think its a good use of money. Instead I got 4 GiB RAM and 1431 MiB storage space.
This GPU should be more than sufficient. If he really wanted to go first class he could opt for a Quadro but OcUK doesn't stock professional-level graphics. The quad should really help rendering times. I could have opted for a Q6700 but I don't think its a good use of money. Instead I got 4 GiB RAM and 1431 MiB storage space.
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Alex40k said:
Well he wont need more than 4GB of RAM, 2GB RAM would probably be enough although my general feeling about these programs and such is that the more the better, could easily get 8GB of RAM with his budget.
My first thoughts were Quad Core, 4GB RAM for a starting point. Graphics wise i'm not sure how powerful GPU he would need, most likely a 8800 GTS is overkill although he certainly has the budget for one, I'll have a quick google about the program in question he intends to use and reply unless someone else posts something
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TBH I cant really fault BillytheImpaler's spec other than personal preference stuff such as me personally would choose the Antec P182 for its sound dampening features but like i said thats mainly personal preference and nothing wrong with the one his chose.
Also a suggestion, you could save a few pounds and buy a cheaper cpu cooler than the Noctua such as the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro as these new ""Energy Efficient" editions are meant to run cooler and considering he wont be overclocking might save him a few pounds.
Also a suggestion, you could save a few pounds and buy a cheaper cpu cooler than the Noctua such as the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro as these new ""Energy Efficient" editions are meant to run cooler and considering he wont be overclocking might save him a few pounds.
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This is a slightly different version. I nixed some of the hard disk space in favor of 8 GiB RAM and the X1950 with the monstrous cooler.
If you wanted to get it cheaper you could definitely go with a cheaper CPU cooler, even the stock cooler would do the job. The Noctua is nice and quiet and with this much money to spend I think it'd do nicely. Remember that with 8 GiB RAM you'll have to run a 64-bit OS, be it XP or Vista. Linux or other Unix-like operating systems are not supported by 3DS Max.
If you wanted to get it cheaper you could definitely go with a cheaper CPU cooler, even the stock cooler would do the job. The Noctua is nice and quiet and with this much money to spend I think it'd do nicely. Remember that with 8 GiB RAM you'll have to run a 64-bit OS, be it XP or Vista. Linux or other Unix-like operating systems are not supported by 3DS Max.
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WoW 8GB of RAM for £235 
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GFX card is the key thing for doing 3D animation you need a good card and preferably Nvidia as they are better supported. Although FireGL's (If you must haveATI) and Quadros are the best. You can use a gaming card however anything thats a Nvidia 7 series or above will be good enough unless your working with dynamic/particle simulations which is where you need pro cards.
RAM and CPU is needed for rendering unless he's doing really complex scenes 2GB will be adequate, 4GB if his money stretches that far if he gets a pro gfx card. Processor needs to be the fastest you can get.
Storage... If he's doing his own stuff then he'll probably be doing video editing aswell so a couple of identical drives are good in raid 0 but fgs he must have his project files on a seperate drive that is not part of the raid. Me, I have two raid 0 arrays with a project partition on each that software mirror each other and a slave computer that also mirrors the projects folder and is also a render node... I have lost precious information twice and I have learnt my lesson... losing a couple years of hard work is not fun.
RAM and CPU is needed for rendering unless he's doing really complex scenes 2GB will be adequate, 4GB if his money stretches that far if he gets a pro gfx card. Processor needs to be the fastest you can get.
Storage... If he's doing his own stuff then he'll probably be doing video editing aswell so a couple of identical drives are good in raid 0 but fgs he must have his project files on a seperate drive that is not part of the raid. Me, I have two raid 0 arrays with a project partition on each that software mirror each other and a slave computer that also mirrors the projects folder and is also a render node... I have lost precious information twice and I have learnt my lesson... losing a couple years of hard work is not fun.