Workstation & Gaming Spec, Maya, CS3 and GAMING!!

Bouncer

Bouncer

Bouncer

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Joined
2 Jan 2008
Posts
88
Hi, (deep breath)

Right, so i'm going to be building my new PC soon. First time build, but i've got friends who build and can help.

I'm going to be doing an animation course at uni (so that means Maya, After Effects, Photoshop and a bit of Video Editing) - It also means Power, Quad Core power to be exact. I'm rambling on and not making much sense am i?

My budget is about £1300 to include 2 monitors (i've got my eye on a couple of 20" samsung syncmasters = £300) so i guess that means £1000 on the box.

I want it to run Maya and CS3 flawlessly. That is the major priority.

I also want to get into gaming again. I left the PC world a few years ago for the sandy shores of Apple Macs (no gaming there!) - I remember the good old days of Hidden and Dangerous, Half Life and, my favorite, Tomb Raider(!!) - but i want to get back into gaming and the new DX10 games/COD4/Crysis look freaking awesome. So i want the build to be able to run these games and those in the future. At good frame rates/resolution. Obviously!

So here is the shopping list as it stands (needs some tweeking/advice!!):

CPU - Q6600 (shall we overclock this to about 3GHz??)

Case - Antec 900

Fans - not needed with this case surely?

CPU cooler: NEED ADVICE

Paste: Arctic Ceramique (something cheap - doesn't really matter much does it)

RAM: 4GB (maybe 8GB if budget permits) - BRAND does it matter??

MOBO: CLUELESS (so many options - i think i want WIFI though)

PSU: CLUELESS (will 500W be enough?) or do i need something like 1000W?

Optical Drive: Something basic (don't really need blu-ray with 20" monitors do i?)

HDDs: looking at 1 for the OS/Apps, 1 as a slave for Maya/PS/Editing, 1 as a place to store movies/music/everything else. Thinking 3x500GB samsung spinpoints? Also, (terrible question) what is RAID, is it easy to setup, will i benefit

GPU: Right, I don't think i have the budget for a Quadro, so i'm looking at an 8800, but which one GT, GTS, GTX?? Also how much memory, brand?? will an 8800 be ok for Maya?

Sound: not sure really, doesn't the MOBO have good enough?

Mouse/Keyboard/Webcam: Not fussed, cheap and cheerful probably. I use a tablet for 90% of the time so not fussed at all.

Speakers: Not fussed really. As long as they're ok. Thinking of a 2.1 system.

OS: hmmmm, I'm looking at 64bit obviously (with 4GB+ and demanding apps). XP vs Vista. I'm thinking XP 64bit (Professional?).

There is one issue i have, but i'm not sure i'm allowed to talk about it here. It begins with 'hack' and ends in 'intosh'. I'd love to run one Mac OS X app (final cut). But like i said, i'm not going to talk about this here. So lets consider this a normal Windows XP system. I'll figure anything else regarding that out for myself.

I'm completely new to Overclocking CPUs, GPUs, RAM etc - is it easy(ish)?

Right i think thats about it for now. If you've got this far, THANKS! Now give me some help on my setup!

Any help appreciated!! ;)
 
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yeh, thought about it quite a lot actually! I've been into PC world and had a look. 24" is huge! I need screen space rather than resolution though; Maya, Photoshop, iTunes, Firefox, Mail etc all open at the same time - I'm sure i can fill all the space on dual monitors!!

Howver i'm still open to the idea of a single 24"er, perhaps. There's something so cool about dual monitors though, right!!
 
overclockersukyourbaskevk4.gif

The 7300 is in there for a reason I won't discuss. Do your research.

If you want XP you'll need to get XP 64-bit, not XP Pro.
 
many thanks kind sage!!

Will look into the 7600 card, though to be honest if i have to knock final cut on the head thats cool. I edit (when i need to) once a month on a borrowed MBP at the moment anyway.

Oh by the way, the £1000/£1300 budget is without VAT (as i can claim this back)

As for XP, i thought there were 2 versions of XP64 (Home and Pro) - but i see now its just one version. Its a pretty solid OS too by all accounts
 
Bouncer said:
I'm going to be doing an animation course at uni
Click to expand...


Out of curiosity, you part of a company where you claim back VAT? Or family business, at PCW where I work, I get a lot of people buying systems and laptops for their kiddys and get a VAT receipt to claim back the VAT, which I thought strange as you would need to show the tax man its used for business...im raambling on..
 
I will be buying it through my parents business (PR company) and i'm going back to uni to change direction on my career. I do enough work for said company to justify to the taxman that i use it for the company. I do the editing/post production. Its all a bit complicated but all legal i assure you!!

Anyway, back to the build...

what about raptor drives?

i'm off for the night now, i expect i'll get more responses tomorrow. Cheers to those already helping me!
 
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK)
(£64.61)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£164.49)
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£76.36)
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£187.99)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS)
(£263.16)
Pioneer DVR-212DBK 18x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£21.14)
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Gun Metal Black)
(£88.11)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK)
(£81.06)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) Tuniq
(£32.89)
Belinea 2225S1W 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver
(£281.98)
Total : £1,261.79

Ok first things first, you have got to really good screens in this spec. Don't be fooled by the price they really are great screens.

You have got a quad core CPU which will overclock nicely to 3GHz with out a doubt but it can do more depending how the ram performs.

You have 4GB of ram because the ram I have included is 2GB sticks this means you can upgrade to 8GB later on.

I have included 4 500GB hard drives, this is because you can use RAID 5 and get 1.5TB of usable space. Using Raid 5 means that in the event of loosing one hard drive you will not loose any data all but if you loose more than 1 disk then your data is history and its all lost. Research the net about Raid 4 and also Raid 0 and 1 then you can decide which one is for your if you do decide to have a Raid Array.

The corsair PSU is the best on the market I chose the 620W version instead of the 520W because its only £7 more and it gives more room to upgrade.

All you will need to decide is what OS, if you want to play games and play them in DX10 mode then you will need Vista make sure you get 64Bit what ever OS you choose as 32Bit can only handle 3Gb of ram. I recommend Vista Home Premium 64Bit but the choice is yours.

Reading your last post I would not bother with raptors as there would not be much speed increase at all the Western Digital drives are very fast there would not be much noticeable speed difference at all between the 500B drive and a raptor.

I also agree with Billy theres no need to spend any more money as you will have a very high spec system. The only things to top it off is SLI but even that is over the top these days. You could add a dedicated sound card like the creative XFI Music but you would not really need to buy anything else in my opinion as the above systems can provide you with all the power you need all ready to do what you said you need the PC to do :).
 
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the only thing i think i need now is a CPU cooler and the OS.

Can someone recommend a good cooler for this case and bringing the CPU up to 3GHz.

Where is the best place to buy XP 64bit? Amazon?
 
For that last spec you posted, it's ~£20 more for an OCUK GTX. Which is faster and has more memory, and you can OC yourself to get it going even faster ;)
 
GTX would be nice... is it more 'useful' than a GTS (or even a GT would probably do to save £££) for CAD/graphics work??

The GPU does absolutely nothing during rendering does it, so it is only to display me triangles on screen during the modeling stages.
 
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