Help with New Build (Workstation Quad)

[Boy Hits Car]

Need everyone's feed back on proposed parts I'm buying.

- This will be a machine for work only in 3dsMax & Video Editing. In 3dsmax it will mainly be small animations or small projects. Do not anticipate large architectural designs.
- Budget is around $2k, prefer to stay under.
- All parts will be bought in US. Prefer Intel Quads and WD HD (only preference I'm sure about ).
- No overclocking, want it as stable as possible.
- Want to start building in the next week or so.
- Read other threads about having render farms and how the ATI 3870 would be a decent video card for 3dsMax.

Main question is can I use a dual quad systems as both a 3dsMax modeler and as a render farm? I saw in a lot of threads people having separate boxes as render farms, but don't know if I could afford to have two separate machines.

Another thing is the Ram, Motherboard and Powersupply good enough for this build and are there ways to save some cash? Should I get Win XP 64? or Vista 64? Really appreciate the help!

So far (all prices from NewEgg.com):

499.99 - ASUS Z7S WS SSI CEB Server Motherboard

299.98 - 2x A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM Dual Channel Kit Server Memory (8Gigs total)

59.98 - 2x Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK

109.99 - Antec Performance One P180 Silver Computer Case

149.99 - PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Black) 750W Power Supply

159.99 - SAPPHIRE Toxic Radeon HD 3870 100225TXSR Video Card

549.98 - 2x Intel Xeon E5410 2.33GHz LGA 771 80W Processor

133.98 - 2x Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

$1933 Total.

 

[asummers7]

im not sure about your main question but everything thing looks good though... u might could save a little bit of money with going with one dvd drive and for that price of two HDD you can get a WD 750gig for the same price. The programs would prolly run a little bit faster in XP 64 but i would run Vista 64 just cos its a newer os and you wont have to upgrade later on, personally i love vista ive never had a bad problems out of it. But make sure you run Vista ultimate 64bit.

 

[djtexas]

question for ya tech heads

Im looking to build a pc, would a server be a better choice for music production, considering i will have two programs running at the same time in what we call in music terms rewire mode ?

thanks Luis.

 

[theAnimal]

Originally posted by: djtexas
question for ya tech heads

Im looking to build a pc, would a server be a better choice for music production, considering i will have two programs running at the same time in what we call in music terms rewire mode ?

thanks Luis.

You should start a new topic for this.

 

[bamacre]

Boy Hits Car, you could probably save some money by getting a Dell Precision T5400 or even T7400. Rock solid systems.