Build your dream workstation

[mkeefe]

I am looking to build a top of the line workstation for my business. It needs to be quick, powerful and have tons of storage. I am mostly looking in the PC line of things, but will entertain a Mac if someone comes up with a compelling reason, just make sure it isn't a simple "Buy a Mac" response :)

I am serious about this and am willing to wait it out for some more money to be available since as you know my cool camera set me back a pretty good chunk of change.

Thanks in advance,

Matt

[Gankstah]

The new pro mac looked awsome. THere was a link colin made in the general forums. Where you could play around with specs. They have those new super fast hard drives 3 gigs a second i believe. As well up to 16 gigs of ram. It tastest yummy. It has a bunch of slots for hard drives I Not sure how many terragigs you can get up too but i know it might be 2 or more with 4 drives each being 500 gigs.

Come on buy a mac response. Havent you seen the mac commercials with the pc guy and mac guy? lol =0. There so creative. Maybee its just me but the Apeal for macs is there advertising campagin. Even though Dell and all those companies are descent and nice. I think mac has it going on. Obviously deffintely get the 3 year guarantee as well. Cant beat that by bringing it in a store they will fix it up asap. There very helpful beyond question. If you have a store near you.

You may want to wait though till the g6 comes out. Who the hell knows when that is. heh. I have a few dell xps gaming machines with 2 gigs of ram running core duo 3 gighz chips. Im much more satisifed with my mac for some reason. just process's alot faster.

[mkeefe]

Let me get this out right away, this will not become a Mac vs. PC war. :)

I will not buy a computer because the commercial is "creative", but do appreciate the view and welcome any others.

Here is the reason I can't really go Mac, I need all of this software to work on it, some does some doesn't.

Photoshop (smooth), Zend Studio, EditPlus, 3D Max, Bulletproof, Premiere, Audition, After Effects, Illustrator, Trillian (haha), Thunderbird, Apache, MySQL Monitor and a handful of many other products.

Matt

[kiwicolin]

How about using bootcamp?
Im planning on getting the macpro and then probably selling my 3.something GHZ shuttle PC
I hope to run mac and windows on the same system

[mkeefe]

That is a possibility, may let them come out with Leopard and address it more in depth after that. Someone has got to be using a Wintel. haha

Thanks again,

Matt

[Gankstah]

hopefully that comes into play with mac and windows being on the same system. I just feel the hardware itself is far better that was the only point I was trying to make. I actualy prefer pc's for certain things. but yet again im not using those web/3d programs but hope it works out for you. Keep it real

[mkeefe]

The problem with all that RAM is the chip becomes the bottleneck, it is like flowing an ocean through a straw.

I am looking at PC based mostly, since Vista probably will not run on Bootcamp at least not the top version.

I need ideas on memory choices, video, motherboards, cases, accessories and anything else you can shed light on.

Matt

[Hermie]

This is a real hard question. I don't need you to tell that the more memory you got the better and that memory is cheap! For everything else it means the same, the more the better! But it's gonna cost!

Is this computer gonna be the main computer?, if so i wouldn't make it a joined "bootcamp" computer with vista and mac (there are already people who has this running, beta windows!!) because of the switching between mac and windows for the programs to run...
If i had to buy a computer then i would wait until vista came out, because of the more options.

Storages is not an problem. I use a NSL USB 2.0 Disk drives. With two Western Digital External harddrives of 320Gb EACH!! This Network Storage Link is nothing more than a little computer (linux) that's hanging in a network!!

I think you should google sites where they are comparing hardware and looking for the best....

[mkeefe]

This will become my main machine, and at this point I am not looking for prices, mostly what you "the developer/designer" would want in a PC.

After reading a few views I probably will not dual boot since it would slice my productivity in the long run.

I have about 600 gig of storage now, I am referring to advanced storage: RAID, offsite, etc...

Like I said this is pure research nothing happening quickly. :)

Matt

[Hermie]

:cool: Raid is an option. In a Dutch computermagazine is a story about T(era)b lots and lots of storage and it's with a raid solution....
I don't know much about it, me got s(erial)ata with two harddrives of 200Gb, in the other computer theres also Sata with two 300Gb harddrives, than there is my back up harddrives (NSL) each 320Gb. So a lot of storage, witch i need for VHS turning into DVD...

[Cappy]

I am a PC guy and since it sounds like you need to go PC and that is all I can really comment on since I haven't been on a MAC since 2000 here are some trade rags that I will list and why you need to get them:

First off I would go with an AMD chip as opposed to INTEL although intel is supposedly coming off of their horse with the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme
CPU - Sept. 2006 / Voil.6 Issue 9 - In depth about the above

MAXIMUMPC - October 2006 Awesome write up AMD Athlon FX-62 vs. Intel's Core2 / Also ASUS mobo info and Media Center information

MAXIMUMPC - June 2006 Everything you will need to be Vista ready
MAXIMUMPC- September 2006 Claims to have built the fastest PC ever with blueprints inside / Also indepth info on Intels Core2 Extreme

MAXIMUMPC - May 2006 Everything broken down as to what is current and what is coming out there / CPU's - Motherboards - Memory\\
All of the above have several other articles by the industries best as to what is going on now, what to wait for and what to build now

Computer Power User (CPU) I didn't think had as much informative info for what you want and I think they may be a bit slighted toward INtel

Good luck. I am doing my own build and these are some of the results of my research.

Adios` Capp

[Cappy]

Didn't see an "Edit"
I forgot for storage I am using Maxtor III One Touch USB and they are going into the Terabytes size wise and I couldn't be happier. Especially with the software included which allows for "Restore Points" taking a system that has crashed and bringing it back to the last restoration.

[bryan]

I recommend to buy a high end server motherboard, with two socket or more. And get a nice Quadro FX card x 2!!

My old rig:

AMD Opteron dual 2 Ghz (Get two of these!)
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 / 3400
TYAN s2877
2G ECC RAM
Seagate 5 Disks = 1,000 GB SATA 16m/sec Storage....

and XP SP2...

Works perfectly with Maya, 3Ds Max and other main stream 3d applications.
I installed Adobe CS3 suite work flawlessly... no chokes..

My office PC Rig:
Intel Core2 Duo 3600,
NVIDIA 8500 GT
and it sucks..
It even chokes when I scroll my screen...
And yes I do have a big screen resolution like 1060 HD, my dispaly is SyncMaster 2232gw... I guess it has nothing to do with this, huh?


My future rig:
Quadro FX 5600
4 Socket board (with any brand, it has to be the best!)
and buy 4!! yes! FOUR AMD (Again??) Opteron native 4 core .. :D this means I got 4 physical CPU and virtually has 16 CPU :D nice! (It is alway good to have multi core when you do multi applications)