for $2-3000 you can build a fucking super computer, you can build something more than capable of running UE3 and zbrush for sub $1000.
I recently put together a pc for around $1000 that consisted of:
Intel q6600 quad core
8 GB 1066mhz ram
8800 GT
DVD burner
250 Gig HD
New case
600w PSU
For probabbly about $500 more, you could supersize all of that, get a gt280 or hd4850 or something and have a very very capable machine. I really dont think you would even want to spend 2-3000, you will end up paying way too much for "cutting edge" components that are marginally better, and give wayyyy less value. Save that extra money and get some drugs and hookers.
oh those drugs and hookers.....
yea i would second that, for around 1000 you could get a pretty decent machine, go 64 bit for that extra oomph and to make sure you get the full use of your ram.
Here here 8gb and 64bit OS to utilize the ram. I usually have UnrealEd/3ds max 2009/photoshop CS3 and Zbrush 3.0 open all the time and these usually gobble ram. A quadcore helps too but like EQ said you can get a very decent rig for 1000-1500 bucks.
I recently put together a pc for around $1000 that consisted of:
Intel q6600 quad core
8 GB 1066mhz ram
8800 GT
DVD burner
250 Gig HD
New case
600w PSU
Do you not find your PSU getting a bit strained under the weight of all that? I had a 550 blow out after I stuck a new 8600 GTX in my machine. I went straight out and got a 750w PSU to give it the extra juice the card pulls out.
the more ram the better i'd say.
don't know much about the new i7 processors, but they sure sound nice. (nice and expensive)
I agree with SnarG that a larger PSU would be a better choice. Thats the last thing you want to be cheap about.
Don't be cheap on your psu, make sure you get a good brand too, the way vid card are these days you'll need one. You should be able to build a system that can run all you want easily with 1500 or less.
be aware the more overpowered the PSU, the less efficient it is used.
I measured my system at work (quad core, 4 gb ram, 1 hdd, 1 dvd, gf 9600 GT passive) and the whole system sucks only about 120 Watts (minus screen) at full load (prime95 + gpu raycasting)
of course the "non passive" latest & fat versions of the graphics card would suck a lot more...
anyway for 1k $ you would get quite a killer machine
Do you not find your PSU getting a bit strained under the weight of all that? I had a 550 blow out after I stuck a new 8600 GTX in my machine. I went straight out and got a 750w PSU to give it the extra juice the card pulls out.
Huh... I'm running a GTX 260 on a 550W power supply... no problems??
As everyone is telling you though don't skimp on you PSU. I'd recommend corsair.
I bought simmilar rig to EQ's one year ago for around 1500$. I had a Chieftec 550W psu with it but recently i switched it to Corsair 650W and i'm absolutely loving it For work with UE3 8800gt is more than enough, spend more on fast hdd/ram/cpu is what i would suggest.
for the psu go with corsair or pc power&cooling. It might be tempting to get a 1000w noname psu but most computers only draw like 250-300 or so. its the efficiency & quality of the power being served that counts
I changed the video card maker (to Sapphire) and upgraded the ram to 8gigs. So far I haven't had a single hiccup at all and the machines runs everything (Crysis included) on maximum settings in 1920x1080. Of course Crysis averages the mid to high 20's but everything else is destroyed.
evga nvidia 9800 GT 1 gb (get the akimbo or another card with hdmi out instead of svideo/component)
evga nforce 780i ftw
intel core2quad q9300
4 gigs ram @ 2x2048 corsair xmsII ddr2 (I'll go to 8 when I save another 300$ for ram and a 64bit os)
segate 1 TB sata drive
corsair 750 W power supply to feed the hungry system and provide future room for SLI
a modest case (coolermaster centurion 534+)
vista 32bit
With 3k you can build a high end core i7 rig... that's 8 EIGHT fawking cores that blows anything else out of the water...
my rig as it is at OEM speeds non overclocked runs crysis on high settings 4x AA between 30-40 fps
half of what you have saved will buy an amazing system... with the rest you can get a cintiq :B
in terms of performance for cash, the entry level i7 is supposed to be about 30-40% faster than my q9300 quad core... but you pay another 200$ over what I paid for the new motherboard and cpu remember with i7 as well, you need to buy 3x the ram instead of 2x the ram. I chose to go quad over i7 because it's proven, reliable technology where i7 is new. I don't want to overclock, but I paid premium bucks for a motherboard that is known for overclocking... lots of overhead for safety
Even in SLI my system should only draw about 500-550 watts but again... safety first... plus psu output declines over time as it ages so pick a good one that is higher wattage an extra 50 bucks here goes a long way.
i can barely run any UE3 game/editor with my EVGA 8800GT it gives me constant lockups and green pixels all over each screen, had to revert to using a 8600 GT to do any work in ue3. There was a huge thread on the epicgames UT3 forums about this video card have issues. I'd stay away from it and get a newer version.
then again, your mileage may be different from mine.
lulz, I have a dual core processor with 4gigs of RAM, UE3 and zbrush run fine. my pc was sub $900 when I built it.
same, according to irc's system info script, i have this:
12:56 @DasAlmightyGir (CPU1) Intel® Core2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz @ 3007MHz (MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD MS-7519 mainboard) (RAM) 4GB, 2.32GB free (HDDs) 232GB, 129GB free
12:56 @DasAlmightyGir (VGA1) NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT (512MB), 1920x1080x32, 60Hz (OS) Microsoft Windows XP Professional (SP3) , 1d 4m uptime, 1d 4m uptime record
the only reason it says i have so little ram free is that i'm on 32bit windows atm and it only recognises 3gb.
i got this on christmas day, and it cost about £500, has an 800w PSU, and a £75 case (all included in the price).
The editor is heavily multi CPU optimized, even more so than the actual game I believe, so a quad core will most certainly help. Rebuilding on a quad core really takes all 4 cores to 100 percent for example.
I don't think 8 gb is needed right now, unless you are really into heavy multi tasking. Rather spend your money on CPU/GPU than on 8 instead of 4 gb imo. Plus ram is always easy to extend later on, a GPU and CPU has to be replaced.
but ram is cheap as nothing right now and with this budget 8gigs are just a very small part of what he's going to buy, i mean 8 gigs is like what? A hundred to a 150 Euro? it's just so cheap it doesn't hurt putting more in right now.
with a budget higher than 1500, i would really spend the extra 100-200 to get a motherboard that supports more than 8 gigs of ram. that way, if you want to start with 4 gig ram, you can in the future, update to more ram.
this is a better way to go, than getting a motherboard that only supports 4 gig ram, then have to upgrade the motherboard if you want more ram.
Definitely get a mobo that supports at least 8 gigs of ram, this shouldn't be hard, you could probably get one for around the $100 range. If you're going for a core2 blah blah. Looking at mobo's for core i7 it looks like many of them support 16 or 24 gigs, but those are pretty much all over $200, and getting that much ram wont be cheap either
If you want to think about it in practicle terms, with a quad core and 8 gigs of ram, you should be able to work on 32million polys in mudbox2, realtime. Maybe more in zbrush? No idea what sort of performance you would get with an i7 and 16 gigs or whatever, but i think there is a point where you probabbly wouldn't notice the difference.
but ram is cheap as nothing right now and with this budget 8gigs are just a very small part of what he's going to buy, i mean 8 gigs is like what? A hundred to a 150 Euro? it's just so cheap it doesn't hurt putting more in right now.
Yeah the 8 gb in my system, 8 gb 1066mhz OCZ ran me about $220? Likely even cheaper now. Theres really no reason NOT to get that much ram, its so damn cheap.
![[Deleted User]](https://polycount.com/themes/polycount/design/default-avatar.gif){kind=avatar}
Replies
I recently put together a pc for around $1000 that consisted of:
Intel q6600 quad core
8 GB 1066mhz ram
8800 GT
DVD burner
250 Gig HD
New case
600w PSU
For probabbly about $500 more, you could supersize all of that, get a gt280 or hd4850 or something and have a very very capable machine. I really dont think you would even want to spend 2-3000, you will end up paying way too much for "cutting edge" components that are marginally better, and give wayyyy less value. Save that extra money and get some drugs and hookers.
yea i would second that, for around 1000 you could get a pretty decent machine, go 64 bit for that extra oomph and to make sure you get the full use of your ram.
Do you not find your PSU getting a bit strained under the weight of all that? I had a 550 blow out after I stuck a new 8600 GTX in my machine. I went straight out and got a 750w PSU to give it the extra juice the card pulls out.
don't know much about the new i7 processors, but they sure sound nice. (nice and expensive)
I agree with SnarG that a larger PSU would be a better choice. Thats the last thing you want to be cheap about.
I would say 1500 would net you a pretty sweet rig for work and gaming for sure.
I measured my system at work (quad core, 4 gb ram, 1 hdd, 1 dvd, gf 9600 GT passive) and the whole system sucks only about 120 Watts (minus screen) at full load (prime95 + gpu raycasting)
of course the "non passive" latest & fat versions of the graphics card would suck a lot more...
anyway for 1k $ you would get quite a killer machine
Huh... I'm running a GTX 260 on a 550W power supply... no problems??
As everyone is telling you though don't skimp on you PSU. I'd recommend corsair.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-graphics-overclocking,2083.html
I changed the video card maker (to Sapphire) and upgraded the ram to 8gigs. So far I haven't had a single hiccup at all and the machines runs everything (Crysis included) on maximum settings in 1920x1080. Of course Crysis averages the mid to high 20's but everything else is destroyed.
evga nvidia 9800 GT 1 gb (get the akimbo or another card with hdmi out instead of svideo/component)
evga nforce 780i ftw
intel core2quad q9300
4 gigs ram @ 2x2048 corsair xmsII ddr2 (I'll go to 8 when I save another 300$ for ram and a 64bit os)
segate 1 TB sata drive
corsair 750 W power supply to feed the hungry system and provide future room for SLI
a modest case (coolermaster centurion 534+)
vista 32bit
With 3k you can build a high end core i7 rig... that's 8 EIGHT fawking cores that blows anything else out of the water...
my rig as it is at OEM speeds non overclocked runs crysis on high settings 4x AA between 30-40 fps
half of what you have saved will buy an amazing system... with the rest you can get a cintiq :B
in terms of performance for cash, the entry level i7 is supposed to be about 30-40% faster than my q9300 quad core... but you pay another 200$ over what I paid for the new motherboard and cpu remember with i7 as well, you need to buy 3x the ram instead of 2x the ram. I chose to go quad over i7 because it's proven, reliable technology where i7 is new. I don't want to overclock, but I paid premium bucks for a motherboard that is known for overclocking... lots of overhead for safety
Even in SLI my system should only draw about 500-550 watts but again... safety first... plus psu output declines over time as it ages so pick a good one that is higher wattage an extra 50 bucks here goes a long way.
then again, your mileage may be different from mine.
same, according to irc's system info script, i have this:
12:56 @DasAlmightyGir (CPU1) Intel® Core2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz @ 3007MHz (MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD MS-7519 mainboard) (RAM) 4GB, 2.32GB free (HDDs) 232GB, 129GB free
12:56 @DasAlmightyGir (VGA1) NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT (512MB), 1920x1080x32, 60Hz (OS) Microsoft Windows XP Professional (SP3) , 1d 4m uptime, 1d 4m uptime record
the only reason it says i have so little ram free is that i'm on 32bit windows atm and it only recognises 3gb.
i got this on christmas day, and it cost about £500, has an 800w PSU, and a £75 case (all included in the price).
I don't think 8 gb is needed right now, unless you are really into heavy multi tasking. Rather spend your money on CPU/GPU than on 8 instead of 4 gb imo. Plus ram is always easy to extend later on, a GPU and CPU has to be replaced.
this is a better way to go, than getting a motherboard that only supports 4 gig ram, then have to upgrade the motherboard if you want more ram.
If you want to think about it in practicle terms, with a quad core and 8 gigs of ram, you should be able to work on 32million polys in mudbox2, realtime. Maybe more in zbrush? No idea what sort of performance you would get with an i7 and 16 gigs or whatever, but i think there is a point where you probabbly wouldn't notice the difference.
Yeah the 8 gb in my system, 8 gb 1066mhz OCZ ran me about $220? Likely even cheaper now. Theres really no reason NOT to get that much ram, its so damn cheap.
Looks like you can even get ddr3 1600mhz (i7) at 8 gigs for around $300.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227297