3D apps are normally not very hard on your video cards like game are, Nvidia cards are defiantly the way to go with maya and other 3D apps. I myself wouldn't spend that much on a card, but if your case has proper cooling it shouldn't need to be water cooled.
I'm starting to see some relatively affordable consumer level laptops/desktops with specs like 13+ gigs ddr3, terrabyte hd, and cards like the 285. (like in this week's Dell and Best Buy fliers). So I'm thinking, it's no longer a budget overkill issue for this level of specs.
Re: venting, read somewhere else that 280's fan noise might be an issue, so wondering if going water makes practical sense.
I've got a 285, no water. It's fairly quiet (at least by my standards) when doing 3d work (max,zbrush), but the fan gets pretty noisy when playing games.
Noise is ok here on a 280, case fans are louder anyway. The card is beastly powerful and hasn't had problems with any game so far (I can max everything).
btw, do consider custom building your desktop instead of giving a premium to Dell or worse, Alienware.
I had a GTX 285 at Raven. Super stable compared to my previous card. Never any issues and I always had our build of UE3 open, photoshop, and 3ds max 2010 with usually a crazy amount of shit on screen.
I would suggest this card if you can get it for a good price. They should be dropping soon since the new DX11 cards (i know seriously) are coming out in the next month or so. Which means the older cards will drop in cost.
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I'm starting to see some relatively affordable consumer level laptops/desktops with specs like 13+ gigs ddr3, terrabyte hd, and cards like the 285. (like in this week's Dell and Best Buy fliers). So I'm thinking, it's no longer a budget overkill issue for this level of specs.
Re: venting, read somewhere else that 280's fan noise might be an issue, so wondering if going water makes practical sense.
btw, do consider custom building your desktop instead of giving a premium to Dell or worse, Alienware.
I would suggest this card if you can get it for a good price. They should be dropping soon since the new DX11 cards (i know seriously) are coming out in the next month or so. Which means the older cards will drop in cost.