I find the best PC is a custom one.

I'm sure there are companies in the states that can offer this. But I got mine from an office called 'PC Specialist'. They're based in the UK.

Here's my rig:


AMD PHENOM™ II X4 955 (3.2GHz) BLACK EDITION (Socket AM3)
4GB CORSAIR XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY (2x2GB)
ASUS® M4A79-T DELUXE: AM3, DUAL DDR3, S-ATA II, 4 x PCI-E x 16, 2
x PCI
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64-bit + Windows 7 Upgrade
Voucher (£85)
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD
150GB WD VelociRaptor® SATA 16MB CACHE (10,000rpm)
22x DUAL LAYER LIGHTSCRIBE DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
512MB ATI RADEON™ HD 4850 PCI EXPRESS
512MB ATI RADEON™ HD 4850 PCI EXPRESS
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
BLACK ALUMINIUM TRIGON CASE + 2 FRONT/SIDE USB
450W Quiet Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£24)
ARCTIC COOLING FREEZER 64 PRO PWM QUIET AMD CPU COOLER
(£19)
2 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORTS (1 onboard, 1 at back panel)



That cost me 875£ [1,400 in US dollars] at the time.

It might be more than you require at the moment, but it's exactly what I needed 1.5 years ago and continues to perform well. I use it for big grasshopper definitions and for rendering in mental ray and vray on 3d Max2011.


I'm aware that more and more platforms are moving to Macs [as Apple has eclipsed Microsoft in terms profits in the past 2 years. Even Autodesk is trying Apple, as well as McNeel.] However, at the moment a robust PC works better than a robust Mac for certain things in our profession.

whatever you do, get a minimum of 8 gigs ram. if your smart you will get (2) 4 gig dimms so you can expand to 16 or whatever next year.

i like the i7 series processors from Intel. i have the lowest i7, the 860... from what I have heard its the best intel processor for the price.. once you move up to the 900 series i7's there is a large price increase.

i look at this site in the technology section

www.redflagdeals.ca

i watched for a deal from dell and jumped on it.

i got the following and its sweet:

Dell Vostro 430
Windows 7 Professional
i7 860
8 gigs DDR3
1TB HDD 7200rpm
512meg video card (this isn't that good)
27" monitor
DVD Burner

2yr next business day on site warranty

1200bucks CDN after tax

you should be able to do much better... this was almost 1 year ago.

... speak of the devil

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-ca-vostro-430-pc-w-i7-870-3gb-ram-320gb-2yr-warranty-709-8gb-ram-799-a-945583/?prefixid=Comp9&daysprune=30

If your 2-year old PC is struggling to keep up with the applications you listed, your problem has more to do with your PC becoming part of a spam sending bot-net than anything else.

The specs listed above are awesome, but a total overkill even for a serious arch monkey.

Get yourself some virus software. Save a few grand and treat yourself to something nicer than a box of wires that you'll feel more smug for having than actually using to full potential.

Also, stop surfing for midget porn, and your 'puter will have a longer shelf life :)

steelstuds.. you can't just go around telling people to stop surfing for midget porn... good god, we all have needs man!

Indeed shaner. It's just that the sin tax is so high.

damn you all --- from now on, whenever i hear or see "i7", I'm going to think, "made for midget porn"

by the way, i agree with shaner --- if you look at reviews, there always seems to be an intel chip (or amd) that sells for around $200 to $300 that will give you, according to reviews, 80-90% of the performance of the $1000 flagship chip. from my perspective, if i bought a thousand dollar chip i'd want to make it last 4-5 years to get my money's worth --- trouble is, within two to three years, you can get a $200-$300 dollar chip that will out perform it --- so right now, i'm of the mindset that I'd rather get a new $200-$300 chip system every two years than a beast every four or five.

So i7-860, 8 GB, etc

also critical to match the RAM to MB & Processor, no reason to buy expensive ram if your MB or processor does not support its higher clock speeds and if you will not adjust the setting yourself

at this point, you may want to wait a couple months for sandy bridge --- due Q1 2011

Your $200 chip is the same chip that costs $1000. Only crippled.

Don't believe me? It's the future of computing.

This has been happening since the early days of computing, only now Intel is looking to profit from it.

Your i3 is same as i7, only artificially crippled.

that is a good part of it, steelstuds. and is the price difference worth it? by reusing my harddrives and GPU, i upgraded my system for about $800 and that included putting in a kick-ass aftermarket CPU cooler i'll spend that again in two years --- and again have a system that will run at 80%-90% of what a top end i7 series will do

now it may not hold its own against a dual six core xeon workstation, but it will do everything I need of it

I thank u guys so much for taking the time and advising..


This gets me started.. But could u guys advise on which make is good: Dell, hp, mac.

dell always gets unfairly panned cause its sort of the easy option... but ive always had dells and they have always been super reliable work horses... they arent fancy...they arent particularly ergonomic or comfortable... the quality of them generally wont blow you away... but they are reasonable, built solid and ultra reliable... if you take care of them, they will last as long as you need them too... ive had 3 dells... each of them i had for around 3 years... only 1 of them broke down at any point while the other 2 i replaced cause i wanted more power...

thats been my experience anywayz...

Dell XPS, nothing less...

does anyone in the arch profession overclock their comp? is that common?

crippled midget pron. Got it

job job, where did you get it from? I'll give you my list of midget porn sites if you give me yours.

@jk3hl: overclocking is rare in architectural circles. The question at hand is HP or Dell or Mac? Which one of these is a more powerful computer for my midget porn?

Also, overclocking will not get you much if your dual core has two additional cores that are disabled.

i overclock my render node. when i upgraded my system with new components, i had a MB, CPU and 4 GB of RAM left from the old system. So I figured, if i get a new case, PS, cheap GPU, i've got a whole second computer for let than $100. I then got a mid-range aftermarket CPU fan for about $20. It cooled the old quad-core chip enough that i can over clock it

so for under a $1000 total, i upgraded my workstation, ended up with an overclocked quad core render node, and can render out with 36 GHz worth of CPU through put. I found that distributed render performance with vray and modo does in fact scale linearly with addition of cores so distributed rendering and overclocking pay clear dividends

my i7-860 runs at stock settings, overclocking is possible but right now it is whisper quiet and overclocking changes that. the render node runs at 10 or 20% over, gets a little hot but manageable and generates some fan noise but only when in full use

interestingly, the toughest part was sharing the computers in windows 7. apparently adminstrator privileges have some safe guards in them in windows 7 that were not in xp so that i had to call microsoft and change some extra settings before the computers would allow each other access