Seeking Workstation Build Advice

[Kikerd]

Budget (including currency): TBD

Country: USA

 

My friend is a graphic designer who dabbles in animation and is looking to finally looking to get herself a dedicated workstation. I was hoping someone might have some insight on what to look for in a CPU and GPU that would meet her needs and not break the bank. I was also wondering if there would be any necessity or major benefit from including more than 32GB of RAM. Any help would be appreciated.

[Roswell]

If you want to do it right, it’s not going to be cheap. I'm also not clear on the animation part. If it's 3D work, that may change up the requirements a bit.
 

That said... I assume if it’s her profession that she’s using the Adobe suite. In which case graphic design apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign only need a basic GPU for acceleration like a 1650. Anything else would be a waste for the most part unless you want to dish out for a Quadro for the error correction and validated drivers.

 

Processor is much more important, more cores the better if you’re working with large renders or in 3D since Adobe uses software rendering. You want at least an 8 core chip. 

 

The main areas of cost will be a 10 bit display that gets close to covering the wider color spaces like Adobe RGB, a proper pen tablet and copious amounts of RAM. If she’s a professional you should be shooting for 32GB. 
 

An appropriate display is going to run you around $550 at least, more if you want better coverage. Not sure if she already has a spider calibrator, but that’s needed as well. A decent Wacom tablet will be a few hundred too. I would factor those costs and build from there.

[boggy77]

really depends on the software being used, and the budget. 

a whole system that can deal with graphic design and animation can be anywhere between $1000 and $4000, depending on expectations.