Build for a friend.

adamsjus1 · June 2, 2015

I have a friend who is running a slightly upgraded Dell XPS computer.

And he is restricted down by its slow speed. He kind of games but the main use would be for editing.

I called him and asked him what programs he uses. they are -Cinema 4d- Photoshop- Illustrator- Red bullet magic looks- topaz clean- and sony Vegas pro 13.

He doesn't know how much money he will be able to speed. But what kind of parts would he be looking for if he only has like $700? What could he do with $1000? maybe even $1200.

I don't know how multi-threaded these programs are and what cpu's and gpu's with help.

Thanks

edit--- All he would need is the computer.. he already has monitors and other peripherals.

rafazafar · June 2, 2015

i guess ur looking ideally for :
i7 or xeon
16gb or more of ram,
AMD cards work well with vegas.
Furryball render for Cinema 4D?
SSD for os and/or scratch disk
and the typical stuff.

Parts will totally change depending on your budget so its quite important to give a fairly confident budget. but for the most rendering station or machine around 1.1k is very good.

Too tired to help list out but im sure someone will come around and pcpartpicker the heck out of this thread.

TLDR:

700$ - Decently good entry rendering. IMHO enough if your not a professional and dont need to churn out alot of things quickly. The production experiance should be very good still. Just slower on the output.

Something like this but yeah just change around i guess, this is just a "workhorse" approach:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kzdPdC

you can downgrade these parts and still have very good experiance :
CPU : 1230 v3 to 1220 v3. -40$
HDD: remove 2TB -50$
SSD: 500gb to 250GB -77$
MOBO: ASRock H97 Anniversary to ASRock H97M Anniversary -6$

Lollausen · June 2, 2015

strongly agree on AMD cards for editing. At least one SSD will be important, big as you can afford or multiple ones. 16gb minimum of ram. i7 is the best option there is, but if you end up on a very very tight budget Fx8350s are a good price/performance ratio for editing purposes, will need a good cooler though. DO NOT buy an 9000 series, if you're going to spend that much might as well get the i7.

keep in mind that the processor you choose will affect future upgrades in terms of motherboard compatibility, and AM3+ socket (for the AMD 8350) is pretty much a dead end in that sense.