Need an extremely awesome PC

[Guitarmasterx7]

Alright so pretty much my computer is a piece of crap and I need a new one. Not necessarily for gaming, mainly for really heavy video editing and rendering 3D objects (in Maya and such.) The main problem is I know absolutely nothing about hardware. So, my question to you is, what is the best possible rig I can get for under 2000 dollars?

 

[Gruthar]

Yeah, you can get a lot of power for that much, definitely in the i7 range. The only thing you should decide is whether you want to use this exclusively for work or not. The reason is because there are specialized video cards used for rendering, but they don't work too well for gaming. Similarly a gaming video card will do well in video games, but won't render detailed models as well.

The only other two things I would suggest if this machine is going to be used for video editing and such is a lot of RAM, and a lot of hard drive space.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Yeah, you can get a lot of power for that much, definitely in the i7 range. The only thing you should decide is whether you want to use this exclusively for work or not. The reason is because there are specialized video cards used for rendering, but they don't work too well for gaming. Similarly a gaming video card will do well in video games, but won't render detailed models as well.

The only other two things I would suggest if this machine is going to be used for video editing and such is a lot of RAM, and a lot of hard drive space.

I would probably use it for both, but honestly, I don't play many PC games, as of now all i have is team fortress 2 and counterstrike, so as long as I can run something like that on high im satisfied. Preferably an all around good video card, but if I have to choose one I would go with video rendering over games.

 

[superbleeder12]

I built my computer for 1000 USD.

an i7 processor, Radeon HD 5770 (I can run crysis on very high settings at 1680x1050), 12 gigs of RAM, case, power supply, hard drive included.

when you're looking at any sort of performance build, don't go with a prebuilt pc from dell, hp or whatever.

Go online, read some sites devoted to building a PC or even go to your local book store, there's hundreds of books out there about how to build your PC.

 

[Gruthar]

Get a 4870? There 100$(ish) right now and will max out everything in existence, and probably continue to do so for a year or more.
Or a 5770/5870/5890 if you want dx11, I guess.

Also, there is no such thing as rendering cards, It's the same hardware with different drivers.

Same GPU, not quite the same hardware. Workstation cards do have some hardware-level optimizations. But your point is taken. One big difference between rendering cards and gaming cards is the driver, with video memory being of secondary concern. As I've been discovering these past few minutes, it is possible to softmod (ATI cards at least. I'm guessing it can be done with Nvidia GPUs, but I haven't checked.) to act like a FirePro card, which makes a huge difference in rendering performance. Based on that, and given the OP's budget, I would go with something like a Radeon 4870, or any high end gaming card that has successfully been softmodded to run like its professional brethren.

Basically, if you go that route, you're using a ~$2-300 card to do the work of one that costs about five times that amount.

Edit: And by the way, here's an example of how big a difference there is between a workstation card and a gaming card:
http://icrontic.com/articles/perspective-the-radeon-hd-5870-vs-the-firepro-v8750

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

kind of unrelated, but can i put my current computer's hard drive in one that i build, or are hard drives not universal?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

kind of unrelated, but can i put my current computer's hard drive in one that i build, or are hard drives not universal?

Unless you have extremely old hard drives, you more than likely can. (The current standard is SATA drives.) Be aware, though, that you may have to reactivate Windows (if that's your OS) as it will see this as a new installation.

 

[Junkle]

I agree with the consensus: build your own. Not only can you get good deals on the specific parts and it'll end up costing a lot less than if you got a premade one, but it'll also teach you how this kind of thing works (if you don't know already. On a related note, if you don't know how they work, get someone who knows very well. Not only will they be able to tell you what everything does, but when everything doesn't work together properly, which is almost inevitable, they can help with that too.)