Computer for Animation

Explosive_Cornflake

I don't know if here's the place or in arts....

Yeah, its another one of these threads.
Basically my freinds girlfriend is doing animation in college and she wants a computer, and i told her i'd make her one, and she's happy with that.
But the thing is i think i'm going a bit over kill on the problem, and i'm making a computer that basically i wanted to make.
What realistically do you need for running 3dsMax, and whatever else they might be using.
It doesn't need to be built to september, so this is just a very general outlay.

item price
case 49
CPU AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Tray FSB400 139.8
256*2 ddr 400 125
video card 150
samsung 160gb 8mb sata 94
abit an7 94.5
nec 2500 black 82.7
floppy 7.99
mouse 10
keyboard 10
hsf 9
fans 16
monitor(crt) 90
monitor(tft) 300
877.99 w/ crt
1000ish with tft

Thats just a quick bit i did on jes. I'd said i'd make it quite because it would be in her bedroom.
Anyone have any expierence in this field and tell me something thats drastically wrong?

There is a need for a budget, so anything i could scale down on?

joePC

You left out the OS but im sure you have one lying around

As for cutting back get a XP2500+, will be more than enough,

€150 for vid card, get a 9600Pro fot about €100 now.

€90 for 512 of PC3200 Twinmos Ram --> More than enough.

You can get cheaper MB's e.g. here

Total: €750 with CRT
Total: €870 with TFT

Good luck.

Thanks JoePC

Mutant_Fruit

CPU AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Tray FSB400 139.8

Thats overkill, get teh 2500+ and just overclock it a tad. If you get the mobile version, you can overclock it even more... I'd advise an ABIT NF7 kind of motherboard.

Hobbes

Lots of memory, good processor and a good vid card.

A reasonable monitor and decent size hard disk.

Explosive_Cornflake

Yeah, ok cool. Thanks for all the suggestions. As i said it'll be a few months before she wants it, but i knew i was going a bit overkill. I just want to give her a rough estimate for how much money she will need.

llatsni

3Ds will swallow as much RAM as it can get... if u plan on running it on XP, 1024 would be a MINIMUM, as windows itself barely runs at full whack with 512.

I ran 3Ds (not the latest v) on my 2500 with a gig or ram and an ATA133 RAID 0 hdd, and it still felt quite sluggish (painfully so). It's a very heavy duty program, which appears to make very inefficiant use of your system, especially the graphics card.

But definetly the gig of RAM, and preferably a SECOND RAID0 hard disk. (use the primary drive for OS & apps, the second for scratch and big animations)

Explosive_Cornflake

If they were in raid 0, wouldn't it show up as one drive, or do i have my raid's mixed up? Or do you mean have two raid 0's?

joePC

Yes, If you creat a Raid array with two drives they will display as one.

Thanks JoePC

Col_Loki

Firstly your not going to get away with a €49 case if your looking for a quiet machine. The PSU will be a screamer and prob wont power your system.

The Xp2500+ or Xp2800+ is a much better option than the Xp3000+ (overprices). Theres 20mhz in the difference between the Xp2800+ and Xp3000+ (400FSB being the only other difference). Get the 2500+ and mabye do a decent overclock with it......... or leave it stock its still a decent CPU.

Ram is going down in price bit by bit again. Its starting to get more reasonable, it would be dreadfull to get 1gb and then for it to go down to €60 per 512mb (remember that?). It stick with 512mb, 2x256 ......... and if she needs more then get more.

Graphics card and make of Ram - as per what joe said.

On the motherboard end of things i wouldnt go VIA for the chipset. Nforce2 at min. The NF7-S is a great board, the Asus A7N8X-X is also a cheaper option but doesent have SATA. [Abit AN7 - also a good mobo]

Explosive_Cornflake

The €49 case is the chenbro one. I have the same one, but i paid a bit more for it. It's not too loud, but it's not a quality PSU. Anyway, there's no point in going into specific too uch on this, because its going to be built in september, and it'll probably be a whole different ball game then. I'm just looking for a price range really.
Thanks for all the valuable input. I'm just trying to convince her she's better off going with home built, over something thats looks cheap in a shop, as it may seem to have the same spec, but they'll be crappy components.