$70K to spend on hardware

[ZFact]

I came into some money and have decided to get the office some new

hardware... considering 10 of these badboys....

 

Case : X20i-64 Midi Case - 670W PSU (No Hotswap)

Mainboard : Intel S5000XVNSATA Mainboard

Graphics Card(s) : AT1 FIREGL V7300 512MB DD3 (PCI Exp x 16)

Hard Drive (1) : Western Digital / Seagate 160GB Serial-ATA II

Hard Drive (2) : Western Digital / Seagate 160GB Serial-ATA II

Hard Drive (3) : None

Hard Drive (4) : None

Optical Drive(s) : Samsung 18x DVD+/-R/RW/RAM (Dual Layer) - Black

Sound Card : Intel High Definition Audio (2-Channel)

Network Card(s) : Dual Intel Gigabit LAN

Floppy Drive : External 1.44MB Floppy Drive

CPU(s) : 2x Intel® Xeon® Processor X5355 (4x 2.67GHz / 1333FSB / 2x 4MB Cache)

Memory : 4GB DDR-2 667MHz - Fully Buffered ECC RAM (PC5300) (4x1GB)

Operating System(s) : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64BIT Edition

The main use is for rendering out animations... the above is costing over £30,000.00

pound sterling, the equivilent of $70,000 USD.

For the same money, I could buy 4 of these for work stations and 36 Athlon X 2 4200

dual cores...

Whats the better option? Maybe neither!! I suppose my question is, if you had 30K to spend on hardware and you will be using the hardware for rendering animations... where would you spend the money?

Thanks

Thanks

 

 

[AJLynn]

How many people do you have doing what work? If you have 10 people doing modeling through rendering, sure, that's great. The FireGL cards will make their viewports fast while the 8 cores will make test renders fast. If you have 4 people who need both those capabilities and 6 who don't, maybe you get the 4+36 option, give 6 of the 36 to the people who don't need the $7000 monster boxes and set up a render farm with the other 30.

[Ernest Burden III]

This is a hardware cost, no new software. Do you know how many seats of whatever you would be using for purposes other than rendering you have available? Not much point in putting a killer workstation in front of someone who won't be able to use it for render work (modeling, lighting, image editing). More render nodes are always good.

[vizwhiz]

dont forget about Time for TRAINING and getting everybody

up To speed on some kind of company accepted workflow &

 

format

 

just an idea

 

(hey you could even adopt me for That kind of $)

 

randy

[Hazdaz]

Even if I had a very nice chunk of change to spend on hardware, doesn't mean that I would spend it on over-priced/under-performing hardware.

 

I wouldn't even give the FireGL card a second look. Without question, I would get a good high-end gaming card and call it a day.... and heck, if most of these stations are gonna be just for rendering, then I would get the cheapest card you can get. Similar deal with the Xeon chips. I see no reason to get a pair of those, over Core2 Duo chips.

 

I don't see anything listed for monitors - unless used just for rendering, I would say two 21" screens would be the minimum for any type of 3D work.

[rpompeu]

I agree with Hazdaz. Is seens it will be a renderfarm, so forget about the high-end video cards for the machines that will be used just for the render

[Sketchrender]

I would have to agree.

Business may be going well but there is a golden rule of business.

 

Don't spend untill you have too.

 

Get a few bog standard Machines in , basic graphic cards, and 4 gb of ram.

 

I personally think spending that much money on a business is crazy, even if you have come into money .

if the money did come to you in an easy way, i am sure you could spend it better.

No offence your irish, you know the price of stuff here it's a rip off.

Have you all the software you want, and the premises you you need , and the security system to protect it all, and health insurance.

 

On the latter, i ended up in hosiptal for a few months a while ago, and completely out of the blue.

you don't know what is around the corner.

 

the machines you buy this year will half in price this time next year.

 

I hope all is going well for you , and what ever you decide the best of luck.

[ZFact]

Hi all;

 

There will be 4 seats... making use of rendering and graphic apps so i suppose

4 xeons and a few dual cores would be best... maybe keep a few pound for next year for hardware and software upgrades. That seems sensible...

 

Thanks

[AJLynn]

In that case, I'd suggest buying wokstations for the 4 people (and probably not spending as much as $7k on each) and holding out on the rest of the purchases until you know you need them. That way you're holding the money (which is always better than not, and better than extra PCs you don't know you need) and you allow hardware costs to drop (I wish construction costs worked the same way...)

[Hazdaz]

What am I missing here? What is the fascination with XEONs? Core2 Duos are insanely fast chips at regular 'consumer' prices. You end up saving both on the chips themselves, but also on the fact that Core motherboards are cheaper than Xeon-based ones. (and just so no one things that I am bashing Xeon-chips, I will have you know that my main PC is a dual Xeon workstation that I have had for many years and I totaly love it, but the only reason I got it was because I got an insane deal on it... $300 for x2 2.4 GHz machine)

 

This is not aimed specifically at the original poster, but just in general... but why do people think that if something is expensive, then it must be good?

 

Buying smart will get you 10x the hardware than simply picking the one with the highest price. I applaud the original poster for being willing to open his wallet and get his people good hardware, but there's being generous and then there's being stupid. (no offense, of course) :lol:

 

Please remember that software today has not even come close to catching up to the hardware that is available out there... there are quad-core and 8-core chips, but most software barely uses 2-cores effectively. And I don't see software catching up any time soon - meaning that the insanely expensive 8-core chip that someone bought today will run barely any faster than a similarly-clocked 2-way.

[pipjor]

with that money i'd buy in this order..

 

1. Herman Miller Aeron Chairs for everyone

2. Dual 22' monitors

3. Plugins/texture libraies

4. $500 bonus for each employee

5. Bose speakers

6. CPU's....maybe I'm just slow but i have a 4yr old Dell with 3GB Ram and i still never have have to wait on anything..