dan_cgi Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 Hi guys, I'm finally going to take the plunge and ditch my old dell xps laptop in favour of a brand new desktop. My question is what would be the perfect setup for my hard earn'd cash for running houdini, xsi after effects etc. My budgets between 2-3k so my initial thoughs are alienware alx x-58, intel core i7-975, 12gb ram, vista 64. Any thoughts or has anyone got any experience with any alienware products as i've always had dell machines in the past. Thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 In my experience, and from everything I've read of others experiences...the only thing that matters is the video card - make sure it's nvidia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pclaes Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 I used to have an alienware laptop... now it's a brick. I personally don't buy from them anymore mainly for two reasons: 1) they are pricy 2) They sometimes pack too much power in too little space, when you actually want your machine to deliver that amount of power for a longer period of time (as one tends to do when doing effects in Houdini) heat builds up and without proper cooling something eventually breaks down. So what would I suggest as an alternative: look on the nvidia website in the section of workstation manufacturers. My experience in terms of the bigger brands: Dell for consumers lacks power, Boxx is too pricy, HP pricy but does deliver quality products that can take sustained pressure of production - I think they also do 8-core workstations (but you have to customize them). Since Apple lowered their ridiculously high prices for adding Ram an 8-core mac could be a decent option too - it's all intel under the hood so you can dual boot windows on them if you want. If you can afford it, go 8-core, Sidefx is optimizing houdini for parallel processing and is trying to make more areas of houdini multi-threaded - as always other softwares will most likely follow. Whatever you get, make sure that you get sufficient cooling in the machine (amd used to generate more heat than intel, not sure if that is still the case). I fully agree with going with an nvidia card for using Houdini, it's the safe bet. If you can, dual boot with Linux (ubuntu 9 is user friendly and has got decent driver support). I find Houdini just runs better under Linux (probably because the lack of all the other small memory hogging applications in windows) and you've got a shell to write scripts and use hbatch/hscript, and you can kill -9 applications if they really get stuck. -Then again I don't really use after effects and xsi, just houdini, maya, shake or nuke will get most of the job done (when you do have to use premiere/after effects/photoshop for a while I boot in windows). just my 2 cents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam.h Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 If you don't mind building it yourself, that seems like the cheapest way. I have build a few desktops in the past and never had any problems, it is quite easy to do and only takes a few hours. I found this guide really useful: http://shsc.info/PCPartsPickingGuide but i'm not sure that it is up to date. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_cgi Posted July 9, 2009 Author Share Posted July 9, 2009 Thanks for that guys, that's dynamite info and puts me well on track to knowing what i want from my new pc. Just been checking out boxx and hp workstations....man they're expensive!!! Another note, slightly off topic to Peter. Many thanks for the technical effects dvd from 3dbuzz, i have it and its awesome. Do you plan to release any other tutorials? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pclaes Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 Thanks for that guys, that's dynamite info and puts me well on track to knowing what i want from my new pc. Just been checking out boxx and hp workstations....man they're expensive!!!Another note, slightly off topic to Peter. Many thanks for the technical effects dvd from 3dbuzz, i have it and its awesome. Do you plan to release any other tutorials? If you want to build it yourself check out some of the youtube videos where people have posted diaries describing how to build their own 8-core machines, sometimes for as low as $1600. (look for octocore, dual harper, or nehalem). I would build it myself as well - you need to do your research, but there are so many resources out there today it really should not be that hard. Concerning video tutorials: Glad you enjoyed them. I do plan to make some more tutorials in the future, but first I want to get some work experience in production. Perhaps I will work with 3dbuzz again, otherwise with sidefx or odforce for smaller podcast-like video tutorials on shorter topics. I really like what sidefx is doing with the masterclasses and the way they are supporting user made video tutorials. The main issue is always time, but sooner or later it will happen again . Good luck with your machine! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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