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My work are buying me a new machine. My problem is they will only buy from Dell (as we have some kind of arrangement with them). I need to convince them that the following machine isn't the best one for the job and price...

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ ... ~ck=anavml

Does anyone know of any more off the shelf systems that may be of help to me to improve the Maxwell experience. It is massively better than the machine I have now, but it not much better than the one I have at home.

Needs to be available in th UK, worst case scenario continental Europe. Any further may as well be the moon as far as the directors here are concerned.

They will not buy parts and assemble.

I need as many cores as possible for the money? This only has 4!

Why do they only ever think small time?

So much money for so little!

I've just ordered parts for a quad-based workstation and all-in it cost me only £545............tell them the building is easy!

Could you send me your list of components please?

I don't want them to blow my budget on this.

They are sticklers for warranties. I don't actually know why we hire an IT guy at all.

Thanks for the reply.

for this amount of money you can easily build an octocore machine with 2,5-3 ghz and 8gb ram i think...
maybe not with those heavy sli gtx's and physix card ( why?!?) and 2,5tb hdd but i don't think this would be neccessary...

d7mcfc wrote:Could you send me your list of components please?
I don't want them to blow my budget on this.
They are sticklers for warranties. I don't actually know why we hire an IT guy at all.
Thanks for the reply.

Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive £59.55

Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 5-5-5-18 £69.99

Vista Ultimate £104.73

ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series iP35 Socket 775 eSATA 8channel Audio ATX Motherboard £70.97

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775 (2.40GHz) G0 Stepping L2 8MB Cache OEM Processor 131823 446 in stock £152.50

Antec Atlas Black Server Case - With 550W Truepower 2 PSU £88.00

Cart total inc vat: £545.74

Oh......and a PNY QuadroFX1300 £45 [on ebay].

I think that's pretty good 'maxwell node' and backup workstation if my main box goes down.

Thanks Glebe for this. I will be cutting and pasting this into an Email to the powers that be.

Numerobis, thanks also...

What exactly would I need to get an Octocore machine together, as in a parts list?
I keep telling them that these machines are not tailored to rendering, they are tailored for gaming, and there are a lot of parts which will be expensive and unnecessary. They are a tough nut to crack, and set in their Dell ways. Plus the IT guy is a gaming Geek of the first order!

They are totally scared about the "building a machine" method though.

d7mcfc wrote: They are totally scared about the "building a machine" method though.

Man it's soooo easy..........

I built my one at home with my brother-in-law. Well I watched him put it together mostly!

I think it a warranty thing with them and security of using Dell.

Obviously, all we can see is expense and the wrong tool for the job.

If my company needed a car to navigate around mountainous regions of the world to save peoples lives, and were recommended a Land Rover, they would probably turn it down as they have a great relationship with Skoda. The consequences are there for all to see.

I just got a mac pro 2.8 ghz 8octo core... very happy with it ...

benchwell about 10 mins 24 secs

I run windows xp 64 on it no problem so far.....built very nice ... adding hardware is a piece of cake so far...


installing xp and drivers when you get them 30 mins.....



just have to spend time finding drivers... not too bad



http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects ... ily=MacPro


hard drive and video card less than what you have spec... but 8 cores is what you need right now !!!!




thanks to the guys here and other forums....

cheaper than what you are looking at .. and with the little difference in price you can get second HD and a better video card...


convincing management to do something that sounds sensible has never ever ever been acomplished in this life time ... unless you can convince them that your idea was originally there idea.. that works too...

btw from what I have seen with dell you never really get any special pricing unless you are buying a bunch of computers at the same time...

i suspect its that thye have a line of credit that the want to use ???

or he want to play crysis.....

booooo down with the Bourgeoisie!!!!!!!

So running XP on a Mac is no problem?

Can you forsee any problems running a Mac on a network full of Windows machines? Not very technical me!

Using a Mac will scare them too I presume. I will put it by them though.

Since apple introduced bootcamp it's very easy to install Windows on a mac. Maybe easier than installing it on a pc...
i don't know how it works with a 64bit xp/vista but i've installed winxp32 without any problems. The bootcamp cd contains all needed windows drivers and it installs them all with one installation routine
New video drivers need to be installed separately after this.
But maybe x64 drivers could be a problem...

....and if you need those 8 cores, you can spec a dual-quad Xeon for around £1,100.........try dabs or ebuyer, both are pretty good.

numerobis wrote:Since apple introduced bootcamp it's very easy to install Windows on a mac. Maybe easier than installing it on a pc...
i don't know how it works with a 64bit xp/vista but i've installed winxp32 without any problems. The bootcamp cd contains all needed windows drivers and it installs them all with one installation routine
New video drivers need to be installed separately after this.
But maybe x64 drivers could be a problem...

I am very happy with the usability of the Mac.... installation is very easy. simple...insert xp 64 disk and click on bootcamp... this selects the disk...installs the xp software....

restart and install drivers.... which have to be found manually...XP 64 is not going to be supported by windows after 2009 but most hardware software still produce drivers....for xp 64.......

i am almost 100 % positive that all 32 bit softwares run seamlessly on a 64 bit system...



The reason why I got xp 64 and not vista coz some software i have is for xp and i dont want to pay for an upgrade right now.....


networking shouldn't be any problem... then mac has 2 ethernet ports 1 at 100 mbs (cat 5) and 1 at 1000 mbs (cat 6)

i have a netwok at home only a couple of computers but have no problems..

I have asked about the Mac option and waiting on a reply.

Thank you everyone who has helped me so far, it has been very much appreciated.

The Maxwell community is a great one indeed!

Just to mention ... today was the first time i really tested my mac... and so far I AM REALLY IMPRESSED...!!!!!

I had studio, maxwell render..solidworks, adode illus and ps all up and running ,,,browsing and streaming music.... pretty seamless on xp 64.....and of course the 8 cores....


i can image being on the leopard side would have been even more fun....

im really happy with it !!!! touch wood