Help my brother build his art computer!

My brother is going to an art institute college to become a video game graphic designer. One of the things that is required is for them to have their own computer where they live.

His HP a6119h, where the only two upgrades are an x300 GPU and a Pentium D 3.4, just is NOT going to cut the mustard.

Budget isn't going to be a huge deal, as he is going to be getting parts paycheck to paycheck.

First thing he said the school needs is MacOS, but he does NOT want to buy from Apple. I said I know how to do that (so you don't need to help me out there :whistler: ), so, I am going to set him up with a triple-boot, in case he ever comes across any Linux-based companies.


So, a machine with lots of RAM, good CPU, and great GPU, and whatever motherboard happens to be best with MacOS.

Then, this is just my opinion, but not mentioned on the necessities: a digitizer monitor for graphics input.

I would go with:

- 32Gb Ram (or more). This is the biggest thing. I max out my ram with most large format print projects I do.
- A decent i7 CPU, something about the price of the GPU
- I would go with a 660Ti GPU. You really don't need a killer GPU for graphic design. It's nice, but not necessary.
- 240GB (or bigger) SSD. Photoshop and other programs will use a hard drive when the ram runs out, and it's nice to have it all on a SSD instead of a HDD. I would make this separate from the OS SSD since you can fill the SSD as well. I've done this plenty of times with really large projects I'm working on, and it kinda sucks.
- A large HDD for storage. Projects get really big really fast. It's not even close to overkill to go with a 2Tb drive for storage. It all adds up fast.

Not sure on motherboard, so I would look that up yourself. Your google-fu is probably as good as mine.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AmEv

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Then, this is just my opinion, but not mentioned on the necessities: a digitizer monitor for graphics input.

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Let me double check, but I may have more of these:

WACOM Cintiq 21UX

For sale soon (refurbished).

My brother said he'd love one of those if you had it.

Parts list post!

He's liking this motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128550

*whistles*

Whoo, this is going to be a SERIOUS chunk of change!


http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=30661628

Well, the first things we're going to buy are the MoBo and CPU. He can just use ModCron for testing purposes. It has DDR3 RAM.

Well, he went for AMD instead of Intel, but....


*whistles*


It's a beast!