Workstation PC

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Stu55

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 25, 2005
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My dads friend wants me to put together a list of components for a pc that he uses at his business. The programs he uses includes the following; Adobe Photoshop, Illustator, Flexi FlexiSign Pro 7.6 vi, Onyx Poster Shop, and Roland Versa Works. He included that he needs a graphics card that does static processing well and that physics are not a priority. On the list he included the following requirements as well; dual core, 2 storage in RAID (What raid would be the best, I don't have too much knowledgeable about RAID), 1 primary 10K rpm drive, ASUS motherboard, 4gb of ram, DVD Burner, and a card reader.

Here is what I have so far:

Case (I haven't decided yet)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 Watts
Motherboard (?)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
4GB of RAM (Depends on the mobo, what would be good/stable?)
Video Card (This is my biggest question because what would be best for what he does? A Quadro or something of that sort, or just like a 8800 or something like that?)
Raptor 150GB 10K RPM Primary Drive
Seagate 320GB 7200.10 x2 In raid...
DVD Burner

Thanks in advance guys for any help.

Edit: Sorry guys, I should have read a little more, this should be moved to General Hardware right?

It would be nice if I could get him a parts list and an estimate by tomorrow morning.
 
If this is for your dad's friends business pc, I wouldn't recommend building him a PC because your going to end up supporting it and it's this guys business on the line.

I'd personally recommend going with a dell precision 390, it offers the same sort of components your looking at (core 2 duo, quadro/fire gl, raid) and you'll get dell business support.

If you're hell bent on doing it yourself, go with the intel bad axe board (the 2nd rev. if you can find it), some patriot or team ddr2 and your seagates in the raid. Were you thinking of going with onboard raid or did you want an external card? Also remember, raid is for redundancy but it is not a backup, remind him to do regular backups on his system as well.
 
Ok thanks, I will give him a system summary of what he wants from dell and what I could offer him and see what he wants. Would a Quadro 3450 be greatly better than an Quadro FX550 though?
 
The quadro 3450 is a 3d "workstation" card. It's made for open gl performance with cad, scientific performance, ect. Unless he is doing that type of stuff, you won't really "need" that card, it sounds like he's doing more 2d things with the apps you have listed, but I would check with him. The main thing with workstation cards is that they are certified to work with certain apps, this means, if you're having problems with those apps on your workstation then you can go to the vendor (in this case, Dell) and have support for the card in those applications.

Also, call dell, most likely they'll give you a cheaper price then online. HP also has some nice workstations to choose from, but in my experience, Dells business support is a lot better.
 
Second the 390 although I don't have personal experience of it... but I am very happy with my 690s and 490. The support is good over here and queries are dealt with quickly with courtesy calls / emails keeping me updated. Don't skimp on support uplifts, they're the key to having problems sorted out smoothly.

The FX550 will most likely be just the thing for 2D work + routine 3D use for UI's/etc, although ATI has a better rep for image quality (so a lower-end FireGL is an option). One of the 690's I got is used exclusively for 2D stuff (big-ass Excel sheets allied with custom analysis software) and I specced it with the base FX550 running on two 20" monitors, it's not caused me any problems.
 
If I'm not mistaken, all of those apps are 2D... therefore, go with the cheapest vidcard available to the precision (except onboard). And yes, dell biz support is great.
 
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