Pentinum 4
2.4 Ghz
12 Mb RAM
120 GB Harddisk space
Any 32-bit decent graphic card would do
Xerox 7700 or 7750 colour laser
LaCie monitor
high-res flat-bed (est. $1000)

That sould be sufficient....

let me just tell you this for now, the better stuff you buy now the longer it will last before you'll need to upgrade everything again. the last thing you want is to upgrade everything to a suitable level and a year later find that the computers are almost obsolete.
i wouldn't settle for anything below a 3ghz PC processor (or 1.25ghz Macg4) and 1gig of ddr ram.....
LCD screens are nice, but expinsive... and they start losing pixels after a year or 2. a tube monitor should be just fine, but make sure they're flatscreen, and not smaller than 19".
as for printers and scanners, technology has advaced so much that pretty much anything $80 and up would be more than satasfactory.
and if you are going to network these i suggest getting Gigabit ethernet cards for all the computers, 10x faster then the standard 10/100 ethernet. (Unless you guys get macs, then just network via firewire 800)

And dont forget to get Battery Backups and Surge Protectorsfor all the computers!




Post Edited (Silence04) : 5/17/2004 5:44:44 PM GMT

yeah...i'm all over the 21' flat screen monitor as minimum - and i agree: lcd is nice (*wow* factor), but it's a bugger to keep. also, i'm happy just to say 'your biggest and fastest please, sir' but didn't know how to get into the specifics. we may be renting for a month, but i think that's a waste of money. we may as well buy a few pcs and move them to the new office later. and if they aren't appropriate for the long haul, we shuffle them to another department and have some happy receptionists or admin staff or something.

anyone else? unlimited budget? live vicariously through my client....because i don't know how to. honest! it's like you win the lottery, go into the jaguar dealership and drive out in a lada. well, that's what i'm afraid of, anyways.

i agree with most of what everyone said...and when it comes to memory, don't be stingy. I'd say 1 GB minimum. Also, when buying a chip, make sure to go with the Pentium 4 over Celeron.


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www.dafenix.org

Celeron sucks. You can never have too much memory. With Pentium 4, make sure you get HyperThread Technology.



C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUN DOS RUN

Hardware junkie here! [img]/emoticons/cheers.gif[/img]

Here's a good cost-efficient setup for ya:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton Core)
512 mb of Corsair XMS pc3200 (1 gig would be better)
Abit NF7-S motherboard (uses nVidia nForce 2 chipset... top notch for decent cost w/ onboard audio, LAN, and RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and JBOD)
200mb Western Digital Hard Drive w/ 8mb cache @ 7200 rpm (if they do any video editing, I'd recommend getting more than 1 hard drive in a RAID array)
ATi 9200 SE w/ 64mbit of vram (good cheap card that will get the job done)

For the monitors, Sceptre makes decent 19' monitors for a competitive price. I've seen some 19'ers on newegg.com for under $500.

For furter questions regarding hardware, IT, etc... check out these forums...
www.ocforums.com

I'm pretty active over there too... but there are a TON of smart ppl there willing to help. [img]/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

I agree w/ the above posts too... if you go Intel, go P4 (C or E revisions, as they have the 800mb front side bus w/ the HT technology). In your situation, I would stick w/ AMD though. They offer more bang for the buck than Intel. They run cooler, cost less, and have shorter, more efficient clock cycles than Intel chips do. The only drawback to AMD is that their chipsets don't support dual channel memory as well as the Intel i865 and i875 chipsets.

If they do any video editing, I would recommend getting at least 2 120gb hard drives (SATA interface) and putting them in a RAID0, along with the 200gb drive as a backup/redundant drive.

Post Edited (YellowDart) : 5/18/2004 7:32:39 PM GMT

lol... I missed the unlimited budget part! [img]/emoticons/biggrin.gif[/img]

In that case...

I would go w/:

dual Intel Xeon processors @ 3.2g each w/ 800m fsb & HT technology
TYAN 'Tiger i7505' E7505 mainboard
2 gigs of Corsair XMS pc3200 ram
nVidia Quadro fx3000 w/ 256mb of ram (video card)
2 or 4 74g Western Digital Raptors (SATA @ 10000 rpm) in a RAID0 (main RAID array of hard drives)
1 200g Western Digital SATA hard drive w/ 8mb cache (redundant drive... would keep separate copy of the RAID array's contents as a backup)
SB Audigy 2 Platinum (sound card)
500w Antec True Power Supply (will provide the best, most stable voltage rails for a setup like this)

That would be your top dollar system... It would SCREAM through anything you threw at it.
[img]/emoticons/biggrin.gif[/img]

Hey, you said live vicariously. [img]/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Post Edited (YellowDart) : 5/18/2004 7:48:45 PM GMT

Unlimited budget huh? Then www.go-l.com.



C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUN DOS RUN

thanks kids!

yeah...i know a good machine when i use it, but i have no interest in them beyond that, so i'm about a good year or so behind the times - and my client needs advice this week. i appreciate the input. we should be setting up a permanent studio this summer, so i'll let you know what happens.

any more thoughts - keep 'em comin'!

ta.

go-l.com looks like an apple site, but i got queesy when i read the specs for the Q2: the word 'Terabytes' is more exciting than a roller-coaster.... this may be a fun summer....

Dual G 5 with 23 inch Cinama Displays
runing OSX 10.3

What more do you need? Boy that way easy.

well, same as in the last thread i started about this same darned situation, clients want the whole studio to be pc, even though they will be sending files to europe for print. also, their IT guy is all about the pcs. i don't mind either way and can use them both, but i haven't been keeping up with what's out there these days - i've just been nose to monitor cranking out the work.





nice to see where we're at. ta!


In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice, there is.

Yep. go-l is going for the 'Apple of the PC world' type thing. They have crazy cool PC's though. 1 terabyte = 1000 Gigabytes

They have the biggest monitors I've see too.



C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUN DOS RUN

cool site!
*kinda off topic...*
speaking of crazy fast computer stuff... Motorola (makers of all pre-g5 macs) has created a new processor thats eliminated the use of a front side bus and utilizes the power of DDR!

that's so crazy, i don't even know what it means.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice, there is.