Modelworks
Lifer
I have been building my own systems for 3d work for over 10 years. The only thing you get by going to a pre-built system is support if something breaks. If you understand the hardware there is no reason not to build it yourself. There is nothing special about the components that Dell uses over ones you buy.
For 3d work there are two ways to approach this. You can build a beefy workstation and do your designing and rendering on it or you can build an adequate workstation and a box to render the work. If you put all the hardware into the workstation you will also have to use it for rendering the final output. This could mean tying up that pc for anywhere from 20 minutes to an entire day during which you cannot use it for other task. If you put the hardware for rendering into a separate pc then you can send the work to it and let it work on it for a week if needed and still have use of the workstation.
The #1 thing for final rendering is cpu power, more cores and as fast as you can afford.
Secondary is memory capacity. The more the better. It doesn't have to be the fastest memory speeds as long as you are not running out you should be fine.
Video card - most gaming cards work fine with 3d apps. Try to get something made in the last year or two and with at least 768MB of memory. The memory needs to be enough to cache textures and textures in 3d can be huge compared to games.
Hard drive - more capacity the better, speed is not really a concern here either unless you plan on generating video renders of your work, then speed helps it go along faster, but still is not something to be overly concerned with.
For a workstation I have that works very very well:
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard $130
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 $154
OCZ Gold 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $183
SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 $175
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb $90
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $100
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V $100
LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R $32
Total: $964
It will run any 3d app out there great. I would start with that and see if you want quicker render times before adding a render box. That system is not bad at all when rendering.
For a render box I use the same thing as above except without the video card and a smaller case . Use anything you like there because it just needs to boot, the renderer is a network run application. About $700 per render box. If you need faster renders then add more boxes .
I use 8 boxes that gives me 32 cores rendering 24/7 without the workstation ever having to be occupied so I can do other things while they render.
Another thing to look for is old rack servers. You can sometimes find them cheap. Ones like these for $150 may not seem like a lot with only 2 cores and 2GB ram , but at that price you can connect 10 of them and have a damn good render farm.
http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/item/62016
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