System for Variable Data work

[jocycliff]

I work for a small digital Print Shop. we are heavily into doing variable data projects. Well for the new software upgrade we need to put in a new PC. I need to put togethe a system for this project.

I can go with a prebuilt system or build us one. I would lean more to building one for the fun factor but if price would be better a prebuil system might have to be it.

Software used mainly would be DL-100, all Adobe products, Excel, and Quark.

DL-100 can be a serious system hog when composing so my thoughts were
Dual CPU (either Xeon or Opteron)
at least 2gb of ram

After that there isn't to much important for what we need. So any recomendations of hardware or pre-built would be much appreciated. Cost is a mild consederation in this.

 

[Confused]

I would go pre-built purely from a support point of view. You don't want to be stuck doing the support for it if something goes wrong.

I would say something like a Dell Precision workstation would probably be your best bet.

 

[tynopik]

dual opterons
triple head parhelia
windows server 2003

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: tynopik
dual opterons
triple head parhelia
windows server 2003

4 gigs of ram
raid 5

 

[addragyn]

For your apps the fastest machines will be a dual G5 or Opteron. Because the dual Opteron box is going to come from a white box house I'd say go for the G5. Unless you want to grab an Opteron from Sun for the big $$$. You just will not get the quality and level of polish a Dell or Apple machine will give you plus: the noise, the warranty, the support...

I'd grab a dual 1.8 G5 for $1,699 and slam 4GB in there for another 8 bills.

 

[jocycliff]

The dual G5 is all ready ordered. We need a hotrod pc as well though. So I am going to have to go with something. I priced a Dell Dual Xeon 3.6ghz, 2gb of ddr2 for about 4600. I think might be the best I could do price wise.