Hi there!

I’m a 3D design student, and I’ve decided to buy a new computer so I can work on my spare time aswell as during class. Thing is,I don’t know jack about hardware, so I need some help deciding what to get. This computer will mainly be used for 3D-production (3ds Max, Mudbox).

I’m buying the computer at a web site that allows me to configure parts of various base models, and these are the specifications of the computer I’ve currently put together.

Power supply: Silver Power SP-SS500 500W PSU ATX 12V V2.2, 80 Plus, Standard, 1x 6pin+1x 6+2pin PCIe, 6× SATA, 120mm fan
CPU: Intel® Core i7-2600 Processor Socket-LGA1155, Quad Core, 3.4Ghz, 8MB, 95W, Boxed w/fan (also considering the i7-2600K, but don’t know if it’s really any need)
Motherboard: MSI P67A-G45 B3, Socket-1155 ATX, P67, DDR3, 2xPCIe(2.0)x16, CFX, SATA 6Gb/s, USB3.0, FW, EFI
Memory: Kingston ValueR. DDR3 1333MHz 8GB, CL9 Kit w/2x ValueRAM 4GB DDR3 (two of these?)
Video card: Gainward GeForce GTX 560 1GB PhysX PCI-Express 2.0, GDDR5, DVI, native-HDMI, VGA
Hard drive SSD: Corsair SSD Force Series GT 120GB SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 555MB/515MB/s read/write, 85k IOPS (4k aligned)
Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar® Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.0), 7200RPM, 3,5”
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Will this do the trick? I’ve got a pretty high budget for this computer, so let me know if anything needs to be replaced.

You can check out the other parts I’ve got to choose from at this link, the page is in Norwegian, but the different parts should be easy to locate.

I would be forever grateful if someone could help me with this little project!

I would get more than 8GB RAM and also a larger capacity PSU (future proofing). If you have $$ to burn, get a better graphics card, I have recently installed a GTX 580 3GB and it’s quite good in Max.

Most people just have one SSD dedicated to OS and drivers but I can tell you that Max will benifit from one just for it’s self (+mudbox and whatever)

Also remember that W7 Home Premium supports only up to 16GB RAM so if you think you will want more in the future, take a look at one of the higher Windows packages.

I’m happy to answer any further queries if I can.