I'm looking for suggestions on hardware (Complete System Suggestions Please) for a build that I plan on doing soon. I am generally going to be using this machine to do work in Adobe Audition, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, After Effects, and Encore. I will also be using this machine to do some moderate gaming with the highest intensity games being Far Cry 3. CS:GO, Red Orchestra 2, and Civ. 5. I do not need to run the games at max settings, all I need is medium to high settings at 60fps. The split between productivity apps and gaming will be about 45/55 in favor of the productivity. Some other uses for the machine will be using Wolfram Mathematica, Blender, AutoCAD (I will be using a large amount of Autodesk's Products). My budget is 2500 USD or below. If you need any more info, please, feel free to ask me.
I do like it. Thank you very much!
np. If you are looking for more work station you might want to try a xeon or something but I don't know enough to recommend builds with those.
I like that build too, however since this is primarily a productivity machine with a secondary gaming requirement that does not necessarily require ultra settings you may wish to consider a couple of things.
1) ECC memory - this will help protect against errors which could kill a rendering job or lead to strange artifacts.
2) A workstation rather than a gaming graphics card, a a card like the GTX 980 can perform well in products like Autocad but a Firepro or Quadro can perform way better and may also have ECC video RAM.
Unfortunately the downside of this is that your money probably won't stretch as far and gaming performance will likely be weaker, the upside is stability will be greater.
I guess the real question us; will this machine be a tool that you depend upon, or are you a hobbyist that just wants a kick arse machine?
If this is a work tool that helps pay bills, consider my points above and build for stabilty and productifvity optimisation. If its a hobby go with the recommendation, it's awesome :-)
Yeah, I'm just doing the productivity work as a hobby and for school so I don't need the ECC memory, and I do enough gaming to where I think that the extra money for a Quadro or Firepro is not worth it. However, if I ever start to do profit from any of the productivity work, then I'll definitely get some ECC and I'll get a Quadro or Firepro.