Pc Question

Yes, best of luck.

I think a dedicated system just to handle major rendering projects would be a step in the right direction.

I will be curious as to the exact system configuration you come up with. I recommend you consider 4-8GB of the fastest RAM the motherboard will accept. Quad-core sounds good. You have a couple of solid choices for graphics cards the only outstanding item to perhaps give some consideration to is the hard drive.

Most systems utilize a hard drive that spins at 7200 rpm. You can get a Western Digital Raptor SATA drive that spins at 10,000 rpm. Compare "seek times" on drives. The lower the number the faster the drive is. If you want to go crazy there are even 15,000 rpm SCSI drives but they are very pricey. For the price of just one of them you could buy 2 or 3 7200 rpm drives.

I was working from the assumption of a networked storage, where HDD seek times don't really effect anything but startup times. If you are saving and opening the files to your machine rather than from a network then hard drive does come in to play. RPMs are king here, the higher the better. Also make sure to read up on reliability as crashes can be devastating. Configuring a second drive in a redundant RAID array helps avoid these catastrophic failures.

Maxwell:

Might the OP benefit to run standalone as opposed to networked? No resources devoted to that network connection.

Really it depends on the speed of the network. But with a decent 10k RPM HDD It would probably be a bit faster. You could look into leaving your current computer hooked up and on the network and use a KVM switch to allow you to go between the two PC's using the same monitors and mouse/keyboard.

just to let you know, my computer isnt on any kind of network at work everything is saved onto my computer because im the only designer for our company, we are a pretty small company so we only have the one cad designer

Boy I would run a dedicated rendering computer so lean that smoke would rise from the vents on the back. Strip it down to the bare essentials. Know what I mean?

haha yeah thats what i was thinking. i think they will probably let me get the more expensive of the two graphics cards but if i say to them for the same money or a little more I can get this computer that will do my renderings for me they will probably go for the computer because it looks to be a better buy if you know what i mean, the top dogs arnt that computer minded, they like to see what they are buying

The problem with running it lean is support. Most employers without dedicated IT workers end up choosing dell for their business support. Unfortunately Dell computers will not typically be "bare bones". You may be better off discussing your needs with a product assistant (i.e. Typical filesize you work on, your frequency of producing renderings, average rendering times, target rendering times, that sort of thing). There may also be a local computer store which would custom build a PC and provide support. Prices may be slightly higher, but support is local. You are at the mercy of that location however and should they hire subpar service people or go out of business you'll be without a good support structure again.

By lean I meant Windows, AutoCAD and an anti-virus program that can be disabled during rendering sessions. Oh, and you'll need a browser program too.

thnx 4 all tips, i was just asking myself the same question as the topicstarter did.

well done!