I'm looking for a top quality Graphics Card blindfolded

[US_Spurs_Fan]

Part of me realizes that it may be more cost effective to spend rather big on something that will last a fairly long time..

I simply don't have the time to build a pc, myself or a friend. If anything goes tits up, I don't have the time to sort it out..

What about this?

Alienware Aurora Desktop Details | Dell UK

The specs look like they range from Good to Really Good depending on exactly what options you chose. I would think you'd be happy with it. As @05grottim mentioned, you are probably paying a bit of a premium for the Alienware look.

[grottim]

Veloce i5-2400 - Dino PC Ltd

i had a little look around and made something up for £600 it's been a little while since i was really into the whole computer parts stuff so im not completely up to date but it seems like if you chopped and changed that base model link i sent you would be a good place to start. Only reservation id have about it is you cant put a mega graphics card in but you can have 8gb of RAM and an i7 for around £600 quid which is decent. Id ask someone who works with graphics what kind of card you'd need whether it be 1gb, 2gb or even crossfire.

Id also make sure your motherboard has 4 RAM slots so that you could potentially have up to 16gb of RAM if you needed as that's easy to upgrade it's literally just click it in i believe. The potential for crossfire graphics might also be nice if you dont have it initially so again make sure you've got enough space for 2 graphics cards.

Im sure someone on here works in graphical design someone who might know what he's doing better than me is @boo wills

[boo]

someone who might know what he's doing better than me is @boo wills

i work in audio mate but, because of my degree, we learned aboot the whole digital media package thing as well.

@Iconic Drei

top of the line is a liquid cooled, silicon graphics work station but hey, you are talking proper prices now.

if you are running XP, your RAM is capped to 3GB maximum. windows 7 pro can handle upto 128GB (could be more, i can't remember, better to check that)

RAM is like your data shopping bag. for example, editing video, the footage goes directly into your bag. the bigger the files, the bigger the bag you need... i often say "i think we're gonna need a bigger bag" lol

this is the same for 3D graphics like MAYA or 3DS MAX only they work on polygons. the more shapes (or more specifically, the more sides to the shape) the bigger your shopping bag gets.

2D is the same also, it all goes straight into your shopping bag. (as does windows and the software that you are running when the system boots up <- this is well worth spending time on - goto ---> start / run / type services.msc and disable loads of the crap that auto starts with windows - there was a site for XP that told you which ones were safe to turn off e.t.c. so i guess the same thing is around for vista and windows 7)

you need a shopping bag (RAM), the size of the projects that you are working on. if you are editing 3 minute films, 3GB of RAM is enough. i had 128M and 64M GFX card running win98SE and managed to produce good quality 3D animations while i was at uni

with a good quality 'gamer' GFX card, you can't go far wrong. NVIDIA are pretty good, as are G FORCE

you will definitely need to invest in a power box for it no matter what though eh. most new GFX cards demand their own power supply direct from the PSU. they also carry on board CPU's (good to have).

i strongly recommend that you buy higher than you need too. i blew a system motherboard because the GFX card sucked all the power and one day *pooof* lol

the processor is how long you want your projects to take to render, rather than performance with graphics so this is an area where you can cut the overall cost of the system. this is where render farming coming into it's own though (if you are doing big 3D projects, this might be something that you would want to look into)

basically, for what you are saying in your post, you are looking at a whole new system i would say and like you say, it's better to invest than to throw away on cost.

build it yourself though, it will be cheaper and better spec and let the type of project determine your budget, not your wallet. it will work out cheaper in the long run. if you can't build it yourself, pay the guy in the shop to build it for you. it should still work out better.

ah yeah, sorry forgot aboot this. it's often overlooked too. your case and it's ventilation is massively important when you are working with graphics. things can get pretty good darn hot in there.

fans for the GFX, CPU, PSU and the case.

like i say, i'm in audio not GFX but, i hope some of that stuff helps.

EDIT:

another thing, sorry i forgot.

you will need 2 HDD's. Drive C and drive D. this is to stop the drives cross threading while you are working. that is to say, you don't want the drive head jumping all over the place. the software runs on drive C, the files / data stays on drive D.

your C drive can be relatively small (100GB) but your D drive should be your bad boy. 1TB drives are extremely cheap.

talking of hard drives, most graphics work isn't done on standard IDE or SATA. you might want to look into something a bit better on performance like RAID or SCSI.

[Iconic Drei]

@boo wills - thank you very much indeed matey.

exactly what I were looking for

[Iconic Drei]

Ended up spending over 1k on my pc.. I'm happy with it though, and will look forward to working without any lag!