OK, sounds like you want "bang for the buck". I would be quite wary of the Maxtor drives you have (seriously, I haven't had any last two years). If you're going to have two PCs and a network, give some serious thought to having a NAS (network attached storage) drive (assuming you have a least ONE wired ethernet port). I use an Encore SOHO NAS enclosure (about $75) and you can install whatever hd up to 250GB that you wish. What is really nice about doing this is it'll allow you to back up files from either computer on this "share drive" and you'll be able to retrieve your work from either computer. There goes about $200 of your budget + another hundred for a switch (assuming WiFi + 4 port wired) + fifty for a printserver (nice to have it accessible from either computer w/o requiring other computer to be booted (and operational, you know how that goes!). So, that leaves about $1650 for upgrades to the existing computer plus the new computer.
I'm assuming (haven't used SLI myself) that it'd be quite useful for video editing, if you're into that.
SLI, in and of itself, has no benefit for this market, however motherboards with SLI capability do have the advantage of having two PEG slots. That opens up a few doors, such as the ability to use the second slot for a high-end PCI-E x8 RAID card or the capability of using a second graphics card to drive more monitors. At this stage the price premium usually isn't that large, so for many people it's worth considering the extra expense to have two high-speed expansion slots for future use.
Sorry mrfitz, I had to laugh at that one. I have 4 sata's and I wish I had five.
No not really you need a capture card, that takes the heat off the cpu big time.
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Well, I have 2 80's and 2 250's and I want to dump my nework drive because its too slow. And extra 500 would come in real nice. I'm sick of external hdd's performance and reliability.
Rendering speed doesn't matter at all?
Sure if you wanna use 8 ports fire away. I feel sorry for global warming and power consumption! twin disk systems are popular....one for the os and programs one for the page file and backup. Even raid users rarely use more than 4..I have 8 sata ports and use all 8 of them. Love it. Sure I could
get by with less. One can always get by with less. I could use a
single 500GB disk and put my OS/App/Swap/Scratch/working/archive
all on it. It'd be a dog, but it would get the job done
(eventually) But why. It's pointless with the price of HDDs so
cheap these days. Some people like the minimalist approach, others
don't. I don't. More is always better.
I'm with you on this except (with my data loss paranoia) I DO like my NAS drive even if it is a bit slow compared to an internal drive. Plus the convenience of accessing data (photos) from multiple computers is really handy.Well, I have 2 80's and 2 250's and I want to dump my nework drive
because its too slow. And extra 500 would come in real nice. I'm
sick of external hdd's performance and reliability.
My case holds five hdd's and it's not full yet.
Plus, you can never have too much storage or redunancy. Especially
with photography.
You surprise me! Of course it does, but you know that a dedicated capture card does most of the hard work dont you?
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This is something that I'm not into (so excuse my ignorance if I am wrong here), but isn't a capture card merely a NUMBER CRUNCHER for DIGITIZING? It does NOT DISPLAY the video on the screen in real time. THAT is why I would expect SLI video cards to be a major advantage here. Make sense or am I still "not getting it"?
I'm doing something simpler and cheaper than what you are looking at. Mine is just home made from an Encore Electronics SOHO NAS enclosure. One of the main purposes of mine is as a share drive so it doesn't matter WHICH PC each of my kids uses for homework. $200 for 200GB a year ago.
BTW, nice choice. Can hardly wait to find a job so I can get current technology again.
