New computer config advice needed

[dmschenk]

Hi everyone
It's been a long time since I've made a computer purchase and I would like to build a new computer (first timer)
I'm looking to build a new new computer to work around terragen, maya and/or cinema4d would like some advice as to which way to go.
First it does need to be a windows machine...
I'm pretty well sold on the i7 processor but  if there are better ideas please lemme know.
So with that I'll need a mother board and video card...  what are the strong performers out there?
I'm not looking for the cheapest components and would like to build a better than average machine.

Does a configuration for running terragen want to be a video editing computer or workstation?


Thanks
Dave

[rcallicotte]

Nvidia has some very good products, but I wouldn't know where to tell you to start with these - http://www.nvidia.com/page/workstation.html  These Quadros are pretty good from what I understand, though not much for playing PC games (I guess).

http://www.newegg.com is a good place to go to do searches for stuff like motherboards, graphic cards, CPUs and memory along with any other hardware or software you might be interesting to know about.  If not for buying, it's usually a good place to read through reviews before making a final decision.

[Tangled-Universe]

Are you dutch as well Dave? Asking this because of your username. If so I might have some good advice on places to be, and not to be.

The i7 is a logical and best choice for TG if you'd ask me. Getting about 8GB RAM would be nice as well, also for your Maya and C4D work.
Terragen won't benefit from a good videocard for rendering, but if you need a good one for Maya and C4D you might go for something of the 260-range from nvidia and if you have some extra money you could always look for one of the quaddro-series which are told to do very well with Maya, C4D and similar apps.

Also, if you're looking for a really cool and fast pc I'd also go for Solid State Disk. OCZ has some very good ones in their Vertex-series. 2x 30GB in RAID 0 of them will make your computer start up at least 4 times faster (for example). Not cheap at the moment, ok.

Martin