Multi-tasking/Workstation

[theor]

Hello.

Looking to build a system with a budget of around $4000 dollars. I'll need to be able to run 4 monitors and i'll be multitasking a lot. One screen may be streaming something from the stock market, another may have some webpages while another might contain some business information

I'm looking to run 2 dual-core processors, not sure whether I shoud go with intel Xeons or AMD opterons or what other.

I suppose for the quad monitors, 2 SLI cards that support for monitors so I'll need a mother board with PCI-Express compatiblility. The cards don't need to be anything special I don't think as no games will be played on this computer, no graphical content besides maybe some occasional Television or news reports.

I'm thinking an 80gb 10k RPM harddrive SATA? is sufficient, aswell as around 2gigs of RAM. I need 4 monitors, so any recommendations will be wonderful. I'm just beginning the research as of know, building this for my dad and he's hellbent on buying a Dell PC but I won't allow it. I believe I can build something more reliable, and I need the best of the best in reliability to keep him satisfied. Lend me your ideas, thanks.

 

[Apokalipse]

yeah, it's definately a mistake going for a Dell

you'll probabbly want a motherboard with 2 PCI-E 16X slots, but don't use SLI. have each card run separately and run two monitors from each.

how soon do you need this PC?

 

[Apokalipse]

this is gonna be one crazy system, but anyway.
if you can't wait, I'd recommend something like this:

MSI K8N Master2-Far motherboard - $250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130523&ATT=13-130-523&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r
has dual socket 940 and dual PCI-E 16X slots

2 x AMD Opteron 270 (dual core) - $788
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103552

2 x 1GB Kingston ECC (it must be ECC for socket 940 systems) - $196
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820144162

2 x eVGA 7900 GT's - $523.98
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130028
they are very good cards, so they'll have no trouble with 2 monitors in each (provided you can set them up right)

Western digital Raptor 10k RPM - $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160

4 x Acer 19" LCD's - $732
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824009073

Thermaltake toughpower 700W - $166
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153035

Lian-Li PC6077 - $105 (great quality case)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112043

LG GSA-4167B DVD burner - $37
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827136064

total = approx $3108
and that's everything you'll need

 

[theor]

I have time, maybe 1-2 weeks before I build. Thanks for the reponse, if you come up with anything else I appreciate your advice

 

[Apokalipse]

was your dad looking at any Dell in particular?
just to compare the two
if you really can spend $4000, there's plenty of budget left to add other things. bigger/more hard drives, another DVD burner (some people like having 2 drives)

 

[Ridlyn]

You might be able to upgrade to SCSI HDD's with your budget.

 

[theor]

This basic setuo you gave Apok seems like a good building block. As long as I have room to add later I have no worries, one more additional harddrive for storage may be a good idea though. Aside from that I may just go with a Kilowatt power supply to be safe although unecessary. Was thinking of water cooling but that may be unecessar for his purposes , i'll prob grab an external water cooler for my computer though. I'm going to look at what my other processor choices are, aswell as RAM.