Hi all,

I was just curious if anyone can give me tips on a moderately low cost system that can handle Houdini. I figured that if I piece together the right system it would be cheaper than getting a pre-fab shelf system. I will probably go with Win2k pro, unless anyone has a better suggestion. Not being to savvy with techie stuff yet, I figured posting to this board would be the next best thing. I guess I am looking for info on a good processor and graphics card, the rest is pretty standard. If anyone knows of a good place to do my shopping online that would be appreciated too.

Thanks

You can put together a very nice system for less than $600 to run Houdini. Head over to pricewatch.com. Right now I have

Athlon 2200+ $150
Iwill Mainboard $100
512 Megs DDR RAM $120
GeForce 3 $110
Linux 7.3 Free

Runs Houdini very nicely.

Accubyte is a good dealer on Pricewatch.

Linux.

yeah go linux if you're an
operating-system-configurator hobbyist,
there's whole months of fun to be had there.
otherwise buy xp pro, turn off the gimmickry
(takes 10 min) and get on with work.
amd systems are also quite good but their real
value at the moment is in a dual processor
configuration. You can find recommended
motherboards at amd:
http://www2.amd.com/us-en/protected/Processors/ProductInformation/1,,30_118_6291_965 [www2.amd.com]^7926,00.html?1055674634
recommended graphics cards can be found at:
http://www.sidefx.com/support/system/index.html [sidefx.com]

-cpb