Hi everyone,

I'm going to buy a new computer, and in an earlier topic I posted, I was advised to make my own computer. With a little research I figured that was just not a good idea (because I don't have any experience with that subject), so I searched for an all-in-one pc and I believe I found one. It's the Acer Aspire M3970 with the following specs
- Intel Core i7-2600 3.4 GHz
- 8GB DDR3 RAM
- 2TB HDD
- Nvidia GT545 3GB
- Windows 7 64-bit

Now, this seems like a very good computer to me (for Houdini), but I was just wondering if anyone would advise me another one in the same price-range (about 1.250 dollars).

Thanks!
Felix

Otherwise looks good, but you would probably want to have more memory, if there is an option for that.

Hi eetu,

Thanks for your answer! I assume that you mean more RAM memory? If the computer is ok, I might add some more RAM memory in the future.

+1 for more RAM. 8gigs is sort of the lowest you can go to get anything decent out of a sim. Saying that I am running houdini with 4gigs which is very limited in what I can do but while I'm learning the program it's OK for now.
The best way to know if the motherboard can be upgraded to accept more RAM is to look inside the case, memory ‘usually’ comes in two's (this is for better performance) and the slots are bunched together on the motherboard the other bunch of slots will be for things like graphics cards. If the board only has two memory slots 16gigs will be your limit as the maximum capacity for a stick of memory is 8gigs (correct me if I'm wrong).

Juan

Thanks for your response JuanDos! I checked the computer specs on the seller's site and it says that 8gigs of RAM is the maximum amount of RAM that this computer can have… Anyway, what is actually the great benefit of more RAM? Does it accelerate the cooking of a simulation?

Felixbuenen
Thanks for your response JuanDos! I checked the computer specs on the seller's site and it says that 8gigs of RAM is the maximum amount of RAM that this computer can have… Anyway, what is actually the great benefit of more RAM? Does it accelerate the cooking of a simulation?

You will be able to simulate more particles at the same time and higher resolutions without having to swap between HDD and RAM.

Thanks Eric, I will think about having more ram in that case. Thanks everyone, helped a lot ( !