@ anthony77 You can get a pretty nice machine for that kind of money . Is there any particular brand that you're looking at? I did surf the internet once , and I found out that the i7-3930k is best cpu for my needs. concerning the gpu, i'm a bit lost on whether I get a quadro 4000 or GTX 580 3GB SLI. I heard once that a new series of quadro will be introduced, maybe I'll wait for that. I'll be setting SSDs for faster loads. Concerning memory, I want it to be 32GB , but I don't know which brand is best for the price/performance. And I will get an IPS monitor, probably viewsonic brand, or dell. MB is x79si and that's it so far I'd be very appreciative for any suggestions