Needs help in building dream machine!

[Nigel_Heng]

Hi guys,

I have a budget of about $4000
and would really want to build a System that can handle various workflows involving the latest Arri, Red and black magic camera formats.
I would like to run it off Premiere with the possibility of finishing off in apple color or Da Vinci Resolve(software) without going through the offline online process.

Is it possible on a $4000 budget? I'm thinking of still sticking to Macs.
I'm considering iMac beefed up with external thunderbolt PCI card expanders....

Thanks in advance!

Nigel

[Eric Santiago]

With Apple products you dont have much choices as far as computers.
So that makes it easier ;)
You can read many posts here on users findings.
If it was an iMac it would be loaded with all possible RAM first.
Then of course TB this and that ;)

[Brian Merlen]

if your sticking to apple, i would say check their refurb section...i also know of a hackintosh company mediaworkstations.net which has some super beefy macs you cant get apple to build for yaa... if you want to do that. the new laptops by apple at least have new ports on em... the mac pro, not so much but the best cpu you can get from a legit apple source. also buy all your stuff third party from owc to save money on ram/ssd/ what have you

[AJ Aguirre]

Definitely recommend looking into Apples refurbished section. Same warranty and guarantees, I always buy from there and have never regretted it.

[AJ Aguirre]

I just checked out mediaworkstations.net, why haven't these been mentioned before?! or maybe I missed it. They look awesome

[Matthew Mann]

If you go With refurbs, make sure you're still getting a system with thunderbolt expandability. The top model iMac from late 2011 with lots of ram has been treating me great. I run 5k 1/4 res in premiere in real time no problem without a red rocket.