It is to much. Did you not see his budget? Clearly it is not gaming...
Yeah, but saying that the pc's 18 cores are 'too much' is BS. I believe I've misunderstood what you were saying in retrospect. I thought you were saying they'd not be used by the program or something along those lines.
Yes, I did read the thread. Hence why I made comments about the whole render farm thing. What I meant is that GPU is not as important with the programs he uses. For the price of a couple of 290s it'd be more cost effective to buy a couple of 8320es...
Here is my attempt, I went for an older 2011 platform as the rendering at the resolutions he wants to do can use up to 12gb of ram. The case can be swapped for a source 210:
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2620 2.0GHz 6-Core Processor ($391.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock 2 87.0 CFM Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler ($49.90 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD45 Plus ATX LGA2011 Motherboard ($219.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($128.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($86.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.98 @ Directron)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card ($269.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-BL ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.98 @ Directron)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1505.75