Maya looks very demanding. The Autodesk site lists only workstations, and the only non-Quadro card is the 690. You will want an Nvidia graphics card for CUDA (the best you can afford), as much memory as you can fit, and the fastest CPU you can afford.

Blistrax

Get a 5** series, like a 570 or 580 has they have much better CUDA performance than the 6**. Also, try and upgrade the RAM, Maya loves RAM. clyde46

A friend has asked that I put togther a small form factor build for less than £700.

They are starting an animation course and will have to have Maya running and watch tutorials etc..

This is what I have, any improvement/suggestions are welcome thanks.

Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III 6Gb/s, RAID, PCIe 3.0, DVI-I/HDMI, Mini ITX - £96.92inc VAT

Intel Core i5 3470,1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.2GHz, 5 GT/s DMI, 650MHz GPU, 6MB Smart Cache, 32x Ratio, 77W, Retail - £152.58inc VAT

8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V - £58.99inc VAT

650W Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650M, Modular, 85% Eff' , 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX PSU - £83.58inc VAT

2GB PNY GTX 660 XLR8, 28nm, PCIe 3.0 (x16), 6008MHz GDDR5, GPU 980MHz, Boost 1033MHz, Cores 960 +Free Game £147.19inc VAT

1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64mb Cache 8ms NCQ OEM - £47.98inc VAT

BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX case - £73.95

Thanks for any help

Unless your current mobo is busted and you need to set up your system, I suggest you wait for LGA 1150 and haswell.

BeerMage

[QUOTE="kraken2109"]

Why would you want a top of the range motherboard for a CPu that won't even overclock properly?

homeboylizard

What motherboard would you recommend for around £170? and why?

It is mainly for gaming but if possible I would like to get one with thunder bolt port? Not sure that is doable?

Thanks for any recommendations.

In BF3 both get to 100%.. I think it might have been the latest driver update? I never really noticed the numbers before.. but then I started to see the 100% and thought something was wrong. Ill keep an eye on performance and temps and also how long it takes to drop.