My computer is getting old and I was curious how much it would cost to replace it (although realistically, I probably won’t buy a new computer for a while). So I went to HP.com to check out their computers, because I’ve heard some pretty good things lately about their hardware. Off their main computer sales site, they have a link to their high-end systems, VoodooPC Gaming PCs. Curious, I decided to check it out since this computer would be for 3D graphics, which has a lot of the same requirements as high-end gaming stations.

They have different options you can select to tweak your system for different uses. One option is for “Graphics / Animation”, so I set that to its highest level. Then I went through their options for this setting and tuned down a few things (I probably shaved off about $4,000, most of which was in their high-end SCSI hard drives they were trying to include).

After customization, the price of this new workstation was $12,638.07. That’s after I took out $4,000. I couldn’t believe it! Who is buying these things? Are they really worth it? Does it even make sense to buy one $12,000 when you could buy four excellent workstations at $3,000, or six good machines at $2,000 (or 24 basic machines at $500, if you want to set up a render farm)?

If I had $12K to spend on technology, you can bet I’d have a lot more than one really fast computer at my desk. Especially since in two years, that same computer will be an outdated, slow POS.