Asfaloth

In January of this year my old trusty “Hydra” workstation shorted out, leaving me with no other computer to work on while my main machine “Bucephalus” was occupied with a render. Bucephalus is a very fast machine, but sometimes the larger renders stretch out over a few days.

I decided that my office could only handle one massive snorting desktop machine so I went with a mobile solution. My experience with the ThinkPad line has been good over the years so I decided to go with the Lenovo W530.

I purchased mine the day the new system became available, but only went with 4GB of OEM RAM. I swapped those sticks out for 32GB that I ordered from Newegg and saved over $1000 in the process…

I chose the name “Asfaloth” for the new machine (another famous horse). Asfaloth was the swift horse in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” which outran the Nazgul and bore Frodo safely to Rivendell.

Lenovo W530:

• Intel Core i7-3820QM Processor (2.70GHz, 8MB L3, 1600MHz)
• 32 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (4 DIMM)
• NVIDIA Quadro K2000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory
• 15.6″ FHD (1900 x 1080) LED Backlit AntiGlare

You will notice that I am running a PC. Don’t all artists use Macs? Well, besides the fact that I learned to do art on a PC, it has been my experience that Macs are wonderful for 2D art (Photoshop, etc) but PCs are superior for 3D. My 3D apps are almost always written natively for Windows and it is easy to access and upgrade the hardware.