First post, so please excuse the newbness.

I'm looking for an upgrade to the Dell Precision M4500s our engineers have been using for the last few years.  I'd like to move them to desktops since mobility isn't as big a deal to the bosses as it was when the Dells were purchased (anyone remember Hurricane Katrina? )

Since management won't give me a hint as to what they'd like me to spend on these things, would it be realistic to think I could find a decent machine in the $2000 range (as a ballpark starting point)?  Since I don't know what to ask for as far as what the engineers do on a daily basis, I thought I'd start the thread and reply to the inevitable questions of what our requirements are.  I only know that we have a consultant doing most of our rendering since the systems we have would take a week to do them.  Aside from that, what info would be useful when building a new system?

I've been browsing my CDW site and I see workstations by HP and Lenovo in that price range, mainly the i7-2600 machines, but wouldn't know if it would be more beneficial to look at other options.  The only response I received from management was that I'm to look for "best bang-for-buck".

Any input would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance,

Rusty

IT Manager