A new work/game desktop

Budget:
I would say 3-4k, less would be great but I don't mind spending a bit more for the performance

Expectations:
Fast 3D rendering, play games on the highest settings if possible

Usage:
90% work, 10% gaming. I'll be doing a lot of 3D graphic rendering, photoshop, archicad, and those fun programs

I haven't really came up with a proper configuration as I still have some questions in mind, but I'm thinking of going with:

Case: CoolerMaster HAF-X 942
CPU: Intel i7 - 3930k
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Deluxe
Power Supply: Corsair HX-1050W
Ram: not too sure which one to go with or how much I need...probably 16gb?
HardDrive: Intel 520 SSD 180GB
HardDrive2: WD Caviar Black 1TB
CPU cooling: Noctua D-14 SE 2011...but I'm considering custom loop if it's considerably cooler than the noctua
GPU: I'm kind of stuck here...as in whether I should go single gpu or SLI. I'm not sure if I should get the GTX 5xx or the new 6xx or the newer ones that are coming out as I've read somewhere that the 7xx is coming out the end of the year? I'm not sure if that's just a rumor so I'm just trying to research a bit more about it but hopefully I can find some answers here.

any opinions would be greatly appreciated

and the resolution I'm using right now is 1920x1080 but I'm thinking of upgrading it to the 27" with 2560x1440 or I might just end up with 2 x 1920x1080 monitors, haven't really decided on that one yet.

Just to add to JStones great advice......If you want to max gaming on that 27" monitor and keep fps above 60 at all times then a sli gtx680 is it.  You might save some money waiting another month or two for other Kepler cards, gtx650/660 ??, that might do it for a couple hundred $$ cheaper but until they're released it's all speculation.

Edited by bprat22 - 19 Apr 2012 at 3:43am

Im pretty sure a quadro rig is in your listed budget, which is pretty high for a student!  Yes, you can get by with a geforce, but their opengl performance gets worse with every new card release.  I wouldnt feel like it was worth it.  If you can, my advice would be bite the bullet now, since its in your budget. 

Good luck!

In short and how it applies to you, opengl is how your autocad or whatever program displays the things you see on your monitor.  It takes no license and is free to use and develop on, which is why its used for most work applications even though it is years behind others like directx at its core.  DirectX is what most games use.

It stands for Open Graphics Language.

The 4000 is what I have at home and love it. 

You're welcome.  Be warned you are going down a path with people on two sides of the fence on about graphics cards for opengl applications.  There are people out there who firmly believe a geforce will give the same performance, and there was a time when they were correct but sadly those days are gone.  I went over this in the other thread.

The deciding factor to me is, at every studio Ive worked at there is an IT dept that spends a lot of time and money testing all sorts of hardware, geforce cards included.  If the geforce gave good results, the studio would certainly like to save hundreds of thousands of dollars using them instead of quadros.