Building a heavy duty graphics machine - Advice needed

[AIDS]

Ok so I'm building a new machine for professional 3D and graphic design.
The machine should be able to run:
Adobe Suite
Cinema 4D
Nuke
Shake
Maya

I have general ideas on what I would need but I know that the tech gurus on GATT can give me some suggestions to get the best bang for my buck.

Speaking of which I'm starting with $7000 for budget.

I intend to run Win7 X64 on it and audio is secondary to graphics and rendering power.

So what's the best board, ram, graphics card, processor combo I can get for that price range?

P.S. Ignore the cost of software.

[Arcmanov]

First question: what hardware do you already have (from previous PC builds),
or are you starting completely from scratch?

[AIDS]

Yes starting from scratch. The old machines will be used in a render farm.

[TriniXaeno]

* TriniWyatt eyes thread like a hawk

[AIDS]

Wyatt you more than welcome to throw your 2 cents in.

[rb]

I'm also looking for a similar configuration to do the same thing minus heavy 3d and compositing outside of after effects, present work machine just not cutting it.

[Crixx_Creww]

Prowl's rig should give a good idea of such a machine

A dual processor work station board

Although with the existence of i7, you might be able to get by with just an enthusiast board and a great i7, but dual processor workstation board, preferably an intel board, will be your start. Ill look some up for you, but check prowl's old builds for the general idea.

[AIDS]

I'm also looking for a similar configuration to do the same thing minus heavy 3d and compositing outside of after effects, present work machine just not cutting it.

So if you not going to do any heavy 3D and compositing what do you need the additional power for if I might ask?

[rb]

Like I said I don't do much 3d or any compositing outside of After Effects. At present the work machine is some flavor of Core2 + 8GB of ram, which isn't too bad since AE CS5 can use the 8GB but I'd like to build a better machine since the amount of HD editing I have to do is increasing and I hate long rendering times.