Building a CAD computer and need help

I need to build a PC for a mate that will be good at running a CAD program/programs. 

Now i know nothing about CADing but i do know a fair bit about PCs and building them so my friend asked me to help him. Ive done some research into what kind of PC is needed to get the job done and think i have a fair idea of what to get but i thought i would come on here and ask you turkeys to see if i can get some more information so i don't fuck up with the parts. 

So as i under stand it the CPU is the most important part of a PC like this. Now im able to get an AMD fx8350, ASUS M5A97 r2.0 evo, 8 gigs of ram and an R9 290 for $700nzd ($530usd). This to me seems like a very nice deal and for what my mate needs it will do the job well. The only issue that i can see is the 8 gigs of ram, ive had a look and i can get another 8 gigs for around $160nzd ($120usd) and from what ive read 16gigs is enough for doing CAD work. Ive got a case that i can use so thats sorted, so the only things that i would need to get ontop of that mobo, ram, cpu and gpu is a HDD cpu cooler and psu. 

For the HDD i was just thinking some 2tb HDD would do the job, so another $130nzd ($98usd).

I can get a nice corsair 800w psu for $100nzd ($75usd).

Now one of my main questions is the CPU cooler, im thinking if the CAD work is very intensive then you would need a decent CPU cooler. I was thinking the Noctua NH-D14 for $160nzd ($120usd) this would be a beast and be able to keep the system cool under very heavy loads. Now if you dont think that this would be necessary then i would be looking at the Cooler Master hyper 212 evo for $65nzd ($50usd) but i dont think that this would be able to handle all the heat that the AMD fx8350 will put out under load but i could be wrong. 

So if i did buy the mobo, cpu, ram and gpu combo then go on the buy another 8gigs of ram with the 2tb hdd, psu and the noctua d14 the total price would be around $1250nzd ($943usd).

If i just kept the 8 gigs of ram and got the hyper 212 it would be around $995nzd ($750usd) this is a more budget option but im sure it will do what he wants just not as well. 

Now im wanting to know what you people think, as ive never done any CAD work i dont know what is needed so any ideas comments will be helpful. 

Cheers Nite.

(ps) if spelling and grammer is shit im sorry, im dyslex as fuck. 

The build looks pretty good.  I'd stretch to the 16gb + hyper 212 if you can.

What cad program is he using?

no, that build is not good. i would go with an intel i5, and 16 gigs of ram. CAD does not paralellize. get a GTX  card that fits in the budget. the only thing you'll use it for is rendering. if you can manage to fit a big ssd in, that will really, really help

Is the CAD going to be 2D or 3D?

Look at the Nvidia Quadro line of video cards.

In his budget we would be looking at a 960, 2tb hdd(if needed idk could just get a 240gig ssd) a I5 4690 3.50GHZ on a ASUS H97M-E INTEL H97 MATX mobo with the hyper 212 and then a 16gig ram kit. 

Would this be a better over all build?> 

Im finding out if its going to be 2D or 3D. Is the Quadro better for one or the other? 

 

3D, using Solid Edge.

Solid Edge. He will be doing 3D cad work. 

Quadro cards were specifically made for workstations. Think of them as the GTX cards for work.

Considering that his budget is under 1000-, money is better spent looking on ebay for a used Dell Precision T7500 and here is the reason why:

DELL PRECISION T7500

2x XEON X5650 2.66GHz SIX CORE CPU'S
24GB MEMORY
1x 1TB 7.2K SATA HARD DRIVE
DVD-RW DRIVE
NVIDIA QUADRO NVS295 GRAPHICS CARD
GIGABIT ETHERNET
WINDOWS 7 PROFESSIONAL x64 INSTALLED
1x POWER CORD

739 w/ shipping included. You couldn't even build a budget computer with those specs for that price. Outside the USA, prices will be different however, the power to dollar ratio will be high compared to building from scratch.

That is alot of power for not much cash. Only thing is finding one in NZ is going to be near impossible, as it is atm i cant find a single one. 

Would this be a better build to follow? so if i could build a custom one with parts similar to this it would be better then going to GTX with an i5 route? 

Also, would an SSD help much? thinking that they wouldn't be very big if i did get one is it worth it? Or would i be better looking to an SSHD one of the hybrid ones?

That CPU is 5 years old and the GPU is a monitor adapter... it has 256MB of vram and 8 cuda cores... EIGHT... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... just because a CPU says Xeon and the GPU says Quadro doesn't mean it's a decent workstation for CAD design...

With the prices of workstation cards how they are, while the drivers don't officially support it and you may have lines glitch every now and then, but you can't really beat a consumer grade GPU for price/performance... I've built many PCs for the engineers I work with and they all use Radeon GPUs... 1 of the engineers demanded he pick out his own workstation and bought something similar to what you just posted, and all he does is complain about it... I've had no complaints from any of the engineers I built for... but he's already spent his computer budget for the year, so he made his bed, and now he must lie in it...

Point being, no, you don't need a Firepro or Quadro... the price/performance on those cards is ridiculous. For the same price as an entry level Firepro or Quadro (and really, Quadros are much better for almost all applications), you could have an R9 290X... and there is ZERO comparison on the raw horsepower between the two, the 290X will murder it in any benchmark.

Another myth debunked... you don't need a top-of-the-line CPU... 99% of 3D programs use a single core and are NOT optimized to run on more than 2 cores... an i3 will physically perform better than a 9590 in 3D applications such as Solidworks. I'm not as familiar with Solid Edge, so I can't specifically say this is true for that particular program, but for most that I have used, it is (Pro-E, Solidworks, Inventor).

I would suggest a non-k i5/16GB RAM/H97/256GB SSD/R9 290 as an ideal solution.

I would NOT buy an AMD CPU, no lower than an i3, no lower than 8GB memory, no lower than a R9 280.

Sir, thankyou for all the information. 

This is lining up with everything else ive read about building a system like this. So i think i will follow what youve suggested. 

One last thing, to go along with the SSD will he need more storage, im not familiar with how much you use when it comes to these kinds of software.

Cheers

yes

Our engineers work off a RAID6 server that uses 6 3TB WD Reds (18TB size, 12TB volume with SSD cache and a high-end RAID controller)... so for that specific application, no... they don't need more storage... but without a server, yes, he will need more storage... a 1TB WD Caviar Blue should be plenty for the meantime and he can always add more storage later if need be with very little effort.