I'm putting together a PC for a family member while I'm home for the holidays. The PC will be used primarily for heavy use with Mastercam and Autocad. The recommended specs are listed here: http://www.mastercam.com/en-us/Support/System-Requirements. I was thinking that the way to go would be a locked i7 with an H97 motherboard and a GTX 960, to try to get the price in at around $750, No peripherals or OS needed. I would appreciate any help putting this build together as I don't know much about the mainstream Intel processors or boards. Thanks.
Sound like a solid build. I work with a lot of cad stuff and usually find my system relying on processor power more than graphics card. So when you're shifting the cost scale between graphics and processor, I'd lead toward processor.
Good luck!
Agreed, a couple of years ago I did a lot of CAD/CAM work and found CPU was used a lot more than GPU, I don't have a lot of experience with Quadro's or FirePro's but it might be a good idea to check them out as they're used in a lot of professional CAD environments.
Here is a build had to go one generation back, for whatever reason Skylake is ether really over priced or out of stock every where.
If it's out of stock in a lot of places that means that the price is going to be high. There must be a high demand and a low supply.
You might consider getting a xeon to save a bit on the CPU since you're also getting a graphics card. Hopefully someone can help you with the exact model you should get.
The 1231v3 is essentially the 4770 without the iGPU, clocked at 3.5GHz, and a lot cheaper.
The iGPU you won't need if you've got a dedicated GPU anywho, and the -500MHz is probably worth the savings.
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