i7-5820k/R9 390 Engineering Build

Hardware Hub Build Logs
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I was given a $1500 budget on Black Friday and this rang in at $1520 after rebates and that included Windows 10 Pro, 2 Monitors, a keyboard, power strip, monitor cables, etc... everything but the desk... I think I did pretty damn good... the engineer will be using Solidworks, DraftSight, ProE, and CATIA for parts to medium-size assemblies...

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ynGyYJ

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Needs a couple fans in the front... I've only got one spare 120MM but it's the bad one I got in a Fractal Core case that one time... I'll have to order more, thought I had more :/

First time working with the Phanteks Enthoo series, but it's one of my favorite cases I've built in... my one gripe is the Enthoo Pro M model only comes with one fan... psh, so much for any semblance of positive static pressure :/... great cable management, however, and really solid construction for a budget case, everything's pretty much steel except the drive bays... and there's a very obvious SSD mount in the back that came in handy... I wasn't a big fan of Corsair last time I built in it, too plasticy for my taste... but I can fully attest to Fractal Define Series, Nanoxia Deep Silence Series, Phanteks Enthoo Series, and NZXT Phantom/H440 for build quality and ease of wire management...

I was disappointed that XFX makes a Gold+ 650w PSU without braided cables on the CPU/PCIe cables...but then again I got it for $40 after rebate...

The engineer will be working off the server so 480GB on the SSD is plenty... I asked one of the other engineers if he's crashed on big assemblies before, and he said no, so 16GB appears to be enough RAM... and some of these guys leave 50+ tabs of Chrome open on the regular... despite my tab-shaming

I have Xeon 1241 v3's in the rest of the engineering department other than one i5 3340 that I salvaged from a POS Lenovo pre-built the company bought before I stepped into IT... so the 5820k will blow the lead designer's mind...

Went with a 390 instead of Quadro or Firepro for sheer horsepower... the $500 Quadro cards are terrible... it's a formula that's worked fine in the past... they're a little glitchy but everything small-medium is smooth and if they load a whole car it sucks, but wit the Quadro series you'd need a $2000 SLI setup to run it properly, sooooo yea, rather just have the raw horsepower... for $200 less you at least get a GPU with resale value...

Should have taken pictures while it was booted up cause it looks nice with all the LEDs from the cooler and the GPU...

And with that.... what would you have built for $1500 including dual 24" monitors, keyboard, and mouse? Thoughts on how it turned out?

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Looks like a great build. I would have assumed that the case would have come with two fans minimum though. That seems strange to only come with one.......

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Pretty cool! Wish this was the computer when I was my old engineering class working in Autodesk Inventor and CAD

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Hooked it back up for computer porn :P

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That will definitely cover most of the basis. Its what I wish our institute had lol

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The best deals on workstation GPUs would truly be in the used market. You can 1 generation old or even current generation quadros for 2/3 market price.

Like a Quadro K4200 which is a brand new pull for $600 shipped on ebay vs $800 new

Although it wouldn't fit his budget, for a real engineering workstation you need a workstation GPU.

Also, long term since he is on X99 he should upgrade to a Xeon and ECC RAM to prevent workflow issues and to allow for higher amounts of CPU cache on Xeons (yes they are waaay out of price range)

Just saying.

But still that is a build I can seriously be jealous of.

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I think you missed that the $1500 budget included the tower itself, MS Office, Windows 10, 2 monitors, a keyboard, and mouse...

I'm well aware of GPU acceleration in Solidworks only working with OpenGL drivers... but at an ~$1100 price point for the tower... even used Quadros that are even mildly beefy enough to bring assemblies in on are $700-2000...

To put it in perspective... a K4200 new is more than the entire budget of the entire system just for the GPU and the raw horsepower without turning on OpenGL acceleration doesn't drive the software as well as the 390 does...

The only real problem with consumer GPUs in the use-case is lines will glitch in and out every now and then... not a big deal... to actually do it "properly" where they could import a car model and spin it around without lag, they'd need two flagship Quadros in SLI but that's not ever gonna happen at my company :P

Also... ECC and the cost of compatible is a complete waste unless you render a LOT or have a high-capacity server... we do neither of those things...

For the use-case... the 5820k is a much faster CPU than any E5 Xeon on the market... as Solidworks doesn't utilize a lot of multi-threading... I got the 5820k mostly for multitasking as they do have a lot of programs open during a typical work session... and it amazingly fit in the budget due to a Black Friday clearance...

Workstations in no way shape or form have to be built around ECC, Xeons, and Quadros... in fact, there's a definite point of diminishing returns when building if you stick to that as a thesis... if I had an unlimited budget, it still wouldn't include ECC and Xeons... it would, however, include SLI Quadros...

Just saying :)

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I did directly acknowledge the budget twice I believe, and assuming future generations of Solidworks would do better with multithreading, for your budget you did make the right choices (except TN monitors ...ick)

Really, I think $1500 is a little low for a proper budget on a really good CAD station even though most of the budget will go towards whichever GPUs make the most sense.

On the subject of the build and thr parts that you did use, do you know about what kinda of GPU utilization he is getting and if the 8GB ram buffer is being used heavily? I just wonder because I am not familiar with the far end of Solidworks as I can only use so many features on our student copies of the software. Thanks!

Like this discussion mucho

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the monitors were on sale for $89 a piece... it was just hard to pass up :P

I agree @ the budget... it SHOULD have been more at the $4000 level.... but the budget is the budget... I can't go to the owner of the company and tell him I need more than that or he'd just find some prebuit POS for whatever he WANTED to pay...

depends on the workload... if he's importing a whole car model from VW then yea... it's being HEAVILY utilized and spilling into DDR4 on top off that... in day to day small assemblies it's not as big of a deal...