So, I need a new computer (for heavy CAD work), GPU prices are crazy.
Do I dive in and buy now at the stupid prices, or wait to see what the next gen has to offer?
Buy a professional card with certified drivers. What CAD program are you using?
Depending on what you are doing, it may be worth getting a card aimed at CAD/workstation use
FirePro W8100 and Quadro P4000 come to mind (both 800 to 1000).
Prices for those seem relativly unchanged in recent history (according to PCpartpicker)
Fusion 360, and pro cards are stupidly expensive for what they are (chip wise)
I could get a high end 1080ti for the cost of a p4000
The WX7100 is equivalent to the RX580 GPU core and goes for less than $600 on newegg.
The pitfall is that it is targeted at design workloads, not precision calculation.
As said, depends on your use case.
Yes, you pay for the driver support and guarantees.
However, Fusion 360 is DirectX accelerated and does not care about drivers. Frankly, it’s not that GPU intensive at all, but will stress the crap out of your CPU (sometimes multithreaded, sometimes not), so buy an RX 560 or 1050 Ti and be happy with it.
Fusion still needs a lot of optimization work, so don’t expect any machine to run it buttery smooth with a few hundred part model assembly (just a warning).
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Im also looking into sofware like Maya (for rendering) and solidworks (for simulation), besides I should have about £700 to drop on a card, I just need to know is it worth waiting for the next architecture, or buying one now
Here’s my current parts list.
It was £200 cheaper yesterday.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/MHgkvV
At least a few notes on the build:
- Wait for Ryzen 2/Zen+, it’s coming in April and will have better single-core boost which you will want for any CAD software. Most are not well multithreaded outside of a few workloads.
- Buy faster RAM, 2666 is really the minimum for Zen.
- Get an SSD and put your OS and main programs on it. Use spinning rust for storage.
If you’re looking at SolidWorks, just get SolidWorks unless you need the CAM and rendering features of Fusion 360. The ecosystem is very mature and that can be worth a lot.
Reccent news suggest Nvidia has yield/production issues with Volta. AMD is not going for the highend for financial reasons.
The next generations are mostly unknown as of now (strong focus on machine learning on both sides).
For your parts list:
The absence of any SSD strikes me as strange.
Pump failure is rare but it does happen. Depending on how mission-critical your system is, you may want to opt for an aircooler.
The 1800X is not that good value, I would suggest going for the 1700 or 1700x instead.
I don´t like corsair gear. Specifically I had problems with LPX series RAM on my 1700x.
PSU wise, look for SeaSonic ones.
The lack of SSD is for cost/storage reasons. I could either get 1 500gb SSD, or 2 3TB HDD in raid 1. I’d rather have alot of protected storage, than a small amount of fast stuff.
Its not a crytical system, Im not a pro yet, If somthing dies I can just get another one. I will probably end up with the 1700x or gen 2 equivalent. And I picked the corsair ram because it was the cheapest.
The psu can be whatever, so long as I dont fry my system again.
As an opposing anecdote, I have 32GB (4x8) running at 2933MHz 
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- Waiting was my plan.
- fast ram is really expensive
- I could either get 1 500gb SSD, or 2 3TB HDD in raid 1. I’d rather have alot of protected storage, than a small amount of fast stuff.
I am running CMK16GX4M2B3200C15 and had no luck getting near 2933 when the CPU or RAM got under significant load.
Interesting. I’m running two kits of CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 and with one I got up to 3066MHz but not stable, and when I tried that there was no 3000 on my board. What board are you using?
Also since it seems @ELFBANE is planning on waiting for R+ the IMC should have been improved quite a bit.
At any rate, the 1080 Ti is way overkill for CAD. If you want it for bragging rights or gaming, that’s fine, but it’s not really needed for workstation purposes.
I got curious about Maya though and downloaded the SPECapc Maya 2017 benchmark. SolidWorks runs fine on my 1700X/Vega 56 although it hates having non-pro drivers so I shut it up.
Its a personal PC I guarantee its gonna be used for more that just CAD I plan to do a tonne of rendering, 3D animation, and simulation (and some gaming). Plus it has to last me atleast 4 years without any upgrades
Also some other more fun things like AI and such if I ever get the time.
Well at this point CUDA is ruling the ML market, so there’s that.
GPU wise buy the best card that works with the software that you are using. for the CPU just hold for a bit and see what changes with the next zen core if nothing real big changes get a cheep 1800x or a 2700x
( guessing on numbering ) and enjoy the new workstation.