Hi there, planning to build an office PC for <£1000 (ex/ VAT), primarily for publishing and CAD applications, and am looking for feedback on the specs. Had seen some speculation that GeForce cards are considerably hindered in CAD relative to Quadro, but couldn't find any direct comparisons for the GTX 770 and so am swithering on that front. Below is the parts list so far, any and all responses are greatly appreciated:
CPU: Intel i7-4770k
Mobo: Asus Z87-K
GPU: Asus GTX 770 DirectCI II
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue - 16GB (2x8GB)
PSU: Seasonic S12G-750 750W Gold
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
SSD: Samsung MZ-7TE250BW 840 EVO 250GB (OS and program storage)
HDD: Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB (File storage)
HDD: Seagate STBX1000201 1TB (Removable backup)
Cooling: 2x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm (Plus case fans)
CD Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE
Media Drive: Akasa AK-ICR-11
Case: Corsair 200R Carbide Series Compact Mid Tower
I considered FirePro or Quadro as I mentioned, but I wasn't sure how they stacked up cost/performance wise given the budget constraint of the build.
i bought a firepro once .. worst mistake ever .. the vector lines they create bleed into each other - when a geforce card is more accurate and looks better then a pro card there is something wrong .. just saying
The GTX 6xx and GTX 7xx are the same base cards as the quaddros. The quaddros have been modified and have different drivers for specific tasks. A friend of mine that has been in the CAD business (selling it, teaching it, and designing with it professionally) since the 1980's. His personal cad laptop has 2xGTX 280M in SLI. He could have gotten anything he wanted, but opted for the GTX line because the performance was greater with less money.
The benefits of the quaddros is with very specific tasks and the business oriented support from nvidia directly. You don't get the same customer support for the GTX line.
That said, your build looks really good. If you aren't planning on overclocking, however, you could get a Xeon build. Something like this would perform a bit better:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Lft84D
I upgraded the HDD's, chose a motherboard that is reliable, but doesn't waste money. The Case provides a lot of airflow. The graphics card is the 4gb version for larger projects and better rendering capability.
Thanks very much for your input, that updated parts list looks fantastic. A couple of items like the case and external HDD were chosen for very specific reasons (end user is fickle), but apart from that the changes look great.