Would that work for CAD rig?

Hardware Build a PC
#1

Hi everybody,

I am quite new to the whole pc building but I did a lot of reading and watching in the last few months to put a new system together. I would use it mainly for CAD work ( SolidWorks, Keyshot, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) and the occasional game ( It wouldn't need to have insane fps on the highest settings or even run the very latest games).
I am planning on doing a medium overclocking but nothing really above 4.3 Ghz. 

I will be moving to England soon and will buy all the parts there. Some of them might not be available in the USA I guess.

 

Would be great if you could advise me on:


[b]1.[/b] If the parts would work well together.

[b]2.[/b] Better alternatives for some components.

[b]3.[/b] General thoughts on the build.

 

Here is the parts list

[b]Case:[/b] NZXT Tempest 410 Midi Tower [i]or[/i] Fractal Design Core 3000

[b]CPU:[/b] Core i7-3770K "Ivy Bridge"

[b]Heatsink[/b]: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

[b]Motherboard:[/b] Asus p8z77-v [i]or[/i] Asus p8z77-v Pro

[b]GPU:[/b] ATI FirePro V3900 [i]or[/i] V4900

[b]RAM:[/b] 8GB or 16GB kit depending on offers and budget.
Corsair Vengeance "Low Profile" 1600MHz [i]or[/i] Kingston HyperX 1600MHz

[b]PSU:[/b] OCZ-ZT 550W modular [i]or[/i] Corsair Enthusiast Series Modular TX550M [i]or[/i] Sea Sonic M12II-520

[b]SSD[/b]: OCZ Vertex 4 128G [i]or[/i] Samsung 830 Series 128 GB [i]or[/i] Plextor M5 Pro 128GB Extreme Series

[b]HDD:[/b] Western Digital Caviar Balck 1TB 7200rpm

[b]Optical Drive:[/b] Any simple and cheap DVD-Writer

[b]Fans:[/b] Arctic F12 PWM Case Fan - 120mm [i]or[/i] Coolermaster Blade Master Fan - 120mm [i]or[/i]
Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm

[b]Display:[/b] Two LG IPS LED 23 inch "IPS234V-PN.AEK"

 

Thank you very much in advance for any tips or comments.

Laurin

 

 

#2

it's alot cheaper to buy parts here. I would reccomend a vector ssd maybe, and just get a radeon gpu. CAD doesn't use gpu acceleration, at all. otherwise, looks good

#3

Thanks Commissar.

The vector is looking good. I thought I use a FirePro as they are made for CAD work and support working with 3D models better.

#4

firepro and quadro are more for video editing and other stuff that uses the gpu...

hell, if your not going to be rendering, you might as well go with an i5-3570k, and get a bigger ssd.

as for gpu, get like a nvidia gtx660 (photoshop uses CUDA) or sumfin like that.

 

my laptop runs inventor really well, and it doesn't even have a real gpu...

#5

I also run SolidWorks at the moment on my laptop with just onboard graphics, but I read that larger assemblies and real view (gives models a realistic and dynamic look) will benefit from a workstation GPU because of the specialized drivers. I would get the V3900 for about £85 and the V4900 for about £115 compared to the GTX660 which would cost about £160. Obviously the gtx660 has 2GB and not 1GB RAM.
Do you think I should rather go for the extra Ram than the optimized drivers/card?

I will be rendering 3D models in Keyshot which is CPU based, which is why I thought I rather get the i7 3770K so I could make use of the HyperThreading.

For all my programs at the moment I am using about 70GB so I thought 128GB drive would be plenty. All my other data and files I would put on the HDD.

 

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.  

 

#6

ah, yeah, with keyhole, you should probably get the i7. I was thinking more about CUDA for the photoshop. and for CAD, large files can have really long load times

#7

wouldnt the 8350 be useful with its 8 cores?, i dont know the programs your using but are they multi thread apps? if they can use more than 4 threads then the FX-8350 would be the better choice.

Powerful Architecture

KeyShot doesnʼt require any special hardware or graphics card. KeyShot takes full advantage of all cores and threads inside a computer. As your computer gets more powerful KeyShot becomes faster. The performance scales linearly with the number of cores and threads in your system. If you double the amount of cores, you double performance and cut render time in half.

thats taken from keyshot website

#8

you really need single core performance with CAD

 

 

#9

Suppose it depends on what he wants the best performance on. If the CAD program he uses is single thread then the i7 will work better but if his stuff is capable of using multiple threads at a time then the 8 core 8350 becomes a pretty appealing option with its pricing.

EDIT: ok, after looking up the programs you listed it seems that they all can use multi threads but only if the qualculations required are non linear so it seems that the 8350 will be amazing for rendering and average for linear things where as the i7 will chomp through linear calculations but struggle with rendering when compared with the 8350.

so id say the 8350 is on the table but you would have to research the programmes you use to get a better over view of what will suit your needs better.

Im not saying one is bad and one is good, im saying that they will both do what you want regardless just that each will do one thing better than the other.

Also if your moving to the UK with this PC make sure the PSU you get can accept 240/250V mains power and that you will probably need to get a new kettle lead/multiway for UK power points :) (or an adapter)

#10

Thanks for all the input guys.

I will buy the parts when I am in the UK so the PSU thing will be no problem.

I was looking at the AMD processors but after reading/watching stuff on it I was more convinced of the Intel CPU's. Most people tended to go for Intel if it comes to more proffesional work. I will have another look into it though, especially how they compare in rendering.

#11

I would have suggested the 8350 isf it wasn't for your cad work. you NEED single core performance, and intel kicks ass at per-core performance

#12

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested

Pretty fair over view of the AMD chips vs Intels, its going to be the same all over, it depends more on what your using on how it performs, full on multi-thread applications perform better on the AMD but when it comes to lower thread counts or linear calculations Intel wins.

Also budget comes into consideration bare in mind that the 8350 is actually in the same price zone as the i5 :)

#13

cad is linear and single threaded, but he also does rendering, so he needs both.

#14

I know :P , just making sure the OP has as much info as possible to make a decision hes happy with, after all its his cash and interests =D

If only there was a 8350/i7 Hybrid haha

#15

lol, the i7 is almost a hybrid between i5 and 8350

#16

not far off, pitty it costs so much in comparison hehe.

Could always go dual CPU, Xeon/Xeon lol :P

#17

not really. CUDA will make that a waste. and CAD will not perform as well

#18

forgot xeons dont have ht :(

#19

I use an fx-8250 for Revit (audo desk) and it blows the third gen i5's out of the water when it come to rendering. (if your doing any in-program rendering revit and other autodesk programs will use up to 16 core's. the newer releases are highly multi -threaded. if your working with large models i.e. 30+ buildings(multi levels ) with site' and all details then you should be looking at 2011 platform with a 6 core. if your doing work in Inventor and auto cad with smaller projects. ie schematics - houses (3d large) - technical drawings (3d), the fx 8350 will be almost as good as the i7 but $100 cheaper.

if you are planing to oc you should run 3 days of prime 95 before saying that your system is stable. the last thing you want is your system blue screaning and loosing data. if you're going to use photoshop to finish renders and do video walkthroughs then you should go with the best nvidia gpu you can get.

I would look at some thing like this. http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/z3EI
  CONs amd?price?

Pos
*TUF motherboard very reliable 5 year warranty
*Very reliable SSD so your large cad programes will open fast.
* 16gb ram so when you have 79 web pages open and 3 programs you can still move between tabs and programs without lag.
* 670 for mass CUDA
* western digital Red drive is as close to server grade as you can get with out buying server HD's. (if you get 3 drives you can run them in raid and have a very safe mass storage option.
* silver PSU That shit wont catch a bad case of explosions!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BZstUJQ2QLg#t=704s

#20

they do. it's just CAD is very, very single threaded. probably more so than minecraft