PC Spec for 3D CAD

[Meek_racing]

Any help on which spec to chose from these days, pre-built or home built - I don't really mind. I'm so out of touch with what can be bought it's best to ask on here first.

Budget of £500 for the PC and £200 for a monitor, or a bit of give and take if the spec is better for either to justify spending more. I've got a decent 42" TV which doesn't get used so can always plug that in instead.

Main use will be SolidWorks with medium build assemblies and static renders. Usual internet streaming and I doubt I will use it for games.

 

[MicKPM]

Tricky to say for sure as i've not been in to Windaz machines since discovering the wonder that is OSX. Get as many cores as you can CPU wise, a good GFX card and as much RAM as you can muster. Solid works doesn't actually require too much to function but obviously, more is better.

 

[Meek_racing]

8GB RAM min and 1GB graphics card for Windows 7 and SolidWorks 2014. I'm sure our computers struggle in work with the amount of network rubbish so it's hard to judge how a standalone PC with less internet/network protection etc will do. In work we run 1.5K's worth of graphics card so I don't know what will be fine from a budget point of view. Oh and the price needs to include operating system

 

[fairm010]

Let me dig out what spec the machines we have at work are.

From memory they are dual Xeons @ 4Ghz
12GB RAM
nVidia Quadro GFX
Dual SSD's in RAID for I/O Performance

On Windows 7 running Solidworks and Autodesk

Roughly £350 each from our supplier. I can PM you tomorrow with specifics if you like?

 

[Meek_racing]

That would be great thanks

 

[Steven103]

dual Xeons @ 4Ghz
12GB RAM
nVidia Quadro GFX
Dual SSD's in RAID for I/O Performance

Roughly £350 each from our supplier.

What's the model number for the CPU e.g. E5-26xx? If those Xeons are current models and 4GHz it genuinely sounds like you've missed a zero off the price.

I think it's been said before, buy smart. Everyone sees the price of Xeon or Quadro branded stuff and assumes it must be 4x as fast as the consumer grade i5 or GeForce product. Couldn't be further from the truth tbh. Skip to 1:12



You'd perceive a higher end Core i3 or lower end i5 with 8GB of RAM and an SSD on a copy of windows (kept free from crap!) to be as responsive when building models or assemblies as anything. Rendering & CFD/FEA won't be prohibitively slow and still very doable on a non-commercial scale, but these are the areas you'd really benefit from more cores and a good graphics card. Realistically, rendering takes 10 minutes and when was the last time you spent 7 hours trying to run CFD on a single seater front wing...

 

[fairm010]

Like I said, it was from memory. I have the specs here:

These are refurbed Dell T5500 Workstations

2 x Xeon W5550 3.33GHz Quad Core CPU
12GB DDR3 10600R ECC RAM
2 x 240GB Enterprise class SSD drive
DVD R/RW
Radeon HD5450
NO OS as we deploy our own images.

£445 each, with an optional 21" LED for £50.

 

[Darren S]

That would be great thanks :smile:

I've got a low-to-mid range Quadro card for sale.
If you're interested, PM me....

 

[Andy_con]

I just got a dell inspiron 5000 series 17", I do a lot of 3d work in autocad and it works great for that

 

[Gus]

Like I said, it was from memory. I have the specs here:

These are refurbed Dell T5500 Workstations

2 x Xeon W5550 3.33GHz Quad Core CPU
12GB DDR3 10600R ECC RAM
2 x 240GB Enterprise class SSD drive
DVD R/RW
Radeon HD5450
NO OS as we deploy our own images.

£445 each, with an optional 21" LED for £50.

@Meek_racing
If you want one of these then get in touch with me, same spec T5500 Dell but with Nvidia quadro card instead of a Radeon, can do it for £360 +£15 to drive it to your place. That goes for anyone else that wants one.

 

[Gus]

This is the pic of it. Can also do the T3500 slightly cheaper.

 

[fairm010]

Ohhhh ours are nowhere near as pretty as that!

 

[Addicted]

That looks bloody good considering it's a Dell.