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PC build help


Grayham

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Hi,

 

 

After 7 years of faultless service its time to trade my old pc in. I am going to attempt to build my own this time. The PC will be mostly used for 3D AutoCAD and Revit with the possibly of some rendering. I have a budget of around £700. I have listed the possible spec below, but the area that is puzzling me is the processor. As AutoCAD is ram intensive would a faster dual core be better suited than a slower quad core?

 

Any comments or help will be most appreciated.

 

 

Power Supply

800W 14cm Blue LED Fan PSU - 20+4pin 4x SATA 4x PCI-E

Cost - £58.99 delivered

 

Case

Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Mid Tower Case

Cost - £29.96

 

Hard Drive

Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive SATA300 7200rpm 32MB Cache Caviar Black - OEM

Cost - £59.62

 

Mother Board

Asus P5Q PRO P45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

Cost - £104.99

 

Processor

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair)

Cost - £162.84

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.5GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed

Cost - £161.50

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz Socket 775 1066MHz 8MB (2x4MB(4MB per core pair)) L2 Cache OEM Processor

Cost – £155.94

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) Socket 775 Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail

Cost - £167.87

 

CPU Fan

Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler

Cost - £16.42

 

Graphics Card

BFG 9800GTX+ OC 512MB

Cost - £154.90

 

Memory

2 x OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual

Cost - £130

 

Or

 

2 or 3 x OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold Memory

Cost -£87.20 / £130

 

OS

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English

Cost - £88.03

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Hi,

 

 

 

After 7 years of faultless service its time to trade my old pc in. I am going to attempt to build my own this time. The PC will be mostly used for 3D AutoCAD and Revit with the possibly of some rendering. I have a budget of around £700. I have listed the possible spec below, but the area that is puzzling me is the processor. As AutoCAD is ram intensive would a faster dual core be better suited than a slower quad core?

 

Any comments or help will be most appreciated.

 

 

Power Supply

800W 14cm Blue LED Fan PSU - 20+4pin 4x SATA 4x PCI-E

Cost - £58.99 delivered

 

Case

Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Mid Tower Case

Cost - £29.96

 

Hard Drive

Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive SATA300 7200rpm 32MB Cache Caviar Black - OEM

Cost - £59.62

 

Mother Board

Asus P5Q PRO P45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

Cost - £104.99

 

Processor

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair)

Cost - £162.84

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.5GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed

Cost - £161.50

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz Socket 775 1066MHz 8MB (2x4MB(4MB per core pair)) L2 Cache OEM Processor

Cost – £155.94

 

Or

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) Socket 775 Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail

Cost - £167.87

 

CPU Fan

Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler

Cost - £16.42

 

Graphics Card

BFG 9800GTX+ OC 512MB

Cost - £154.90

 

Memory

2 x OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual

Cost - £130

 

Or

 

2 or 3 x OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold Memory

Cost -£87.20 / £130

 

OS

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English

Cost - £88.03

 

 

I would reconsider the Vista Home Premium and go with either Business or Ultimate as they recognize more RAM (Home Premium max's out at 8 gig) plus you can swap to the hard drive.

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id go for a workstation video card if at all possible. I have 2 similar (slightly lower spec) BFG cards running SLi and they really arent much cop at large cad files compared to even a reasonably low end quadro card.

 

Also you may have problems with the Arctic Freezer heatsink & fan with that motherboard. I bought this same fan to go on an asus P5N 32E board & the large copper pipe running around the perimeter of the socket (which asus use on many of their boards now) doesn't leave enough room to fit it. In the end i used the stock fan from the Q6600 processor which for a stock piece of hardware is really not that bad. Sorry but i cant give you definite advice cos im not familiar with this particular board

 

other than that definitely an OS which can utilise more ram, as dum said.

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when asked this question the best answer for the basics is to visit autodesks site and see what specs (like RAM etc) they recommend for running of whatever program, in your case 3D and revit and base it from their then customize

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Just built a Cad system for Inventor 2009 SP1 the other week for a client and thought I’d share.

Inventor uses Direct 3D now so a Quadro is a waste of money atm.

 

If you a can go for 4GB or even 8GB of RAM if you can fit it in the budget as long as you go with a 64bit OS.

Also a higher clocked dual core CPU will help a lot more than a 2.4GHz Quad at least for the next while in CAD anyway. So if you can, grab the E8500 or E8600 instead of a Quad.

Another big improvement would be a faster drive something like the Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000GLFS 300GB SATA2 10000RPM 5.5MS would make a difference compared to regular 7200RPM drives.

 

I went for the following since my budget was fairly small and meant for very small assembly’s and no rendering :

Antec Sonata III Black Mid Tower Quiet Case

ASUS P5Q Pro LGA775 P45 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor 3.0GHZ

G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800 Memory

BFG GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB 1.8GHZ Video Card

Western Digital SE16 320GB Hard Drive

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 32BIT

The client called back yesterday to say that he’s VERY pleased how the computer runs. Had somebody else there that also used IV and was also impressed for the price.

 

PS: I’m not sure you can fit that 9800GTX+ in that case though. I’d go for the Antec Three Hundred case or similar that has the drive cages facing the card which will allow you for more space if need it.

Also make sure you get a decent PSU. Just because it says it’s 800W doesn’t mean it of good quality.

Cheers.

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