PC Build for Construction Engineer 2.0

Calhoun

Hi All,

I wonder if you could help me out again please, I am posting on behalf of a friend again who you guys helped me help before.

This is the spec he went for before the only difference is he swapped the i5 for an i7 proc

Item|Price
ASRock B75 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€66.14
Intel Core i5-3470 Box, LGA1155|€172.00
Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit (SB-Version)|€81.67
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€82.94
LG GH24NS Retail schwarz|€22.67
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€46.12
16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL10-10-10-27|€110.48
2 x BenQ GL2450E|€270.00
PNY QUADRO 600 1024MB DDR3 BULK|€165.17
Rechner - Zusammenbau|€20.00
BitFenix Shinobi Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black, ohne Netzteil|€53.03
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1109.21

Regular Form:

1. What is your budget? €1-1.5K

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? 3d Modelling ( i believe that is part of the CAD program)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes, 2x Monitors

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future?

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [No]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? [Credit Card/Laser/Bank Transfer/Etc...]

9. When are you purchasing? in the next 2-3 weeks

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? No help require


So the thing is he wants a system in similar power to what he already purchased, however he wants some quality of life upgrades.

1. He went with a Sata hard drive, 2TB and i think he would be served better this time with a SSD & solid state combo. SSD for OS and 1-2 of his most frequently run business programs
2. He uses CAD allot and its sluggish, i am not sure if it is the quadro gfx card that is causing this or he was downloading from some pretty dodgy sites so the computer was infected with allot of malware
3. OS probably would benefit from being Ultimate/Business as he has a small office network with 1-2 computers and for some of the stuff he wants to do home doesnt cut it.

Really open to suggestion here on how to improve the power for him when using the resource heavy programs like CAD ect. The budget is a guideline, for the right build he could potentially invest more in it.

Appreciate any help you guys could give me on this, although i have a passing knowledge in this area i am just not comfortable to fly solo on this.

Thanks.

Calhoun

Hey Guys,

Is this a little bit complicated,would you have a recommendation for anywhere I could get advice on this .

justsomebloke

is he replacing the current unit? or just getting a secondary unit? Since you posted the original post have you tried wiping the machine to see if a clean install made it any quicker.

Calhoun

He has another worker so he is keeping the original unit and he wants one exactly like it but there are a few quality of life changes i feel he would like.

I will reformat his current system when he is ready to swap over.

justsomebloke

truthfully, at the price point he is looking at, your going to be getting a slightly updated version of what he currently has. If that unit isn't performing well, I'd want to double check what is causing it before getting another identical unit.

So I'd say buy a 120GB SSD for this machine now, out of the budget for the new machine. Do a clean install of windows on it with the CAD software and see if it makes a difference. If it isn't, you be better off trying to see what is bottle necking the current machine and then divert funds from other parts of the build into rectifying that.

Calhoun

justsomebloke wrote: »

truthfully, at the price point he is looking at, your going to be getting a slightly updated version of what he currently has. If that unit isn't performing well, I'd want to double check what is causing it before getting another identical unit.

So I'd say buy a 120GB SSD for this machine now, out of the budget for the new machine. Do a clean install of windows on it with the CAD software and see if it makes a difference. If it isn't, you be better off trying to see what is bottle necking the current machine and then divert funds from other parts of the build into rectifying that.

Being honest, it could be the cracked version of the program or it could be perfoming as described, or it even could be all the crap downloaded on it.

I think he nearly needs a like for like so, the only thing is a 120 GB SSD as you advised.

justsomebloke

Calhoun wrote: »

Being honest, it could be the cracked version of the program or it could be perfoming as described, or it even could be all the crap downloaded on it.

I think he nearly needs a like for like so, the only thing is a 120 GB SSD as you advised.

ye, see if there is trial version of the programme and stick it on a 120GB SSD and see if there is any marked improvement over the cracked version.

At your budget you are better off trying to target either CPU or GPU performance to try and rectify the bottle neck as you don't have the money to throw money at both. So pin pointing where that will mean you will get more bang for your buck in terms of performance

justsomebloke

Also if they are only using one CAD package see if you can find any GPU bench marks, on the off chance that there isn't a massive difference between consumer and professional cards

Calhoun

Any idea how much he would need to invest to sort out the CPU and gfx bottle neck ?

And will do.

justsomebloke

I have a funny feeling the GPU is probably bottle necking it, so rather then spending €320 on a i7-4790k he might be better off saving a €140 and getting a i5-4570 and diverting the funds towards a stronger GPU.

However professional GPU are expensive and you spend a lot for little gains. So if benchmarks are available for the programme this could save you some cash.

The other thing is, your friend will have to be realistic about performance. Rendering 3D images takes time and resources. So what he views as sub standard performance may actually not be half bad.

Calhoun

Yah i would tend to agree with you on that, we picked the quadro card based on feedback from folks last time but it was fairly cheap i am just not sure what to upgrade him to.

He is open to upgrading if its worth it but from what i am getting from you this may be acceptable lag.

As i would be more accustomed to gaming performance and not working situation i was not sure so appreciate the feedback.

justsomebloke

next step up is pretty much the K2200 but it comes in at around €520. However it would be a good bump up and if he is doing any heavy 3d work it's what he will probably have to jump to.

Lu Tze

Have ye kept an eye on utilisation of the cpu, ram, gpu and and hard disk when rendering?

It might point to the bottleneck. Im sure there is apps out there to help.

Task manager will do cpu and ram. The nvidia software should have some monitoring section in it. Windows 8 task manager shows the hard disk utilisation, so im sure theres something you could download to look at that if you are on Windows 7.

Calhoun

Thanks guys will check that card out and checkout how he's using the current system.

Honestly think he just has to understand how much performance he can get out I his machine and the impact of downloading dodgy programs.

TerrorFirmer

How is he defining sluggish? No matter how powerful your machine is, rendering does take time...especially if he swapped that i5 for a 3rd gen i7 it's certainly not a processor limitation either. Just curious to know if this 'sluggish' relates only to autocad, or is he complaining that the machine in general is sluggish?

Calhoun

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

How is he defining sluggish? No matter how powerful your machine is, rendering does take time...especially if he swapped that i5 for a 3rd gen i7 it's certainly not a processor limitation either. Just curious to know if this 'sluggish' relates only to autocad, or is he complaining that the machine in general is sluggish?

I am going to be honest i dont know, all i know is when he got me to look at it the browser was redirected to some ****ed up search engine ect.

I think waht he said was that it was taking time to render and build stuff like slow clicking in the program ect.

Cuddlesworth

A SSD will give him a better overall impression of the system in terms on speed.

Unless something has changed in the last 3 years, auto-cad on a render will max out the proc. The graphics card can ease that process along, but rendering is mainly the proc. And when the processor on a system is maxed out at 100%, it will seem sluggish and slow if you continue to try to use it for other tasks.

Even if he picked up a 16 core workstation with 2k graphics cards, all that would happen is the render would be faster. It would still crawl along during it.

Calhoun

Thanks for the feedback, i will say it to him. He needs a second build anyway as he has a worker that needs access to a system.

I think the SSD is the way to go for him but after that he is going to have to make some decisions on what he wants to put in place.

Thanks all.