Capable CAD desktop for £400-£500

puma luke said:
Hows this look?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3470 3.20GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £155.99
1 x PNY Nvidia Quadro 410 Graphics Card - 512MB - GDDR3 SDRAM £124.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Blue 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX16C9K2/16X) £101.99
1 x Gigabyte H77-D3H Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £80.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD £39.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
Total : £600.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Haha these things soon creep up in price!!!
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The same but Haswell
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £149.99
1 x PNY Nvidia Quadro 410 Graphics Card - 512MB - GDDR3 SDRAM £124.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Blue 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX16C9K2/16X) £101.99
1 x Gigabyte H87-HD3 Intel H87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £80.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD £39.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
Total : £594.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
I'm not very clued up on Quadro cards, but I expect a £60 used FX 4600 would perform equally or better than that 410.

Would you or your friend be happy performing a small / safe overclock?
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Avexir MPower Yellow Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16001008G-2CM) £89.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £49.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £449.93 (includes shipping : FREE).




Assuming a FX 4600 (for £60 ish) is as good or better than the 410, you'll have a decent build for £510, but he will still need windows.

If you/he are happy to OC a little, a £25 after market cooler would allow you to easily and safely OC the CPU.
 
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puma luke said:
Why do you suggest the FX route over i5? I suppose the IGP will get the pc up and running until a decent GPU pops up used...
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It will perform better in some tasks, especially if overclocked (your haswell build is a non-k chip).

It's also a lot closer to your original budget.
 
Potty27 said:
It will perform better in some tasks, especially if overclocked (your haswell build is a non-k chip).

It's also a lot closer to your original budget.
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I agree, it is better in some cases, mainly multi-threaded ones but the intel chips are good in both single and multi threaded, the 8350 doesn't run away in multi-threaded tasks but it does lag behind in single threaded..

Intel is consistant.. That's why i'd chose it.
 
puma luke said:
Oh god now I'm loosing it... Non k chip? Single/multi threaded-what's 3d rendering?
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Who are you? :p

Intel CPU's with a K in their name are overclockable via the multiplier enabling massive overclocks easy, non-k chips can't do this (as the multiplier is locked.

CPU's have threads aswell as cores, some like the 8320/8350 and i7 3770(k)/4770(k) have multiple threaded (2 per core) which are linked (hyperthreading). There are some programs/task which require a lot of threads to be used such as HEAVY CAD modelling, this is where hyperthreading/multithreaded CPU's excel.

Single threaded CPU's don't have hyperthreaded (only 1 thread per core) like the i5 series. There are many more single threaded tasks in everyday use than multi-threaded.

3D rendering is basically a physical image of a 3D part, this can just be the display on the screen or when converted to a picture file, which hig res/complex textures and lighting applied. This complex textures and lighting are what stresses the CPU and RAM most, its use commonly as it makes the object appear more real.

Did that help or did you face just explode? :D
 
Potty27 said:
I would be shocked if an i3 outperformed a 8320 in rendering with modern programs.
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Likewise. Rendering is CPU bound, trivially parallel, doesn't need much too much memory bandwidth. The eight core AMD chip still has twice as many floating point units as the dual core Intel so should be better - at a trivially parallel task.

Potty27 said:
It will perform better in some tasks, especially if overclocked (your haswell build is a non-k chip).
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Sure. It'll be better at some tasks. Such as rendering. Now what will it be worse at...

  • Anything single threaded
  • Anything requiring low latency memory access
  • Anything sensitive to cache layout
  • Any maths which doesn't parallelise nicely

Unfortunately for your pro-AMD theme, CAD is mostly maths in a difficult-to-thread gui. Every now and again you click a "render" button, yes, and the amd will do that bit faster. But everything else - modelling, analysis, data processing - will be quicker on the Intel dual core.

On the few occasions where I've needed to render significant models, I've set it working and gone to lunch. I think once I had to leave my computer rendering overnight. It doesn't matter very much how long rendering takes if you're asleep at the time.
 
So if I stick to the Haswell route with only a mild OC we will have a capable PC, then as and when funds allow he can slot in a meaty GPU and be good for a few years?

He's got a 1tb external drive he uses for all of his storage needs so I'm considering swapping out a traditional 500gb HDD for a 128Gb SSD. This would be his sole HD though is that a bad idea?
 
If you want a mild OC, you'll need a k chip and a better motherboard for the Haswell spec and a £25 after market air cooler ideally. aka more cost.

120GB/128GB should be fine with a external HDD plugged in for file storage.

I'm not particularly pro-AMD, I just think it's a better choice if you want to keep close to your original budget.
 
Potty27 said:
If you want a mild OC, you'll need a k chip and a better motherboard for the Haswell spec and a £25 after market air cooler ideally. aka more cost.

120GB/128GB should be fine with a external HDD plugged in for file storage.

I'm not particularly pro-AMD, I just think it's a better choice if you want to keep close to your original budget.
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You can get a mild OC with non-k chips.. though leaving it at stock would be more than fine, no aftermarket cooler needed then. :)

I wouldn't go for SSD + external store. I work with CAD files day in day out and some can be massive, so if you store the file on a external drive they are limited by the USB speed rather than the SATA speed, i would go for a big interal drive and skip the SSD.

SSD's are good but internal storage is more important. If you could go for a 1TB internal and a 128GB SSD it would be best but that'll push your buidget up even more.
 
I would build a system around this cpu and forget about overclocking, save the money on the extra cooling for gfx or something else

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15224826&linkID=9240617

I would steer clear of AMD chips for this purpose, the 3d rendering argument doesnt hold much water, they arent miles ahead of the intels for the money, but as pretty much only the 3d rendering part of the software is multithreaded, with pretty much all of the hands on parts, modelling, etc etc are all single threaded, the intels are just better to use. This is true of most of this type of software in my experience. AMD chips only make sense for dedicated render nodes on a budget. My AMD rig crumbles performing boolean functions that my intel at the same clockspeeds sails through, as they are single threaded, it makes the part where your actually using the machine far better.

here is an example

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15224826&linkID=9240617
 
Guess most of what I have read about CAD and AMD has focused too heavily on the rendering.

By the way Doom, do you happen to have any links on info about overclocking the i5-4430? Most of what I've seen says you can hardly OC them at all.
 
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