Computer build Help needed

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Hitlist

Hitlist

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Can you please help me spec a new build

Hey am looking at building my brother a new computer. The main use will be for 3D modeling autocad and other programs like that, he would also like to use it for normal internet searching and media streaming.

His main request was for it to be as fast as possable and as quiet as possable. So am thinking water cooling mite be the way to go. Now i have never done a custom watercooling loop before but am willing to give it a try if need be.

His budget is any where between £500 till like £1000 possably more.

He will be wanting every thing apart from a screen.

Now i have no idea about 3D modeling and autocad so dont know what proccessor to go for gpu well any thing really.

Could some of you nice guys give me a hand and spec me one up please.

Thanks in advance
Aaron

Hope i coverd the main parts

*UPDATE* I am now looking at buying it this weeknd as he now needs it for work, so anyhelp at all would be much appreciated.

Thanks
 
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ok ill just take a guess at this am i rite in thinking the i7 would be better for this type of use than the i5 2500K??

Thanks
Aaron
 
I don't really know how AutoCAD uses resources compared to SolidWorks but if I was to build a CAD machine I would make sure of the following:

-CPU: clockspeed is far more important that number of cores, the way SolidWorks calculates things means only 1 core can be utilised. I'd advise an i5 2500K and then overclock it. Maybe if you can afford get the i7 2700K but I'm not sure how much more performance it will give you.

-Graphics: SolidWorks eats GPUs for breakfast, especially with large assemblies and the realview feature on. I'd advise a high end card to keep things smooth, perhaps a 560Ti you don't need to go too high end though unless you want to of course.

-SSD: I would advise an SSD for the OS and to install CAD programs on they can sometimes take a while to open and this would speed things up considerably.

I don't really know much about watercooling, it may be best to ask in the watercooling section of the forums.
 
Heres something I just knocked up,


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £253.99
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £131.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £91.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX) £79.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard REV 1 £78.98
1 x Corsair Force GT 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CSSD-F60GBGT-BK) £74.99
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse and FREE Boogie Bug AimB.Pad XL Gaming Mouse Surface £44.99
1 x Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £29.99
Total : £977.36 (includes shipping : £11.25).




• i7 CPU (hyperthreading so 8 threads)
• 16GB RAM
• Nvidia GFX so you get CUDA support
• Case that looks like it can take a rad or two.

The Retail CPU comes with a heatsink, you will have to see what sort of cooling to add,

• Good air cooler such as a NH-D14
• Closed loop water cooler such as a H100?
• Some custom loop using a kit - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-170-EK&groupid=962&catid=1532&subcat=
 
stulid said:
i7 CPU (hyperthreading so 8 threads)
Click to expand...

Just wondering, my work PC has 2 xeon processors, 4 cores each and so 16threads in total. SolidWorks only uses 1 thread and so I get around 6% CPU usuage when it's at full demand.

In this case would the i5 be better than the i7 since it would be using 25% CPU under full demand (from SolidWorks) and the i7 would be using 12.5%?
 
Thanks for the info hxcftw as the computer is not for me i have no idea how cad works on the processor side, so was good to learn something.

Thanks stulid for what looks to be a good build. I belive i can save 79.98 on windows 7 as i think he may have a copy already. Maby this saving could go to a better motherboard with more usb 3.0 and maby a case with usb 3.0 on the front?

Has anyone on here used the EK-KIT H3O 240 LTX Performance Watercooling Kit and how would they rate it on performance and noise. Also is it straight forwads to setup?

Thanks

Aaron
 
hxcftw said:
Just wondering, my work PC has 2 xeon processors, 4 cores each and so 16threads in total. SolidWorks only uses 1 thread and so I get around 6% CPU usuage when it's at full demand.

In this case would the i5 be better than the i7 since it would be using 25% CPU under full demand (from SolidWorks) and the i7 would be using 12.5%?
Click to expand...

The i7 is still only 4 cores.

Hitlist said:
Thanks for the info hxcftw as the computer is not for me i have no idea how cad works on the processor side, so was good to learn something.

Thanks stulid for what looks to be a good build. I belive i can save 79.98 on windows 7 as i think he may have a copy already. Maby this saving could go to a better motherboard with more usb 3.0 and maby a case with usb 3.0 on the front?

Has anyone on here used the EK-KIT H3O 240 LTX Performance Watercooling Kit and how would they rate it on performance and noise. Also is it straight forwads to setup?

Thanks

Aaron
Click to expand...

That case has USB3 on the front :)

I'd possibly get a 128GB SSD with the extra money.
 
Hitlist said:
Thanks for the info hxcftw as the computer is not for me i have no idea how cad works on the processor side, so was good to learn something.

Thanks stulid for what looks to be a good build. I belive i can save 79.98 on windows 7 as i think he may have a copy already. Maby this saving could go to a better motherboard with more usb 3.0 and maby a case with usb 3.0 on the front?

Has anyone on here used the EK-KIT H3O 240 LTX Performance Watercooling Kit and how would they rate it on performance and noise. Also is it straight forwads to setup?

Thanks

Aaron
Click to expand...

Well you did say everything:)

And that case does have a front USB3.0, its in its name;)

Ask in the water cooling section about kits etc, I no nothing about them really.
 
O i completly missed that in the name *face palm*, very true i did say every thing my bad am just not 100% on if he does or not :)

Thanks i will go have a look around in the watercooling section. Carnt wait to get my hands on my first watercooling setup:)

Thanks again ill let him know and see what he says on the price and try get more money out of him to get better parts.

Aaron
 
Do check back when you are ready with the full list of bits before ordering etc to double/triple check everything:)
 
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beejjacobs said:
The i7 is still only 4 cores.
Click to expand...

I'm on about threads, I'm a little confused over them. i7s (quad core) have 2 threads for each core, so in task manager it shows 8 boxes for CPU usuage, 1 per thread. My i5 2500 has just 4 boxes here, 1 for each core. From this I'm assuming this technology is only in the i7 range.

When SolidWorks is at 100% demand, 1 of the boxes in the task manager will be at 100%, the rest just at idle. So in the case of an i7 the overall CPU load would be around 13% but in the case of the i5 be around 25%.

Using this logic it made me wonder if the i5 would perform better than the i7 in this situation. What do you think?
 
2 threads per core, means it can process 2 sets of instructions for a given core.

If you only have 1 thread running, it will still be able to use all of 1 core, so 25% of the CPU, even though task manger may see that as 12.5% or whatever. That's my understanding of it anyway.
 
beejjacobs said:
2 threads per core, means it can process 2 sets of instructions for a given core.

If you only have 1 thread running, it will still be able to use all of 1 core, so 25% of the CPU, even though task manger may see that as 12.5% or whatever. That's my understanding of it anyway.
Click to expand...

Hmm but with SolidWorks it has to do its calculations in order, it can't do any simultaneously because it relies on the previous result, so surely it can't process these calculations between the two threads?

Also I think 16GB of RAM is overkill, with a fair few models and large assemblies open I would use less than 6GB, and if you manage to have enough open to fill 8GB you are likely not to need the majority of them open.

I'm not convinced that an i7 would give you £100 worth of improvement. That money could be spent elsewhere. I feel the same way with the mouse and keyboard suggested, the extra dpi, buttons, backlights etc are unnecessary for CAD work.

I think a 560Ti and 8GB of Crucial Ballistix would be better. More money would be available for the water cooling as well.
 
hxcftw said:
Hmm but with SolidWorks it has to do its calculations in order, it can't do any simultaneously because it relies on the previous result, so surely it can't process these calculations between the two threads?

Also I think 16GB of RAM is overkill, with a fair few models and large assemblies open I would use less than 6GB, and if you manage to have enough open to fill 8GB you are likely not to need the majority of them open.

I'm not convinced that an i7 would give you £100 worth of improvement. That money could be spent elsewhere. I feel the same way with the mouse and keyboard suggested, the extra dpi, buttons, backlights etc are unnecessary for CAD work.

I think a 560Ti and 8GB of Crucial Ballistix would be better. More money would be available for the water cooling as well.
Click to expand...

What I'm saying is that with 1 thread on and i5 and 1 thread on an i7, they will be as fast at the same clock speed and be using the same amount of physical CPU power (they both have 4 cores and will both be using one of them).

Also, the OP doesn't mention solidworks and the program he uses may make use of extra threads.
 
for autoCAD i would advise the i7, i've got the i5 2500k and it can be a little slow. i will be upgrading to the i7 when i finish uni, as i will be using it a lot more.
 
Stinger53 said:
for autoCAD i would advise the i7, i've got the i5 2500k and it can be a little slow. i will be upgrading to the i7 when i finish uni, as i will be using it a lot more.
Click to expand...

Just done a search and found that AutoCAD is the same as SolidWorks in the CPU department. Source

I think it's just the nature of these programs to be slow, all we can do is get the best combo of hardware to speed it up a little :/
 
hxcftw said:
Just done a search and found that AutoCAD is the same as SolidWorks in the CPU department. Source

I think it's just the nature of these programs to be slow, all we can do is get the best combo of hardware to speed it up a little :/
Click to expand...

i have used it on a i7 920 and it was faster than the 2500k, with less RAM as well
 
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Stinger53 said:
i have used it on a i7 920 and it was faster than the 2500k, with less RAM as well
Click to expand...

That makes no sense. The 2500k is a better processor regardless of what's using it. Look at this chart.

The fact it was using less RAM as well makes me think you were asking less of the program and/or had a different version of it.
 
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