New build for Engineering, CAD, and Gaming - Is this wise?

Cew27 · 23 Feb 2016 at 23:10

I am happy with the corsair spec-03 i got cheap recently and plan to leave a few parts under-spent to keep the costs low and allow me to upgrade later.

CPU: i7-6700k 4ghz
Cooler : Swiftech h220-x
Motherboard : MSI H110M pro-vd micro atx lga1151
Ram: Kingston fury ddr4-2400 2X8 Gb
Storage: cheap £240GB ssd and ill upgrade later
GFX: Use my gtx 750 until i can afford to upgrade that.

Am i wise in going for the i7 (which i plan to overclock ) and the 1151 socket?

Any advice is appreciated!

Cheers

Borealis · 23 Feb 2016 at 23:23

What CAD package do you use? It may be worth going down the X99/5820K route instead of the 6700K and getting 4x4GB DDR4, especially if your CAD software can make use of multiple cores.

If you do go Skylake, don't go with an H110 board. It won't really let you overclock and has no VRM heatsink. Stick with a Z170 board, the Z series are designed for overclocking and can cope with the additional power requirements/heat dissipation.

Cew27 · 23 Feb 2016 at 23:28

i use solidworks, inventor and plan to use some open-source alternatives also.

that sounds like a plan with the Mobo

Borealis · 24 Feb 2016 at 01:13

I use Solidworks at work every day (I'm a 3D design engineer). The 2016 release is the first to support multi-core processing and GPU rendering, so for the first time a Quadro/FirePro makes sense. I'm not so sure about Inventor though.

TBH either a good Z170/6700K combo or an X99 build will be a good setup for you. Price-wise, do some comparisons. A 6700K and Z170 board could quite easily be just as expensive as an X99/5820K build. If you plan on using the build for some time, at least invest in a decent motherboard so you can make the most of the rest of your hardware and be confident that it'll be reliable.

jonclark · 1 Mar 2016 at 08:36

^^ agree (same day job)

Roverno · 1 Mar 2016 at 11:04

Same day job here, but i have to disagree. You cannot have multi core processing in 3D modelling because it is a linear process by definition. Multiple cores will help with analysis, such as FEA but you shouldn't do that in solidworks anyway since their systems are inaccurate. unless you use FEA for flow or solids, get the i5 and OC. It will give you the same performance.