New system build.....

Ollie2586

Ollie2586

Ollie2586

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Joined
7 Oct 2011
Posts
6
Hey guys, I have lost contact with the ins and outs of building my own system somewhat so hopefully some advice might be on the way :p

I built my own system back along but Uni calls and I need to upgrade so something a little more up-to-date.

The system is going to have to deal with running SolidWorks 2011/2012 comfortably....well as comfortably as i can afford anyway!

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/SystemRequirements.html
Link to the system requirements they suggest.

I only need to upgrade the main bits as far as I know.....m/b, cpu, ram, (possibly) gfx card, don't know whether my psu would still be ok? it's an Antec one, model no: Antec480
http://www.antec.com/pdf/manuals/Neopower_EN_Manual.pdf

I think I have everything else but if anyone has any recommendations for extras please say.

Oh one last thing, I guess the budget would be up to the £500 mark.....but the lower the better really as I am a lowly student ;) I need to build it though, so if it comes in a little over budget that's not the end of the world! haha

Thanks guys and gals for any help that you might be able to give me!

Look forward to hearing from you.
 
came up with the following, left a little in the £500 budget as you will need to add an ati firegl/firepro or nvidia quadro/quadro fx graphics card not something that ocuk stock but have a look at the solidworks site.

maybe check with uni as to whats worth going for in budget.

do you have a sata hard drive or is it an old ide one, same with your dvd drive.

take it you have an o/s ?

480w should be ok with the low end cards your likely to use.

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £184.99 (£154.16)

Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
(£74.99)

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A) £37.99 (£31.66)

Sub Total : £260.81
Shipping : £9.50
VAT : £54.06
Total : £324.37
 
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I shouldn't be tied to the Quadro range....they just are the cards that have been tested....so as long as its up to the job any card would do :)

Only problem I can see I might have with the psu is the lack of 6pin pci-e plug and only having a 4pin atx connector, not the more up to date 8pin?

Yeah, am getting the OS seperate. Being a student does have it's perks sometimes....cheap software!

Have got a SATA hard drive and an old IDE one but the older one is possibly dead at the mo :s

DVD drive is IDE as well, is that going to cause a problem at all?

Cheers for the list though :D

Just one more question.....what differs between the different chipsets on boards? i.e. H61, H67, P67, Z68!

Cheers
 
4 pin atx shouldn't be an issue as the mobos allow use of 4pin.

6 pin pci-e, you could get an adapter(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CB-018-AK&groupid=1929&catid=153&subcat=)

the ide drive will be a problem as the mobos are all sata nowadays.

with the chipsets they allow different functions of the sandybridge processors to work, hopefully someone can confirm/add to the folllowing:

h61/h67 allow the use of onboard cpu graphics but no overclocking
p67 allows overclocking of the K series processors, but no use of onboard graphics.
z68 allows you to do everything the h61/h67/p67 boards can.
 
Ok, going off on a different track for now...if say i was to max out my current mb (asus P5B-E Plus) with best cpu and max ram....do we think this would be capable of running the solidworks software?

Or is it not really practical spending the money?
 
Yeah, was kinda expecting that answer. Would prefer to have a complete upgrade but really, want to do it for as little as possible if I can. Was just a thought I had.

Don't suppose there are any kinda benchmark tests that show up the performance benefits of say and i5 over a core2 quad 8400 for instance?
 
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