Spec Me - Sketchup & D5 Render PC

[Derek W]

I'm looking to replace my current PC (I think about 14yrs old)

Asus z77 Extreme6
i78 3770k at 3.5GHz
16Gb ram
NVidia RTX 2060

I'd probably just be looking to keep the monitors, mouse and speakers from the current set up with everything else being superseded.

Enjoyed a fair bit of gaming in the past but not touched it from that perspective in over a year now so looking to upgrade to concentrate on a work related PC instead. I've been teaching myself Sketchup and using D5 Render which we use at work albeit I'm doing technical drawings on AutoCAD rather than the 3D stuff.

I have previously asked about the Graphics Card conundrum and whether i should go for a high level consumer card 3090 + or whether I should go for a Quadro card / two to do the same job. I am leaning towards the Quadro card as it'll run for longer at a lower power usage which i think for rendering would be beneficial over time rather than pushing a consumer card.

Beyond this I've not really looked into a full upgrade spec as I'm seriously out of the loop other than 'the higher the number, the better' philosophy

I know that Sketchup and D5 Render have their minimum requirements but I'd be looking to comfortably meet those and beyond as I'm keen to have some large scenes with a number of buildings and objects within so would be quite heavy on the real time engine.

One thing to note is that I probably won't be upgrading until at least the middle of next year so I'm perhaps a bit premature on the spec me post but I'm looking to get a better idea of things now and should there be anything i should be looking out for cpu / gpu wise in the next year?

 

[Derek W]

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i9-12900KF 3.20GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6A2-IN) = £389.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance RGB 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMH64GX5M2B5600C36) (SKU: MY-4DZ-CS) = £229.99
• 1 x Corsair RM1000e Fully Modular 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply (CP-9020250-UK) (SKU: CA-271-CS) = £169.99
• 1 x PNY Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 Graphics Card - 16GB GDDR6 - 6144 CUDA Core (SKU: GX-06U-PN) = £1,269.95
• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BK-GI) = £329.99
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool III Full Tower PC Case - Black (SKU: CA-7AW-LL) = £149.99
• 1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-10528) (SKU: SW-18K-MS) = £164.98
• 1 x Corsair Hydro Series iCUE H100i RGB ELITE Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - 240mm (CW-9060058-WW) (SKU: HS-04C-CS) = £144.95

Total: £2,849.83 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

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Bumping this as some time as passed and still looking to get things firmed up a bit. I'm adamant that I'll be buying the Nvidia A4000 card with the intention of getting a second one further down the line. I'm also working on the assumption that as before the bigger the numbers the better!

I'll be using the mouse, monitors and DVD drive and Wifi card from my current set up but looking to see if there's anywhere that i could improve things without necessarily increasing costs and if possible reduce them!

Thanks for any advice

EDIT

Storage either bought already or reused from current PC for now also.

 

[Derek W]

I'm no expert on Quadro cards, but the specs of the A4000 are very similar to the 3070 Ti (TPU has it use the same chip: GA104), so if that's true: £1269.95 seems far too expensive for the performance on offer, even with the greater efficiency.



The A4000 does appear to be clocked a fair bit lower than the 3070 Ti (if that's the equivalent) and has a much lower TDP, but there's nothing to stop you buying a 4080/4090 and setting a power limit, you'll also not be restricted to blower style coolers, though admittedly you'd struggle to get 2x three or four slot 4090s to fit in most boards / cases.



Personally, I'd rather have a 13700K than 12900K and productivity benchmarks are won by the former in almost all cases, any particular reason why you want 12th gen?

I'd also get the K for a productivity build (not F or KF) because the IGP can come in handy.



I don't think this PSU is ATX 3.0 / PCI-E 5.0 with a 12/16 pin and my guess is that you'd need to spend rather a lot of money to get two of them. The A4000 says it uses a 6 pin, so no problem there, but I wonder if future Quadro cards will need one (RTX 6000 does).

The main differences between the consumer and the pro cards do seem to the the greater effeciencies for long periods of time rather than the 'boost' of power that the consumer cards deliver for short / long periods of time. The reason i was looking at the A4000 was that it offers 16gb rather than the 8gb as you've compared the 3070ti card as well as the lower power consumtion and the real time ray tracing of D5 render combined with potential longer times to render animations.

I'll take a look at the different CPUs as this is the first time 12 years that I've looked to update my computer so im effectively a complete noob again! The same applies for what PSU will be most use to me. So I'll take another look there as well.

I’d probably go A4500 as it’s a lot meatier than the A4000 as it isn’t power gimped. For the CPU pretty much anything. A 7600X - 7700X will make light work of these kinds of tasks with minimal heat and power use.

I'll take a look at the two cards, I've seen that the a4500 is about 400 quid dearer so the cost will come into my decision as well.

Thinking a little more, you can get some very well spec’d and heavily discounted workstations for this money.

I think I'd had a look at workstations but they got pretty expensive pretty quickly so I ruled them out. I may have another look though.

Cheers for the input though guys its appreciated.

 

[Derek W]

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-13700K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AX-IN) = £419.99
• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BK-GI) = £329.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-41600C40 5200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5200C40 (SKU: MY-4DC-CS) = £199.99
• 1 x Corsair Hydro Series iCUE H60x ELITE High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - 120mm (CW-9060064-WW2) (SKU: HS-04R-CS) = £89.99
• 1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (FQC-10528) (SKU: SW-18K-MS) = £149.98
• 1 x be quiet! Straight Power 11 1200W 80 Plus Platinum Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-13Z-BQ) = £230.00
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool III Full Tower PC Case - Black (SKU: CA-7AW-LL) = £149.98
• 1 x PNY Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 Graphics Card - 16GB GDDR6 - 6144 CUDA Core (SKU: GX-06U-PN) = £1,269.95

Total: £2,839.87 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

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Revised things a bit and its ten quid less now! But i do see that there's a couple of discounts in there which probably wont last! Upgraded the CPU and PSU but dropped down on the RAM (clock speed and no RGB!) and cooler to a single fan closed loop.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.