Building a couple systems for work

[Ballatician]

Hi

These are going to be used for CAD (Solidworks, max 100 part assembly), Adobe CS5, LabView, Matlab, Office/browsing/research/etc etc etc. They will be used heavily and reliability and performance are most important, in that order. Budget is around $6-700 per machine. Would appreciate your comments and suggestions, especially for parts I haven't found yet. I need to have these done by Thursday!

Proposed build-

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 - $139
seems reliable from reviews

Processor - Core i5 2500K LGA 1155 Boxed Processor - $180

RAM 2x4Gb = 8Gb total $40ish or ideally 12-16Gb....

Graphics Card: AMD FirePro v4900 - $159
I don't enjoy having to buy a more expensive 6670 simply because it is recognized by Solidworks but these are for work and I want to be sure...

Hard Drive: Thinking about doing small SSD + moderate size spin drive or just a WD Blue - 500Gb in each. Always been solid for me.


PSU Corsair CX430w or CX500w - $60ish - will that be powerful enough?

CD/DVD R/RW - generic - $30

Case: any cheap case with a few fans that looks decent, may want to add a card reader or USB hub or something though

Windows 7 64 Professional - need to find 2 licenses
Keyboard/Mouse - will find at some point
Anything else?

Thanks as always AT.

 

[pitz]

Given consideration to picking up a couple Dell Latitude E6420 or E6520 laptops? They can be purchased in that rough ballpark cost-wise with Win7 Pro licenses and warranty.

 

[Ballatician]

After the nightmare I am having with the current Dell Desktop we purchased since we needed something last minute I will not be buying from them again. Also I don't think they have the graphics horsepower for CAD?

 

[ElFenix]

with that price for that processor i'm guessing you're going to microcenter?

430 should be powerful enough, though they're often substantially cheaper than $60 ($25 right now at the egg)

for inexpensive but nice looking case the fractal core 1000 wouldn't be a bad choice (move the white fan to the back). edit: core 1000 is mini atx, core 3000 is atx. pick the second for compatibility with your board.

if you're going to microcenter check out the bitfenix merc alpha and outlaw cases. they're also fairly nice looking (no mesh in front depending on how you feel about that).

 

[raf051888]

You can purchase a discrete video card and an i7 processor in the Latitude E6420.

 

[piasabird]

I just bought a case Antec 300 which came with an Antec Basiq 430. I use the graphics on the 2500K. However for CAD you may want to have a little better power supply. I dont know how much wattage you need for CAD capable video card. May want just a little more than 430 watts. The Antec 300 is a fairly nice case with good ventilation and lots of room for drives. Has a nice Basic Black look for office decor. The front has a lot of metal grills for airflow. Looks better in person than you will see pictures on the Internet. This case can also be purchased without a power supply or with more fans. There is room for 2 front fans, but I dont think they are needed. It already has a fan on the top and the rear. Bottom mounting PWER SUPPLY.

I have my new rig hooked to my 40inch HDTV.

 

[Ballatician]

with that price for that processor i'm guessing you're going to microcenter?

430 should be powerful enough, though they're often substantially cheaper than $60 ($25 right now at the egg)

for inexpensive but nice looking case the fractal core 1000 wouldn't be a bad choice (move the white fan to the back). edit: core 1000 is mini atx, core 3000 is atx. pick the second for compatibility with your board.

if you're going to microcenter check out the bitfenix merc alpha and outlaw cases. they're also fairly nice looking (no mesh in front depending on how you feel about that).

That price is from microcenter but depending on who is ordering, we may just do this all online.

You're right about the psu, I think we'll go with 430watt if we can get away with it.

All your case options are nice, thank you. I'm not married to the full ATX board however. I just want something <=$100, reliable, and that can handle our peripherals and last a couple a years.

Thanks for the helpful post.

 

[Ballatician]

I just bought a case Antec 300 which came with an Antec Basiq 430. I use the graphics on the 2500K. However for CAD you may want to have a little better power supply. I dont know how much wattage you need for CAD capable video card. May want just a little more than 430 watts. The Antec 300 is a fairly nice case with good ventilation and lots of room for drives. Has a nice Basic Black look for office decor. The front has a lot of metal grills for airflow. Looks better in person than you will see pictures on the Internet. This case can also be purchased without a power supply or with more fans. There is room for 2 front fans, but I dont think they are needed. It already has a fan on the top and the rear. Bottom mounting PWER SUPPLY.

I have my new rig hooked to my 40inch HDTV.

Nice case indeed, a little more expensive than the others however. Good point about the power supply. Since we are now buying mostly online, might go with the 500w.

 

[kornphlake]

With your budget I don't think a SSD fits. I'm not sure how much difference it would really make anyway, typical solidworks files are pretty small, unless you're working with large assemblies with a lot of parts (you already said you aren't) 8gb of ram should be enough to keep from hitting the page file. Assuming files are primarily stored on a network, opening files won't be any faster with a SSD, the money would be better spent on a faster processor or graphics card IMO.

I got a smokin' deal on a Dell workstation last month, too bad you've had a bad experience, they're really pretty competitive on workstations if you have a business account.

 

[Ken g6]

I get the impression you'd rather not overclock, or at least not much. If that's the case, consider substituting a Xeon E3-1230 for the 2500K. It's not officially supported in consumer motherboards, but I've heard good things about it. It has hyperthreading, so it's faster than the 2500K at stock, for about the same price if both were bought online.

In that case, you can then drop to an H67 board.

 

[mfenn]

Building a couple systems for work

My advice is: don't. If Dell has burned you, there is always HP. Their enterprise line of desktops and workstations is pretty good.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

My advice is: don't. If Dell has burned you, there is always HP. Their enterprise line of desktops and workstations is pretty good.

+1

 

[Ballatician]

I get the impression you'd rather not overclock, or at least not much. If that's the case, consider substituting a Xeon E3-1230 for the 2500K. It's not officially supported in consumer motherboards, but I've heard good things about it. It has hyperthreading, so it's faster than the 2500K at stock, for about the same price if both were bought online.

In that case, you can then drop to an H67 board.

That is the case and I don't think hyperthreading will help in any of our applications at least. I will look into it though.

+1

I see where you two are coming from but a similar spec'ed workstation is more expensive and more importantly won't ship to us for a couple weeks.

With your budget I don't think a SSD fits. I'm not sure how much difference it would really make anyway, typical solidworks files are pretty small, unless you're working with large assemblies with a lot of parts (you already said you aren't) 8gb of ram should be enough to keep from hitting the page file. Assuming files are primarily stored on a network, opening files won't be any faster with a SSD, the money would be better spent on a faster processor or graphics card IMO.

I got a smokin' deal on a Dell workstation last month, too bad you've had a bad experience, they're really pretty competitive on workstations if you have a business account.

I think you are right about the SSD speed wise. One user just wants one. Are they not more reliable however?

 

[ElFenix]

Are they not more reliable however?

SSD? i wouldn't trust one as much as i trust a hard drive. then again, you shouldn't be trusting any critical data to a single storage device (or a single physical location). but i assume you know that.

 

[Ballatician]

SSD? i wouldn't trust one as much as i trust a hard drive. then again, you shouldn't be trusting any critical data to a single storage device (or a single physical location). but i assume you know that.

Yeah, I was just wondering. Anything critical is being backed up daily.

 

[kornphlake]

I paid about $1275 for a precision T1600 system with a Xeon E3-1245 CPU, 8gb RAM, Quadro 600, 250gb HDD (not SSD) windows 7 pro 64-bit, and a 23" monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. I may have gotten a year end promotional discount but the price ended up being very hard to beat. Pricing out comparable components on newegg the same system would cost about $1180 (without keyboard or mouse,) but I'd have to assemble everything, install the OS and drivers, and hope it all works or else I'd have to go through the individual manufacturers for support which isn't likely to be productive. I think the system shipped ahead of the promise date and arrived in a little over 1 week.

 

[Ballatician]

I agree that is a great deal but time and the recent dell experience played heavily I guess.

 

[Charlie98]

I agree that is a great deal but time and the recent dell experience played heavily I guess.

Did you just have one bad Dell experience? I'm a big Dell fan, I've had 3 consumer-level Dells and they have performed quite admirably, my original laptop is 7 years old now. ...and I always got my computers ahead of schedule.

I would probably skip the SSD, for the price you could probably drop in 2 HDD's and have a redundant backup without the issues of two different drives (i.e: OS on SSD, storage on HDD... unless you are going big on the SSD's and can forgo the HDD.)

If you are trying to build 2 or 3 identical systems for business, I would just order them through Dell or HP (with the caveat that I will never buy anything HP again.)

 

[gsaldivar]

I think you're making a mistake by building computers for your work.

In this case, Dell or HP business line is definitely the way to go. No brand is perfect. However, you're really doing yourself (and your employer) a disservice by completely writing off the best solutions to your problem because of one bad experience. But don't let all the feedback to the contrary stop you...

 

[raf051888]

I use Dell for my users at work. I wouldn't purchase any PCs from HP as they are reportedly closing / selling their PC hardware side.

 

[Ausm]

These are the work stations I have been installing at work and fully decked out the come to around 4500 each. We Run Solid works and Auto CAD where I work. I can tell you from experience to steer clear from SSD drives for enterprise applications because imo they are not ready for prime time.

 

[mfenn]

I use Dell for my users at work. I wouldn't purchase any PCs from HP as they are reportedly closing / selling their PC hardware side.

That's last years news. HP decided to hold onto PSG.

 

[raf051888]

That's last years news. HP decided to hold onto PSG.

Which group is PSG?

 

[Darknite39]

Don't forget about Lenovo desktops.

 

[mfenn]

Which group is PSG?

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