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Building desktop for father. Need spec advice.

R

RyanGreener

Senior member
Hi everyone, I'm building a desktop for my dad and I'm not sure which components to go for. It is a desktop that will be built for Pro/Engineer and AutoCAD. The recommended requirements of Pro/Engineer tell me nothing, because they are vague with the requirements, such as:

2.4 GHZ CPU - Is this dual core, single core, and not to mention clockspeed doesn't tell everything.
1 GB RAM and 2 GB of Hard Drive Space (Pagefile/Swap I believe?) - I don't want to rely on using the hard drive, so I'd rather have more RAM.

And they also did not give any required GPUs. So what i'm asking here is, if any of you have had experience using pro/engineer, what is a good setup that will allow it to run flawlessly. I'm trying to spend the least possible, so keep budget in mind. I basically only need the following information:

What CPU to use?
What GPU to use?
How much RAM?
 
my sister uses proE, but she couldn't tell me if it used openGL rendering or not. if it's entrely software, then the GPU doesnt really matter. in that case, get a decent quad core and plenty of ram, and you're good to go. if it does use openGL, then you'd want to get a decent video card too.

looking at the platform support, it apparently uses both openGL and direct3D. (odd....)

well, you can't really go wrong if you build it like you would a modern gaming rig.
 
Last edited:
Fayd said:
my sister uses proE, but she couldn't tell me if it used openGL rendering or not. if it's entrely software, then the GPU doesnt really matter. in that case, get a decent quad core and plenty of ram, and you're good to go. if it does use openGL, then you'd want to get a decent video card too.

looking at the platform support, it apparently uses both openGL and direct3D. (odd....)

well, you can't really go wrong if you build it like you would a modern gaming rig.
Click to expand...

I see. Even if I do build it like a modern gaming rig, I wonder how far I'd have to go until the performance was acceptable. Hopefully some people who use pro/engineer can help 🙂
 
well, the only point of data i can give you is: a 1.6 ghz dothan processor with 1 gig of ram is "dog slow".

😛
 
Fayd said:
i should reiterate the point about "dog slow"... 😛
Click to expand...

Yeah but dual cores and stuff these days aren't that expensive and perform way better than something that old. I wasn't going to go with an Atom or something, haha. I'm not a jerk. 🙂

Axon said:
Given the requirements you've listed, I'd go with:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.344674

Quad-core/Mobo (includes decent onboard GPU), $155

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231122

4 GB Ram, $85

Total: $240

And that's actually kind of expensive. What kind of budget are you looking at?
Click to expand...

Budget is around 600 bucks without monitor/peripherals/OS.
 
The setup I've listed will do everything, including gaming at low resolutions. If you wanted a little more oomph for gaming, you could add a GPU like the 4850.
 
CAD and especially the "best" as Pro/E beat the drive channel to death. Especially if he works with large assemblies day in/day out ... think SSD! Convention & less expensive is RAID HDDs. Else, just a real good HDD. Personally, I would use a SSD as the "work" drive for current projects moving them off to an HDD as they age & to reserve space on the SSD.

Next video cards and this is big! It is all about OpenGL for CAD. These can be nearly if not identical AFIK electronics, but different firmware & drivers as the same cards for gaming.

Go to SolidWorks or just Google "solidworks video card benchmarks" & read ... SPECopc Viewperf 10.0 Solidworks is good. You will find some very affordable OpenGL CAD compatible graphics cards. I mention SolidWorks as they do extensive testing on CAD graphics cards. They should all be compatible with Pro/E. FWIW once you have a bit of an education ... call the local Pro/E rep & talk. Demonstrates to your dad that you are doing do diligence!

For myself, I buy usually less expensive gaming cards. This gets me funny & strange graphics effects & errors in CAD. No crashes, just odd little undocumented features. But for me I don't care as I don't live & die in CAD.

Typically CAD is the anthesis of gaming as far as video cards are concerned. If gaming is an expectation, just get a gaming card & deal with the unusual effects in CAD. But considering what Pro/E costs ... I would get a separate computer for gaming!!
 
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PsiStar said:
CAD and especially the "best" as Pro/E beat the drive channel to death. Especially if he works with large assemblies day in/day out ... think SSD! Convention & less expensive is RAID HDDs. Else, just a real good HDD. Personally, I would use a SSD as the "work" drive for current projects moving them off to an HDD as they age & to reserve space on the SSD.

Next video cards and this is big! It is all about OpenGL for CAD. These can be nearly if not identical AFIK electronics, but different firmware & drivers as the same cards for gaming.

Go to SolidWorks or just Google "solidworks video card benchmarks" & read ... SPECopc Viewperf 10.0 Solidworks is good. You will find some very affordable OpenGL CAD compatible graphics cards. I mention SolidWorks as they do extensive testing on CAD graphics cards. They should all be compatible with Pro/E. FWIW once you have a bit of an education ... call the local Pro/E rep & talk. Demonstrates to your dad that you are doing do diligence!

For myself, I buy usually less expensive gaming cards. This gets me funny & strange graphics effects & errors in CAD. No crashes, just odd little undocumented features. But for me I don't care as I don't live & die in CAD.

Typically CAD is the anthesis of gaming as far as video cards are concerned. If gaming is an expectation, just get a gaming card & deal with the unusual effects in CAD. But considering what Pro/E costs ... I would get a separate computer for gaming!!
Click to expand...

solidworks i know does that sort of thing, but i dont know if ProE does anything like that.

like i said, i asked my sister about this. she's a mechanical engineer, and does a lot of drafting in Pro-E. she told me that there was no other effects from not using a workstation card other than the slow speed. (her comparison was her laptop, the dothan processor 1.6 ghz, versus the company workstation....which was set up with solidworks/autocad/proE and a bunch of other programs necessary for their use.) i'm guessing it wasnt the workstation card, but rather the slow processor.
 
I will probably start off by buying a quad core cpu/at least 4 gb ram, and using good integrated graphics (785g or intel "HD") then if that doesn't work out, I'll upgrade the GPU.
 
I'm not a Pro/E guy but a faster dual-core would do the trick with AutoCAD.

And you may want to check out Guru3D for info on soft-modding an inexpensive Radeon into a FireGL. Regenerating multiple views and perspectives on complicated line drawings or 3D assemblies will eat an IGP alive.





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