Cad Build

[saratoga172]

We are bringing our design work in house and I've been tasked with speccing out a Cad system build. I don't have specifics on software at the moment but I'd assume something from auto desk will be used. The designer will be designing and creating plans.

It won't be a manual build it'll be something from Dell. Looking at the Precision T5600/7600 for the build. The 5600 seems to give us more bang for $$$ since we don't need the ludicrous specs of a t7600.

Here's what I've got so far:
$12-14k budget for tower only
Dual Xeon 8c proc 2.4ghz (16c, 32t)
2 x 256gb ssd
Quadro 6000
32/64gb ram
Win 7 pro

What I do have decided on is 2 Dell u27xx ultrasharp monitors that will be additional to the tower budget.

Open for suggestions as I've never built a design system like this before. I'm just wondering if the dual 8c procs will be held up by not having enough memory when running through processes. Should we shoot for 128?

We also get about 30% off retail of what's on Dells website. Sometimes more but looking for spec recommendations. So anything around the 16-17 range we should get around 12-13.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Cerb]

1. Why not the Xeon E5-2643? >90% of the time, the user is waiting on a single thread, between clicks. More cores may help here and there, but clocks come first.

2. Seriously, they don't have 500+GB SSDs? Nope. Grrr.

3. You really want to know the specific software it will run, and how it will be used, to not go overkill on the graphics card. The software and what kind of work will be done with it will define whether the cheapest option is good enough, or how much can be spent before you get into the land of overkill. Architecture, and basic machine work, FI, will barely stress most modern cards, even low-end ones. You probably don't want to go lower than the Quadro K600, though, just based on price/performance. The video card can be 50% of the whole machine budget, if you blindly get one of the best.

 

[jimbob200521]

1. Why not the Xeon E5-2643? >90% of the time, the user is waiting on a single thread, between clicks. More cores may help here and there, but clocks come first.

2. Seriously, they don't have 500+GB SSDs? Nope. Grrr.

I'm not sure if your serious or not about an SSD capacity greater than 512 gig but here's a link to one of many many at Newegg

http://www.Newegg.com/Product/Produc...tem=20-148-696


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[T_Yamamoto]

I would go with 64gb of RAM. CAD is ram hungry.

 

[Ayah]

I'm not really a fan of the limited memory support of the 5600, so I'd vote for the 7600, but buy your own third-party memory.

 

[Cerb]

I'm not sure if your serious or not about an SSD capacity greater than 512 gig but here's a link to one of many many at Newegg

Newegg != Dell. Dell has 256GB only.

 

[imagoon]

Are you going to only be using CAD for line art or are you using stuff like MEP and the 3D rendering?

If it is just line part (IE just 'AutoCAD') then we were running drawings approaching a million discretes with about 1/4 that power. Mostly needed RAM and GPU.

You may want to read on the CAD software site also, AutoCAD really had a peak of about 4 cores (threads) that it could use. Extras slowed things down. This made a single 6 core CPU the sweet spot since it let 4 cores run hard while leaving 2 for OS / e-mail etc.

I also found that disk had minimal affect on CAD. Once the files are loaded they run from RAM. The SSD may not give you much. 3D rendering may need it though if you are texture hungry.

I personally would look at a higher clock CPU and drop the core count. CAD needs the core speeds more than the core counts.

 

[mfenn]

Sweet Jesus, $14K? I don't think that you'll need to spend nearly that much unless you are doing some really complex 3D design and analysis. I agree with the other posters that we really need to know some more specifics of what you're doing.

 

[saratoga172]

Couple things:
Dell only offers 256gb SSD's on their workstation builds. We would prefer a 512 but the goal is not to have to crack open the case after we purchase it. Hence the 2 drives.

I still haven't gotten a definitive answer on the software. I came back with a $4k system and was told to spend more.

Thanks for the suggestions on the higher clocked proc. I'll swap that out and go with 6c with high clocks.

I've given pretty much all the information I've got. It'll be for designing house plans and the like.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

 

[imagoon]

Sounds like someone wants to go hog wild with daddy's credit card. You should tell them that you can't get the right machine unless you know the use case. If they are doing 2d, line art house designs, then they could get away with a random Dell i5 desktop. If they are rendering those designs then they may need more.

To give you a ball park idea, we did a ~22,000 sq/ft datacenter in 3d with the electrical, plumbing, hvac and structure with only a 4 core Nehalm, 24GB of RAM and a Quardo card. 22,000 sq/ft was only the usable space so it was closer to 35,000 when add it generators exterior cooling towers etc.

 

[Cerb]

I've given pretty much all the information I've got. It'll be for designing house plans and the like.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

House plans? Good renders can usually work out more cores, or a nicer Quadro (again, the specific software will make that distinction, though), but a beefy machine is typically needed for either complex machines (complexity as in number of parts, not necessarily anything regarding operation), or when simulations are part of the work.

You probably want a workstation computer, but sizeable apartment, office, etc., buildings have been made w/o issue on weaker systems than you can buy from Dell. May as well get the fastest CPU (in clock speed), plenty of ECC RAM, etc., but unless something really heavy is being done besides those plans, I'm solidly in agreement with mfenn and imagoon.

Past around $4-4.5k, you won't get any benefits from more hardware, and in some cases may get a slower part (such as the slower 8-core CPU), for the money. A really expensive Quadro, FI (say, anything above the k2000), is going to be wasted on 3D performance alone, 99% of the time, but a single task with code tuned for it (such as using CUDA) will be so much faster than not having having it as to make it worthwhile. Same with the CPUs: if a specific task that causes the user to wait can use many cores, then more cores may be worth it. But, in general, fewer faster cores will be better.

I also found that disk had minimal affect on CAD.

SSDs can benefit some in use, but most of the SSD benefits are in making backups. Just getting a deep directory listing can sometimes take minutes on spinners, as the project folders grow, which can then require digging around and finding how to make whatever software is being used wait longer. Meanwhile, the same thing will take seconds on an SSD.

 

[saratoga172]

Won't be designing anything as far as office buildings to my knowledge. Just houses and whatever they need as part of them. Most users like to load everything on the computer so a little overhead is preferred.

As for SSD's we are moving all end user systems to SSD only. Biggest complaint we get is computers taking too long to start or open programs. Talking much weaker systems but going SSD has drastically decreased that complaint.

As for budget. I don't know what else is at play here. And it may get nixed down to something more reasonable. They see a 10k number then we come back with a 5k figure and it looks much better on us. Crazy I know but nature of office politics.

I've got something like this;
High clocked 6c proc
64gb ram
2x 256 ssd
Quadro 6000

I'll be giving this as preliminary system and hopefully find out software specifics tomorrow.

 

[mfenn]

I came back with a $4k system and was told to spend more.

Politics, eh? Go to lunch with your Dell sales rep and work out some sort of kickback. :whiste:

OK, not really, please don't do that.

In this situation, I would come up with 3 builds: $2K (too low end), $4K (just right), and $14K (too much). The argument should go somewhere along the lines of $14K gets you X, $4K gets you 95% of X, and $2K gets you 50% of X.

 

[imagoon]

SSDs can benefit some in use, but most of the SSD benefits are in making backups. Just getting a deep directory listing can sometimes take minutes on spinners, as the project folders grow, which can then require digging around and finding how to make whatever software is being used wait longer. Meanwhile, the same thing will take seconds on an SSD.

Like I said, minimal. Assuming the CAD person is sane and keeps track of the xrefs, they really shouldn't be digging through more than 5-15 directories and only 3 maybe 4 deep.

 

[Cerb]

Like I said, minimal. Assuming the CAD person is sane and keeps track of the xrefs, they really shouldn't be digging through more than 5-15 directories and only 3 maybe 4 deep.

The CAD person does whatever they need to do to (handling this is not their job). The IT person then has to make sure the backups complete on a regular basis, and lots of software can't, out of the box, handle many minutes without responses, as it compiles a list of files, sizes, and timestamps, and has them protected by VSS There are clearly many serial dependencies in this process, as SSDs can be in excess of 100x faster.

Document version control would probably help, but that tends to be an uphill battle, wrt to users.

 

[imagoon]

The CAD person does whatever they need to do to (handling this is not their job). The IT person then has to make sure the backups complete on a regular basis, and lots of software can't, out of the box, handle many minutes without responses, as it compiles a list of files, sizes, and timestamps, and has them protected by VSS There are clearly many serial dependencies in this process, as SSDs can be in excess of 100x faster.

Document version control would probably help, but that tends to be an uphill battle, wrt to users.

It is the CAD users job to be organized. Sure "IT" backs the files up but beyond that, if the CAD person is keeps a complete mess of a file system, that is on them. That isn't even IT's problem, it is the next CAD guy that has to go through the mess. I spent 7.5 years managing a CAD utilized network and it was to everyone's advantage to not dump crap all over the network, any where the flavor of the day CAD guy decided. I worked with the CAD manager to develop a system for archiving, "company standard" directory structure etc. The CAD manager fixed the issue when he realized that I was no longer going to help him search "the network" for those elusive files because his team of 8 dumped crap where ever they want. Our largest job in the history of the company fit neatly in to 3 layers deep and about 4-8 directories in each.

 

[Cerb]

It is the CAD users job to be organized. Sure "IT" backs the files up but beyond that, if the CAD person is keeps a complete mess of a file system, that is on them. That isn't even IT's problem, it is the next CAD guy that has to go through the mess. I spent 7.5 years managing a CAD utilized network and it was to everyone's advantage to not dump crap all over the network, any where the flavor of the day CAD guy decided. I worked with the CAD manager to develop a system for archiving, "company standard" directory structure etc. The CAD manager fixed the issue when he realized that I was no longer going to help him search "the network" for those elusive files because his team of 8 dumped crap where ever they want. Our largest job in the history of the company fit neatly in to 3 layers deep and about 4-8 directories in each.

I haven't seen anything like that, before. I just mean the projects directory per machine, and on the server, having many projects, and each one has several drawings, some DBs, some images, etc., often being 1000+ files per GB (once I came across 10,000 files per GB, with Civil 3D--I recall it taking over 20 minutes to simply find out how big the projects directory actually was).

 

[Gillbot]

I would go with 64gb of RAM. CAD is ram hungry.

Agreed, as much ram as possible.

Politics, eh? Go to lunch with your Dell sales rep and work out some sort of kickback. :whiste:

OK, not really, please don't do that.

In this situation, I would come up with 3 builds: $2K (too low end), $4K (just right), and $14K (too much). The argument should go somewhere along the lines of $14K gets you X, $4K gets you 95% of X, and $2K gets you 50% of X.

This is really good advice. I'd do a budget ~$3k, Mid range ~$5k, good ~$8k then overpriced ~$14k to really show options.