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Help buying CAD/3DSMax workstations

J

JCH13

Diamond Member
Challenge: I need 2-4 computers to run CAD programs, i.e. SolidWorks, and 3DSMax. I have $3k or less to spend, including monitors/peripherals/etc. I would prefer 22"-24" monitors, gigabit ethernet, a gigabit router (the computers will be turned into a render farm for 3DSMax regularly), and I would like to buy all of the gear from one location, preferably with a protection agreement of some sort.

Think you can help me out?
 
Go back and request more money. All of our CAD / 3DS / Solidworks machines are $5500 each. At least to get a level of performance where we were not wasting the operators time. (also costs money)
 
imagoon said:
Go back and request more money. All of our CAD / 3DS / Solidworks machines are $5500 each. At least to get a level of performance where we were not wasting the operators time. (also costs money)
Click to expand...

These are for high school students, so I don't need top-notch performance and operator time is free. It's this or we use some Pentium 4 machines... 🙁
 
Does your school have vendor requirements (most if not all do)? Check with the school IT group. 9 times out of 10 you will have a preexisting agreement that will discount the machines significantly. Once you know the discounts, you might get someplace. $3k for 4 machines is really low and bordering on walmart level though. Your IT group might have some random gear that meets your needs also, like some 1 gig switches, monitors, etc. If they do, you free up cash to spend on the machines.
 
They are for high school students, but not purchased through any high school program. They will be purchased using grant money for an extra-curricular activity. We do not have any tech/IT departments backing us.
 
I really don't have a good answer for you. Even if you go really cheap, 22-24 inch monitors put you out around $225ish which eats up at least $900 more if you are not tax exempt. Throw in $100 for a gig router / switch you effectively have to buy 4 computers @ $500 each.

That can net you and i3 with 4 gig of ram but likely the built in video chip will not do well or keep up with the CAD / Solidworks.

Dropping to 3 machines frees up about 750ish a computer which nets you a bit more cpu and ram.

the above is all "big box" vendor however. White box might make $750 / machine work but then you have to buy the OS and everything separately but you can buy a box that can hold a videocard. I am hesitant to offer a "this is what you need" solution because it would take considerable work on my part to get a parts and price list going.
 
JCH13 said:
They are for high school students, but not purchased through any high school program. They will be purchased using grant money for an extra-curricular activity. We do not have any tech/IT departments backing us.
Click to expand...

Sounds like an awesome project (teaching kids CAD). Maybe you could get some of those components donated?
 
having started with high school architectural drafting tools (#2 pencil), then starting with CAD in 1988, i've used a spectrum of tools, including the dual-xeon workstation+FireGL that corporations tend to provide.

the computers you will buy will be faster than all but one of my own computers (i also run Solidworks & 3D Max, among other programs).

and, the students will be thrilled, and learning - that's the main thing.

i would suggest as one possibility, systems based on AMD's cheap 4 core, the Propus 620/ 630/640 etc. series.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103871

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Deneb 3.0GHz
$100

Newegg has combo deals including a motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Size=10&page=1

for hard drive, the Western Digital Black 640GB or the Samsung 103SJ 1 TB drives are both great.

for monitor, a 19" monitor will be enough for Solidworks (screen space for tool menus + viewport).

for 3D Max, a few more pixels would help, to support the standard 2x2 screen display + menu's.

but you have enough money in your budget to get some decent 22" monitors.

PLUS - since you're a school - there's a chance you'll get some good discounts. though Apple discounts won't help much ... Solidworks doesn't run on Apple OS without work-arounds that might be a pain in the ass.

anyway, with that budget, you should end up with 4 educational workstations and some very happy students.
 
Not sure if you know this, but if the students have an edu email, they can get free copies of various autodesk products.
 
JCH13 said:
Thanks for the advice. I am thinking that I'll get my students something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883147173
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127060

Meets all of the recommended (not just minimum) spec's for 3DSMax.

I have talked with our supporter about increasing the budget to $4k, but the money may not be there.
Click to expand...

I'm no CAD expert, but for about the same price, you should be much better off replacing that $750 computer w/ Radeon 5450

With this:

$510 computer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883147197

$177 workstation graphics card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814195096

There's no info on the PSU, you may need to beef it up a little, but you're still saving $60 over the system you listed, so you can get a 500-550W Corsair or Antec in that range.

Or you can do better yet checking bensbargains.net daily and jumping on a deal like this:
http://bensbargains.net/deal/164160 (expired) for $600, selling the gaming Radeon 4850 for ~$100 and buying that workstation card above. Deals like above come up more frequently than you might think, both HP and Dell.
 
JCH13 said:
Thanks for the advice. I am thinking that I'll get my students something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883147173
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127060

Meets all of the recommended (not just minimum) spec's for 3DSMax.

I have talked with our supporter about increasing the budget to $4k, but the money may not be there.
Click to expand...

Also, for $20 more, you can get this Dell monitor with a 2048 x 1152 resolution.
http://bensbargains.net/deal/164169/
 
I would need to check but most of the CAD and Solidworks systems use the OpenGL of the workstation cards. Most of the "workstation" drivers have increased accuracy among other things. So for the best effect it is worth going workstation but since it is learning a faster "gaming" card might be fine. In most cases the hardware isn't different, just the drivers. However the workstation lines are generally "certified" at the hardware level (ie tested harder for soft errors that a gamer would never see/care about) and thus get full support from Autodesk etc. I know that here at my company we stick with Quadro mostly so Autodesk can't accuse us of running out of spec if the software bombs up.
 
That's not a lot of $$$ in your budget. Just one of our SolidWorks stations ( Dell T3500 )costs more than that.

However, working with the $$$ you do have, this would be my MINIMUM pick for a qualified machine. The key element is a qualified Videocard. You can get away with a slower CPU. You can pump up the ram at some later date, as 2GB will prob not cut it for a "Render Farm" app. Also, these *DON'T* include MS Office in the price, which your school *MAY* already have Open License for.
You can buy 550VA APC UPS at Staples when they go on sale for around $50.











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Dell Precsion T1500 Workstation

Starting Price $1,194.00

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Dell Precsion T1500 Workstation




Date 11/5/2010 2:54:00 PM Central Standard Time

Catalog Number 4 Retail 04



Catalog Number / Description Product Code Qty SKU Id



Dell Precision T1500:
Dell Precision T1500 Base for Intel H57 Chipset T1500H 1 [224-9972] 1


Processor:
Dual Core Processor Core i3-540, 3.06GHz I3540 1 [317-5667] 2


Operating System:
Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit, English W7PN6E 1 [330-6228][421-1486] 11


Productivity Software:
No Productivity Software NOPSW 1 [421-3872] 22


Memory:
2GB,DDR3,Non-ECC SDRAM Memory,1333MHz,1x2GB 2G3N31 1 [317-2387] 3


Hardware Support Services :
3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD On-Site Service U3YOS 1 [905-0212][905-1687][905-3428][905-7740] 29


Graphics:
512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580, DUAL MON, 2 DP & 1 DVI FX580 1 [320-1197][330-9266] 6


1394 Controller:
No 1394 MT 1 [311-7463] 15


Hard Drive Configuration:
C1 All SATA Hard Drives ,Non- RAID for 1 Hard Drive SATA1 1 [341-1256] 9


Boot Hard Drive:
250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache™ 250G72K 1 [331-0571][341-8664] 8


DVD and Read-Write Devices:
16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD™ No Media DVD16N 1 [313-9193][330-6758][421-0537] 16


Monitor:
Dell Professional P2210 22in HAS Wide Monitor, VGA/ DVI/ DP P2210T 1 [320-8099] 5


Media Card Reader:
No Media Card Reader NOMCR 1 [330-5783] 10


Resource DVD:
No Resource Media NDVD 1 [330-2440] 27


System Recovery:
Recovery Media for Genuine Windows® 7 Professional,64bit,Multiple Language M7P64M 1 [421-2992] 47


System Recovery:
Resource DVD, H57 RDVD57 1 [330-8084] 47


Shipping Packaging Options:
Shipping Material for System SHIP 1 [330-6760] 40


Quick Reference Guide:
Quick Reference Guide, English REFE 1 [330-5528] 39


Sound Card:
Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio INAUDIO 1 [313-8764] 17


Speakers:
Dell AX510 Sound Bar for all UltraSharp Flat Panel Displays AX510 1 [313-6414] 18


Keyboard:
Dell QuietKey Keyboard QUSB 1 [330-5522] 4


Mouse:
Dell MS111 USB Optical Mouse USBOP 1 [330-9458] 12


Network Adapter:
Intergrated PCIE 10/100/1000 INT 1 [430-3246] 13


Documentation:
Documentation, English, with 125V Power Cord DOCENG 1 [330-3156][330-3157] 21


Installation Services:
No Onsite System Setup NOINSTL 1 [900-9987]
 
>512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133273

high school kids don't need a Quadro or FireGL to learn Solidworks, or 3D Max.

they need a fast-enough card with solid drivers. by "fast enough" i mean it will handle medium-complexity assemblies and, on 3D Max, do everything but some of the CPU/GPU intensive work such as particles.

they can use a solid gaming card - like the one in my sig - which cost $120 - to model some quite elaborate assemblies.

to be specific, i'm recommending buying a video card that has been "out for a while" (field experience 1 year +) AND is highly recommended.

an example; i was looking for a "mid-range" card -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161297
 
Last edited:
If you try to use a "gaming" class card, SolidWorks will not have any video acceleration. It will use pure CPU rendering. That's why I spec'd a qualified card.
 
wlee said:
If you try to use a "gaming" class card, SolidWorks will not have any video acceleration. It will use pure CPU rendering. That's why I spec'd a qualified card.
Click to expand...

Back when I used Solidworks 2006, I'm sure this was NOT the case. A couple years ago I ran a newer version (2008?) on a system with a Geforce 6600GT & it seemed to run pretty smoothly. Perhaps the dual core 2.2Ghz Athlon cpu was fast enough for my relatively simple models...

The only time I'm sure that Solidworks was running with only CPU power was for ray-tracing my models into pretty images. (I guess this was Photoworks?)

Do you have some pointers to the Solidworks website or some other resource that states that Solidworks disables acceleration unless you own a Quadro or FireGL?

Thanks. (Obviously I'm not a CAD professional, but I do use it occasionally -- I'm lucky enough to work for a company with a *bunch* of floating licenses.)
 
Just try real time dragging/rotating a shaded model and you'll see what I'm talking about. CPU gets pegged and you're LUCKY if you get a slideshow over the span of a couple minutes.

I tried installing SolidWorks 2009 on a Dell Dimension XPS. That was my experience with that test. The machine has a 2.4Ghz Core2Duo, 8GB Ram and one of the NVidia 9x cards.
I was trying to see if a "cheaper" class of box could be used.

That's not the case with the qualified machines.
Granted our T3500's have Quad Core and 10K rpm HD's, but only 6GB Ram.
 
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