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Need a comp for a friend

J

jbubrisk

Senior member
Hey guys,
my firend is upgrading from a 6 year old P2. He wants to run solidworks, and pro E on it, plus other basic stuff, itunes, ms office, etc. Any recommendations for brands? He also said he wants widescreen flatpanel. Any suggestions? I was thinking Dell, but any specific parts/models? Thanks,

-John
 
Just look in the hot deal sections. Get one with a pentium D if possible. Its not really much about the models with them but try to get a dual core system.
 
well most (if not all) pentium D's are 64bit compatible. just the extreme edition processors have hyper-threading, but that is basically useless since there are 2 physical cores. the same goes with AMDs athlon X2s...they are all 64bit compatible, just like the opterons.
 
Are you looking to build or buy?

Unless you are unable to I would suggest building it. I have a friend who works with those programs on a daily basis; if you want I can get his input on the situation.
 
Yo that would be awesome if you could get your friends input! My friend is looking to use Pro E and Solidworks, and other basic office apps. He is looking to buy, but if it came to it, I could build it for him. I have decent knowledge, just not about what is actually good 😛 Let me know if you find anything out! Oh, and here is what I was thinking:

Pentium D 820 (dual core at 2.8 I think)
1 gig of ram
160-250 gb hd
mid range video card, maybe x1600? or x800? or geforce 6800?
He said he wanted widescreen, so maybe the Dell 24 in widescreen would be good?

Other than that its pretty much peripherals
 
What exactly is Pro E and Solidworks? Do you know what it is intense on? cpu, video card, etc.... If I have that I could advise you on a system for your friend.
 
Originally posted by: jbubrisk
Yo that would be awesome if you could get your friends input! My friend is looking to use Pro E and Solidworks, and other basic office apps. He is looking to buy, but if it came to it, I could build it for him. I have decent knowledge, just not about what is actually good 😛 Let me know if you find anything out! Oh, and here is what I was thinking:

Pentium D 820 (dual core at 2.8 I think)
1 gig of ram
160-250 gb hd
mid range video card, maybe x1600? or x800? or geforce 6800?
He said he wanted widescreen, so maybe the Dell 24 in widescreen would be good?

Other than that its pretty much peripherals
Click to expand...

I'll get in touch with him over the weekend, and see what he says.

I can say with almost certainly that both programs are pretty RAM intensive so plan on making the move to 2GB.
 
ProE and Solidworks are MCAD applications. If this friend is going to be using these applications as a professional I heartily suggest the purchase of a system that is certified to run them. There's nothing worse than getting your head into a design for a few hours and having the system cave in on you. Design software of this type and complexity requires at least prosumer level 256 megabyte graphics cards and LOTS of memory to run efficiently. Fast hard drives don't hurt, either, depending upon the projects you're running.

You can build one heck of a homebuilt system with the very best components imaginable that still won't run an MCAD app without blue-screening. This is very much due, at least in part, to the fact that the software may not really be all that well-written -- or that it may have been written to use the video subsystem too aggressively in the interest of peak performance. If you do build the system for your friend it might be a good idea to communicate with the purveyors of the MCAD software to see what suggestions they might make with respect to at least the motherboard / processor / video components. And be aware that engineers can get kinda cranky when their systems keep blowing away their brainchildren.

😉

 

i run Solidworks and Pro-E. Solidworks on an Asus P4C800. bought both of them a year ago because i thought i should learn them. i learned that i like Solidworks.

that system had 2 GB of low-latency Mushkin, with a 10% OC. recently upgraded to 4 GB of OCZ DDR Platinum, though it's only recognized as about 3.2 GB. the extra memory makes a difference, you don't have to re-boot as often.

the Pro-E machine is on an Abit IC7Max. no overclock. not a big pro-E fan, yet.

as far as buying Solidworks approved hardware, i didn't.

System Suggestion - Intel
950 CPU, 3.4 GHz, Dual Core, $300+
Asus P5N32 motherboard, very good power processing circuitry.
memory - Patriot low-latency DDR2
hard drive - Maxtor SATA 300 GB 7VF300 or 6VF300
video card - Asus 6800 GT PCI-Express or faster. in any case, nVidia.

as far as the "ATI Fire GL", one place i worked at about 8 years my workstation always had a "late great" Fire GL video card in a Dell Xeon workstation. My nVidia 6600 with 256 MB RAM is just as fast, for these purposes (modelling & rendering, not gaming). $139. not recommending that card, just saying it's as fast as the Fire GL cards i spent many years using, for industrial strength solid modelling.

System Suggestion - AMD
Denmark 175, 2.2 GHz dual core, $500+ but they should be lowering the price in a week or 2 to match Intel's massive recent (wonderful 🙂 price cuts.
Asus A8N32, same power processing circuitry as the P5N32. crappy place for the reset button
memory - 2 of the 2 x 1 GB OCZ DDR Platinum kits. short fuse on the rebate, got to send it in QUick !
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227210

anyway, hope that helps.
 
Good hardware will run good software. There are other ADD-ON programs in the PC that may not get along with those drafting proggies. The issue could also be related to video drivers.

The talk about getting CERTIFIED hardware to run those programs is PURE BS! I have NO ISSUE with Pro E/SolidWorks on a cheap ECS NF4 754/Sempron 3100 Paris overclocked to 2.43GHz. The system is running with 2 x 512MB Corsair Value Select at 166/2.5-3-3-6-1T (270MHz FSB).

As a general rule, getting "certified" stuffs will cost more because you're paying some bone-head $ to slap on a tag. There is no GUARANTEE in the world of software. Even the best program has unpatched/undiscovered bugs. The key to system stability is to install the absolute minimum of applications to get the job done. More proggies translate to more chance of software issue.
 
furballi,

Such strongly worded dissent! I'm going to say that your anecdotal evidence doesn't speak for every situation. And there ARE guarantees in the software world. That's what certification does, among other things. It entitles the purchaser to return the system for a full refund of the purchase price if the system doesn't perform to specification.

I have seen two different designers working on identically configured certified systems. One was suffering blue screens and the other was not. The replacement system for the guy who was getting blue screens also exhibited the same behavior. There were no extraneous apps on any of these systems. The vendor chalked it up to differences in user behavior (methods of utilizing the systems). They also refunded the purchase price so that Mr. Blue Screen could get another system that worked better for him.

Certification, in this instance, means that the software vendor has signed off on a particular hardware and driver combination and the vendor of the workstation will stand behind the product as being fit for duty. That may be pure BS to you, but it isn't to everyone else.

Let's all remember that there is room for opions other than our own.
 
Oh yeah...THX, blah, blah, blah. Let me repeat. THERE IS NO BUG-FREE software and hardware. If you want to pay extra for a cert, then fine, it's your money. However, no vendor is capable of testing every software that can be loaded on the PC for compatibility. Therefore, if you want to buy a box and load ONLY the certified software, then it should probably work as advertised, unless there is hardware failure.

In the world of PC computing, a certification is a security blanket. Have seen many certified software (including MSFT) that caused massive software corruption! A similar line of argument has been used to justify the purchase of Intel vs AMD processors. Software XYZ is certified to run on Intel processors.
 
Oh yeah...THX, blah, blah, blah. Let me repeat. THERE IS NO BUG-FREE software and hardware. If you want to pay extra for a cert, then fine, it's your money. However, no vendor is capable of testing every software that can be loaded on the PC for compatibility. Therefore, if you want to buy a box and load ONLY the certified software, then it should probably work as advertised, unless there is hardware failure.
Click to expand...

Uh, that is exactly what most engineers at the level of my colleagues do. They take a certified workstation delivered exactly as it comes delivered by the vendor and use it that way. When design time and output are critical that's what you do.

I don't think of software of this class as a sometime adjunct to a personal computer. For students or for those who are just fiddling around with the software I would tend to agree that a certified system may not be needed.

What I don't understand, however, is your apparent derision for another person's point of view. I suspect that my colleagues and I are as well qualified as anyone you're ever likely to know to formulate our own opions -- and to have our opinions considered by others. Is this your usual way of dealing with other people's ideas?

Eh, never mind.
 
Because your point of view is based on BS pie-in-the-sky logic. Most engineers are no smarter than the average person. The same with physicians, lawyers, etc....
 
Because your point of view is based on BS pie-in-the-sky logic. Most engineers are no smarter than the average person. The same with physicians, lawyers, etc....
Click to expand...

Yep, that's what engineers are known for -- pie-in-the-sky. No common sense at all. Anyone who really believes that engineers aren't just a bit above average in intelligence (at least of a certain type of practical intelligence) must live in terror of technology, because a great deal of it can really bite you in the behind if it has been designed by average folks. Think about it next time you cross a bridge or fly somewhere -- or just drive, for that matter.

But the questions I directed at you didn't have much to do with intelligence. I wasn't trying to wage an e-penis war about smarts. I was referring to a) manners and b) the ability to acknowledge that not all people have had the same experiences (and, so, don't come to the same conclusions).

I apologize to the thread originator. No need for this sparring to continue.
 
The majority of innovations are created by the top 5% engineers. 65% of the engineers out there are paper-pushers with very little practical knowledge. My database? 13 years with a major aerospace company with over 250K employees.

I doubt that most engineers who use ProE understand about PC computing. Again, good hardware will support good software. Your post about requiring CERTIFIED hardware to support ProE is BS because I have NEVER had any issue with ProE on a properly configured system.

IT procure "certified" stuffs because they are too lazy or stupid to troubleshoot the problem. It's easier to send back an item with the "certified" label. The company ends up forking big bucks due to lazy or incompetent workers.
 
Originally posted by: furballi
The majority of innovations are created by the top 5% engineers. 65% of the engineers out there are paper-pushers with very little practical knowledge.
Click to expand...
Are you an engineer? Do you have an engineering degree? Where are you getting your statistics from?
 
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