P4HT Motherboard for Cheap Workstation

[Lufkin]

A friend asked me to do some research on building a CAD workstation for him. Unfortunately he only has a budget of ~$1,000 for the tower (he already has the monitors). He will mainly be doing 3dSM and Autodesk applications. I looked into some dual processor Tyan motherboards but I think those will be cost prohibitive given that I will be recommending a pricier workstation card.

I thought a hyperthreading Pentium system might be a more cost-effective option, but I'm not sure which is the best platform for a workstation. Should I recommend an 875P or a K8T800 solution? Also should the motherboard accept registered ecc memory?

Any thoughts/suggestions on an appropriate motherboard are appreciated. Or if you could point me in the direction of some workstation resources....Thanks.

 

[smahoney]

Well - the big problem is the $1,000 price tag for your workstation. You said he has monitors - as in plural. What type and does he already have his graphics covered.

I twin LCD's I would suggest looking at one of the Gainward Golden Sample cards with dual dvd outputs. P4HT is a good CPU for Autocad. Does he already have the Tower or is the case and PSU in the $1,000 price tag?

Otherwise:
P4 2.8 ~185
Abit AI7 ~105
Memory - dual PC3200 - how much memory?
a couple of hard drives - how much space does he need?
video card - see above - ~$200
Antec Tower - less than $100 with good PSU

You can do it for under a grand but it's going to be tight.

 

[Lufkin]

He wants to use his twin 21" trinitron CRTs for the time being (until he can afford some LCDs)...Most of the workstation cards I looked at come with two dvi outputs or one analog one dvi so he'll have to get some dvi-analog dongles. This is what I put together at newegg.com for $1030 + shipping. When he gets some more scratch, he can upgrade to serial ATA drives and ina year or two he can hopefully get an extreme edition P4 for a reasonable price.

ANTEC Solution Series Mid Tower Case with 300W Power Supply, Model "SLK2600AMB"
ASUS SiS 655TX Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU, Model "P4S800D-E Deluxe"
ATI FireGL 9500 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, Dual DVI, 8X AGP, Model "FireGL Z1"
Intel Pentium 4/ 2.6C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache, Hyper Threading Technology
Kingston 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 x2 for 1GB total RAM
Western Digital Special Edition 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model WD1200JB
Lite-On Black 52X32X52 CD-RW Drive, Model LTR-52327S
Lite-On Black 16X DVD-ROM Drive, Model XJ-HD166

Will it get the job done? It's the best I could do with $1000 that has some room to grow.

 

[smahoney]

I would suggest getting a 2.8C since they seem to be a more stable CPU and can be found for almost the same amount as the 2.6. Everything else looks good. make sure you check the latency settings on the memory.

 

[Lufkin]

Your right, there is a $2 price difference at newegg for the 2.8C. That is a definite upgrade. Will the 2.8E work in this motherboard? The memory has a CAS latency of 3, but that particular kingston memory is cheap and has been approved by ASUS for what it's worth...

Thanks for the advice.