Hi again, Have a slightly bigger build question this time...in a way. I have been asked to help put together a PC for a mate at uni. The only reason I asked is that he wanted it to be small - so micro ATX I guess. He hasn't given a budget as such but would put one at £600. Does anyone have any good reviews for micro atx parts - that would come together for that budget? To put a bit of background into it - he is doing a design course. Main programs will be Solidworks, photoshop and 3ds max. He won't be gaming in anyway so will that mean that I'm going for a higher budget CPU and more RAM or will it be best to beef up the graphics card to? Guess rendering will be fairly gpu extensive... If that's the case (pun intended) then - would there be any heat issues around a smaller case? Could just do with some general help with it and then grind down to some parts prices etc Cheers chaps
rendering isn't GPU related with in the CAD environment at all, its all CPU horsepower. (note that there are a few GPU based rendering engines but mainly all are 3rd party plug-in's) A solid CPU, high clock speed as multi-threading is still in it infancy most software packages are still 2 core limited. Quadro GPU's accelerate the softwares view ports but CAD cards really aren't needed. My CAD machine at work is the old generation i7 950 with an entry level Quadro just because it needed a GPU. I run solidworks all day and tbh i can't tell the difference between using my work machine compared to my home CAD box based on a Q6600. tempted at that price point to say AMD 6 core machine, soon to build a render farm around that plateform but waiting until new year sales
Ok then, never really looked into amd much before - ive mainly focused on tge intel sides of things. What would be a good amd combination to fit thr price bracket? Btw that price is internal parts only - dont need any screens or software etc. Started looking last night quickly - would an i7 be overkill if nothing came out if amd? Also meant to ask - memory wise - i think i read in cpc that its pointless going over speeds of 1600 if your not overclocking? is that right...
you should ask him if he does any ray traced rendering in Max, hyperthreading can be really handy as the renderer utilises every core, aside from that GPU rendering is in its infancy really and not worth worrying about. You can't go far wrong with a 2500k atm, or perhaps 2600 if he's doing a lot of multi-threaded stuff
I have the Asus Gene-Z (Z68) and the bit-tech/CPC review says its the fastest m-ATX board out at stock. got mine for 140 on scan: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-20-(x16)-ddr3-1866-2200-sata-6gb-s-raid-matx
Why mATX, because case size isn't that much of a difference to be honest, i could understand ITX, but mATX doesn't really offer much of a step down in size. An Antec 300 case is pretty decent of its size and cooling, he'll be sat next to this machine for many hours and to hear fans buzzing it will only make him scream after a while. I went the total OCD over making my home workstation silent when i was at uni to the point the only thing i could hear was the inverter in the screen. mATX really doesn't offer much to anyone really and by the time you've set up the cooling the case is virtually ATX sized anyway.
2500k. End of story. It also a very cool running chip, particularly because it's so powerful you won't even need to overclock so with a good cooler silence will be easy.
+1 for the 2500k. Couple of mATX cases for you to have a look at; http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/06/22/fractal-design-arc-mini-review/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/06/17/nzxt-vulcan-review/1 I think bit-tech reviewed the asus p8p67m mATX mobo which would be perfect. For gfx I would recommend looking for a passively cooled card to keep the noise down.
Thanks for the replies guys! Looks to be some good ideas coming up. Think I have settled on the Intel Core i7 2600k - give some nice power behind the machine and I can fit it into the budget. Then by the looks of things with the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z. Looks like that going to hit right on the budget so should be fine. Would there be any issues using the integrated graphics on the 2600k for design? I'm having to weigh up whether there's going to be any marked performance difference between a low end graphics card and the integrated. Think I put about £50 aside for a graphics card and anymore is going to put everything over the budget so yeah any ideas there? Would either need to shave some off the processor so probably got for a 2500k (i5) or go integrated
Cool that should work! Seeing as though I had the thread open I started looking at mini-itx - just to see what was around. Has anyone heard any good reviews around mini-itx caes and mobos? Looked at the Gigabyte GA-H67N which didn't seem to bad - http://bit.ly/qzI77F and can be used with the original 1155 processor I was looking at - http://bit.ly/r0Bn39 Haven't seen any great cases though...
