Hey guys a the title suggests, I need to grab ideas for a PC for a mate.... He wants it purely for CAD, internet browsing and some 3D photo work... Adobe photoshop.. The budget is around the 500 quid mark... not to include monitor or XP and other software... He will be using XP home... Don't really know what ideas to give him, and also the budget is fairly constrictive... He wants a core 2 tho.... Cheers guys Scott B
This is what I quickly put together for him.... Asus P5N-E SLI NF650i SLi, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £64.59 £75.89 Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, Socket 775, 1.86 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £96.98 £113.95 1Gb Corsair XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £42.54 £49.98 512MB Palit 7900GS PCI-E (x16), Mem 1320MHz, GPU 450MHz, 20Pipes, 2xDual Link DVI-I/S-Video SLi £99.99 £117.49 (x2) 160 Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) OA32728 Deskstar T7K250, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ £31.64 £74.35 NEC AD-5170 18X DVD Writer SATA BLACK OEM £17.79 £20.90 Asus TA-861 Black Midi Tower Case w/o PSU £23.95 £28.14 480W Tagan TG480-U01 Quiet ATX2.0 SLi 12v EPS/SATA/XEON 3 Years Warranty ATX/BTX £48.99 £57.56 Price - 554.88 (458.56 ex VAT) He has a business so tax vat whatever may or may not apply
www.dell.com look at small business servers, no operating system. (They are desktop "servers") You can get plenty of machines with no OS for that price range - even dual core xeon. I stopped building computers for friends a looooonnnng time ago because they always call with every little problem. (Note - there a few very very close friends that I will still do custom in-home computer work for for just the cost of a few beers, but not many. And, for that matter, counting my parents, I have converted all but one of these friends to Mac.)
Yeah well I am nice! Lol, only joking, personally don't like Dell, but he has thought about that option.... Any more ideas?
www.hp.com And the PC you spec'd out... OVERKILL... Core2Duo? 7900GS? It's a workstation, not a gaming pc... What you need for Acad:
Keep the C2D, they're nearly the same price as a decent P4, and it's roughly a bajillion times faster. Ditch the 7900GS for a 7600GS - they're plenty fast enough imho.
if he's serious about CAD work he might want to get some kind of matrox kind, either now or in the future - they are known for great picture quality and monster load of multi display options
ok my machine below runs AutoCad 07, 3Ds Max 8 and 9, and solidworks. AutoCAD really is crap for 3D work, if 3D work is required use either solidworks or proEngineer. The most important thing is to have a biggest screen you can afford, i have a 17'' TFT and i want a 22'' or at least a res above 1280x1024 now as the toolbars really take up room and the viewable work space is needed. Any DX9 graphics card will do, just 3D rendering is slightly faster the better the graphics card.
I'm a SolidWorks guy, myself. However, I'll reiterate what's been said a few times already. I'm using a 7600gs and I can't imagine you'd need anything more for the kind of work you're talking about. However, I'll agree on the gig or two of RAM and a Core2, if only because those things aren't all that expensive any more and will certainly make the system nice to work with. Even with those, though - there's no reason to go remarkably high-end. An E6300 is plenty, and budget RAM that has decent reviews on your retailer's site isn't going to cause any problems.
keep an eye on Euro PC for a precision 390 workstation, there aren't any cheap ones atm [just 2 x X6800 extreme machines] 2 weeks ago there was an e6300/1 gig ram/fx540 with xp pro for 350 plus vat, and included the full 3 year dell warranty. perfectly capable and good machine regardless of your preconceptions, we personally buy 90% of our buisness requirement from there these days as they are only 20 mins drive from our factory and we can generally get them next day, cheaper and much quicker than direct from Dell.
http://www.europc.co.uk/pages/ProductPage.aspx?PID=82356 Grade Dell Refurbished Model Precision 390 Colour Black on silver Cabinet / Case Tower Operating System MS Win XP Pro Number Of Processors 1 Processor / Type Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Processor / Clock Speed 1.86 GHz RAM / Installed Size 1 GB RAM / Technology DDR II SDRAM Memory Clock Speed 533 MHz Storage Hard Drive / Capacity 160 GB Storage Hard Drive / Interface Type SATA Optical Storage / Type CD-ROM Video Memory / Installed Size 128 MB Graphics Nvidia Quadro NVS285 Video Output / Interface Type N/A Audio On board Video Output / Max Resolution (external) N/A Networking / Data Link Protocol Ethernet Modem / Type None Networking / Type Adapter On board USB 7 DIM used 2 DIM free 2 PCI free 3 PCI express 1 PCIe Graphics 1 PCIe Graphics used Serial Port 1 Storage Floppy Drive / Type None Keyboard UK Card Reader None
