architect first desktop build

Better to go with a dedicated card for this build than the one in the build above. Quadro or Firepro cards are the ones usually recommended for rendering and CAD tasks. Theses cards are a bit more expensive for good ones though. The software manufacturers such as Autodesk have lists of approved cards on their websites.

sophiearch,

I strongly recommend a Xeon > ECC > Quadro system for your use. Workstation components are oriented towards image quality- whereas gaming / consumer are configured for image speed, and is capable of 10-bit color and multiple lighting sources in rendering. A Quadro renders each image fully, has error-correcting RAM, and the drivers make it capable of much higher anti-aliasing. Renderings will be free of artifacts, the shadows and color gradients will be subtle and gradual instead of rainbow banding and so on. This is not to denigrate gaming components, but only to say that the hardware intended for content creation is configured for a different set of priorities.

A good system for your uses need not be terribly dear. Here is a system that I was thinking about for my uses > AutoCad, Revit, Solidworks, Sketchup, Adobe CS MC, Corel Technical Designer, WP Office, MS Office, (architecture, rendering, industrial design, graphic design) and that would probably work very well in your applications. The Xeon E5-1650 was chosen as it is has 6-cores / 12 thread and rendering is one of the rare tasks that can use all the available cores / threads>

BambiBoom PixelDozer Cadaedigrapharific ExtremeSignature V ®©™®™©™

This system is intended as a workstation solution with high performance / high precision, very high stability / reliability at reasonable cost, and suitable for 2D and 3D CAD, graphic design, rendering, mathematics, some simulation, animation, and video editing.

1. Xeon E5-1650 6-core 3.2 /3.8GHz, 12MB cache, LGA 2011 £519.19 (Passmark CPU score= 11462, rank = No. 12)

2. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) £24.80

3. AsRock X79 Extreme3 Motherboard (Socket 2011, 3x PCI Express 3.0, DDR3, ATX, £153.27

4. 16GB (2X 8GB) 8GB Crucial DDR3 PC3-12800 • CL=11 • Unbuffered • ECC • DDR3-1600 • 1.35V • 1024Meg x 72 • • Part #: CT102472BD160B £131. (£65.25 ea)

5. nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB Graphics Card USED Ebay US $350-400 > £235-270

OR>

5A. PNY nVidia Quadro 600 1GB Graphics Card £144.20

6. Samsung 840 Series Pro 128GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive £106.07 (operating system, applications)

7. Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive £84.26 (Files, Backup, System Image)

8. Seasonic 750W M12II Bronze Series Modular Power Supply (Ample +12V Outputs, Smart and Silent Fan Control, Multi-GPU £102.99

9. Lian Li PC-6B Midi Tower Chassis - Black £85.07

10. Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, SP1, 64-bit, OEM, DVD, ENG £49.00

11. Asus DRW-24B5ST 24x Internal SATA DVD Drive £18.94

TOTAL = £1436.53 with Quadro K600.
TOTAL = about £1525. with used Quadro 4000 @ £250

This would be excellent for 2D CAD, 3D CAD modeling and excellent rendering system, and would be significantly improved in 3D modeling with the Quadro 4000. For budgetary reasons, this would need to be a used one. They were new £700 but are often sold on US ebay for about £250 as used. If you are uncomfortable with a used card, the Quadro K600 is very good and from the recently released series, but the the Quadro 4000 is still quite a bit stronger for 3D modeling and a lot of them were sold, making them good value used. This is important enough, that I would say that the SSD could be deleted from the list and that amount (£106.07) applied towards the graphics card.

I believe this would be a highly competent system for professional use for up to four or five years.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Ex> Architectural Association School of Architecture, London

[Dell Precision T5400 > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @ 3.16GHz, 16 GB ECC , Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB), WD RE4 / Segt Barcd 500GB > Windows 7 Ult >]