Workstation PC Configuration for CAD/REVIT/RHINO/VRAY/ADOBE SUITE

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
S

Sean Lee

Honorable
Sep 27, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hello all.

I am looking to start building a home workstation pc. I'm a heavy AutoCAD, Revit, Rhinoceros 5, V-ray Rendering user which my current laptop(2012 Samsung series 7 Chronos 17.3" - CPU i7-3615QM @ 2.3Ghz, GPU - GT650M, SSD/HDD - Samsung 128GB(OS) + 1TB Data, RAM - 8GB (2x4) DDR3) can only do so much. I go BANANAS with these software.

I have a limited budget per month so that I'm planning to build piece by piece but I'm a total noob at DIY pc and have no idea where to even start from. I've read so many forums regarding building a workstation, benchmark comparisons but they only gave me a big headache.

I have a basic understanding of differences between Gaming video cards vs Pro Cards and importance of clock speed for CAD and so on. I also realized that Mid to High-end Quadro cards are ridiculously expensive compared to gaming cards. Here are the list of my questions:

1. 3 to 4way SLI(GTX 680, 690, Titan) VS. High-end single Quadro?

2. Dual Xeon with lower clocks@ 3Ghz range, higher cache(20mb) VS. i7 quad or hex with higher clock @ 4Ghz+ OCd with slightly lower cache(15mb)?

3. 10k rpm HDD raid configuration VS. SSD (OS) + HDD Data?

4. ECC unbuffered ram necessary?


My budget is maximum $500/month that I'm willing to spend to build this pc for as long as 6 months to max. a year. That gives me total of $3000 - $6000 budget. So maybe if any DIY PC/CAD/Rhino Modelling Render pros out there willing to help me out with choosing the right pieces together, I'd greatly appreciate it.
 
Solution
Z
As far as the cards go I am not an expert but for a lot of these professional apps SLI won't make a difference it will only really use one card, but I would double check with your apps, maybe even call their support and see if they have an experience with that. Will you be working with scenes over 10 millions polygons? if not I would consider a high end gaming card, probably the 690 or titan, or go the route i did with the 780. it's 90% of the power of the titan for 65% of the cost. that would help with the budget.

For the CPU don't even consider any thing that isn't a Xeon or Opteron. You want a lot of cores so you will need/ want dual processors. It's all about speeding up those render times and cores is the first thing that...
Sort by date Sort by votes
Z

Z-Licious

Honorable
May 14, 2013
31
0
10,540
As far as the cards go I am not an expert but for a lot of these professional apps SLI won't make a difference it will only really use one card, but I would double check with your apps, maybe even call their support and see if they have an experience with that. Will you be working with scenes over 10 millions polygons? if not I would consider a high end gaming card, probably the 690 or titan, or go the route i did with the 780. it's 90% of the power of the titan for 65% of the cost. that would help with the budget.

For the CPU don't even consider any thing that isn't a Xeon or Opteron. You want a lot of cores so you will need/ want dual processors. It's all about speeding up those render times and cores is the first thing that will do that.

For the storage, a raid will always be better for file backup but you will run up against cost again. you might wanna start off with SDD and HDD then add an external raid later like a G-RAID. that ssd boot drive will really help with file handling and general OS speed a lot.

For ram this is the next thing that can really speed up your renders and the more cores you have the more RAM you should have. think about how much RAM each core will have when you are pushing your system too 100%. 16 cores and 16GB of RAM means only 1gb per core, thats not great. I would aim for at least 2x the amount of cores you have but 3x would be preferable. which gets us to ECC. ECC allows you to go beyond 128 gb in your system and that is one reason you would want to go that route, future proofing. It sounds like a lot, but think about what was a lot 3 years ago. The other is accuracy and if you are in technical 3D modeling and rendering, this might be a must for you. Now don't think non ECC is going to be terrible, I mean your laptop has more than likely been using Non ECC ram and you have been doing ok with that.

So I was in a similar spot and I spent about $5,100.00 here is a link to my machine if you wanna see the specs.

http://pcpartpicker.com/b/E09

I have since upgraded to 96gb of RAM and I don't regret it at all, made a good deal of difference.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
S

Sean Lee

Honorable
Sep 27, 2013
3
0
10,510
Z-Licious, I really appreciate your insight and your awesome build example. I could not agree more. I have no idea if I work more than 10 million polygons, however I work with a scene that contains a 3d mesh model of entire city(major cities like New York, Chicago, etc), also at a scale of a building with at least 40 stories high. So I'm guessing it's probably close to a couple millions polygons. In that case, I was thinking adding a Quadro 4000k would much improve the 3d modeling/rendering in addition to the your suggestion of GTX 780?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom