building a workstation pc for a friend

It looks like a fine workstation, though you need to make sure you use 2x8gb or shell out for 2x16 if you're doing iGPU based CAD.

And that PSU is not good, you can get a 350W (plenty for that system even with a K1200 if he adds it later) Seasonic power supply instead. It's cheaper now and in the long run. If not, Seasonic 550G and XFX TS Gold 550 and EVGA G2 550 are ~$60-80. EVGA's one comes with a decade of warranty, which is always a plus.

he doesn't need one now, though eventually he'll see it's beneficial to have one for high density lines and higher quality. He'll need a Quadro or FirePro card though, so that's an upgrade for another day, since CPU is more important usually.

1) It doesn't match up in price, being ~$100 more expensive. For that extra price you can get a 6700 (non-K) that's significantly faster.
2) Rendering programs actually don't benefit much from hyperthreading, since they tend to be small, dense kernels that don't leave much CPU time for additional threads. Throw in faster memory (like DDR4) and you'll see nearly no gains for most high end software.
3) The 360 will have worse performance in many 3D software, since it's opengl implementation is heavier and the drivers are geared towards gaming DX. The only software that might see tiny improvements is 3D Max, and then only in DX mode.

nooby84,

For a system that has enhanced 3D modeling and rendering, a Xeon E5 LGA2011 is very useful, espcially as they can use fast 6, 8, and 10-core CPUs, have more PCIe lanes and support more memory. I can't conceive od any system for 3D CAD without both a strong single-threaded CPU and caapable GPU. I use a 4GHz 6-core Xeon and 4GB Quadro and a Sketchup model of 40MB with a lot of textures seems to run slowly on certain operations. Rendering today can be either or both CPU and GPU using as many processing cores/threads as possible- CPU and/or CUDA.

For these reasons, an alternative suggestion is to consider a used workstation. For example: Lenovo ThinkStation S30 3.30GHz Hex Core E5-1660 8GB RAM 500GB HD Win7 Pro > sold for $499 or offer. This includes an E5-1660 which is 6-core @ 3.3 / 3.9GHz - originally cost $1,100- very stong single-threaded performance plus 6-cores / 12 threads. Add to this a used Quadro K620 (2GB) - about $100-120, +8GB RAM (about $60. and Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD about $88- that's about $750 and that would be a strong performing, reliable, and quiet system for this use. Also, you don't have to buy a pile of parts and put it all together; on some level it could used out of the box and upgraded by plugging in the new parts as they arrive.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Modeling:

1. HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) > 32GB DDR3 1866 ECC RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)>
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555]
[Passmark V9.0 Beta Rating = 5019.1 > CPU= 14206 / 2D= 779 / 3D= 5032 / Mem= 2707 / Disk= 4760] 3.31.16
[Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15

Rendering:

2. Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6-core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z313 > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating = 3844 / CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D= 3550 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)