Architecture student

[sarahjoey78]

Hello,
My name is Sarah, I'm an architecture student about to head into grad school. I'm looking at building a desktop but not really sure what to look for. I need to run adobe CS5 and autocad products. If you could please help me out in what to look for that would be great!

 

[sosofm]

Its better if you told us your budget for this PC.
Processor i7 2600k , Z68 motherboard , video card Nvidia 560Ti minimum,

 

[samuelspark]

CPU's with a lot of cores are going to be needed. Look at the FX-8120 or i7. Also, ivy bridge is supposed to come out spring next year and I would wait until then for the new cpus.

 

[truegenius]

according to your purpose

look for more cores in cpu
cpu intel i7-2600 or i7-2700

a motherboard with z68 chipset

go with nvidea's graphics cards which have cuda core technology
graphics card nvidea gtx 560ti (448 cuda core)

consider at least 8 gb of ram

use a 7200rpm hard disk drive or a solid state drive or if you can afford then use pci-e ssd

a good quality 600w psu/smps

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Before you all go recommending the most expensive processor you can find, how about we get a budget first. The performance of your computer is going to be directly proportional to how much money you can put into it...

With that being said, how much are you looking to spend on your new system?

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

+1 for truegenius

This is a very good starting build. Based on your budget will shape where you form this point. Solid State Drives (SSD) really add a benefits for boot times and access times for any application loaded on to it. If your budget is more constained you can with a Z68 board you can use the Intel SRT (Smart Response Technology) to use small SSD (<64GB) as a caching drive to give you better performance that you would get from a normal hard drive.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[swifty_morgan]

budget first............ and if it's a work machine vs gamer get a work station card.

here's another recent thread...... hopefully it'll pick up

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=31&post=329720&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

 

[sarahjoey78]

Thank you for all the suggestions! My budget is about $1000. Ill only really need it to last me the two years through grad school, then hopefully the firm I work for will provide me with a computer.

 

[sarahjoey78]

Best answer selected by sarahjoey78.