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Computer for architecture student

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I'm looking into building a desktop to run all my autocad products and adobe creative suite. I've talked to a few people and think I have it narrowed down to an intel core i7 2600 processor, but i'm not sure what other components I need to buy with it. I only want to spend around $1,000, so I'm looking for the best performance for that amount. Any input help. Thanks!

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sarahjoey78 said:
I'm looking into building a desktop to run all my autocad products and adobe creative suite. I've talked to a few people and think I have it narrowed down to an intel core i7 2600 processor, but i'm not sure what other components I need to buy with it. I only want to spend around $1,000, so I'm looking for the best performance for that amount. Any input help. Thanks!



Hi,

I use the exact same CPU in both my CAD machines at work, they are perfectively suited to the job. I do have a question before I try ot advise.

Will the machine be used for gaming as well as 2D design and Adobe Suite? If not, I would advise going for either NVidia Quadro or ATI FirePro for the graphics cards, SLi is up to you. I use NVidia Qaudro 600's in my machines as they are great for 2D/3D work and don't cost a bomb. RAM should be ECC ram but does not need to be, I'd go for atleast DDR3 1066MHz but 1333Mhz is better. Not sure how much you would need, again depends on the work you do but safe side would be 6GB-8GB. I went with 10K SCSi drives in my config in RAID1 and RAID0 with sperate controller but standard 7.2K SATA drive will be fine.

It's hard to make a more accurate decision without more information on the overall use of the machine and what software you plan to run on it but hope the above points you in the right direction.

There will not be any gaming on this computer mainly 3D design and rendering. The main programs I use are Revit and Rhino. So I just need something that will render fast. That's basically my only concern. I have a laptop and an external hard drive now so memory isn't a big concern.

sarahjoey78 said:
There will not be any gaming on this computer mainly 3D design and rendering. The main programs I use are Revit and Rhino. So I just need something that will render fast. That's basically my only concern. I have a laptop and an external hard drive now so memory isn't a big concern.

the 2600k would be the better option, as you can overclock it to make rendering substantially faster. I am assuming you are buying a prebuilt system, but a gaming system would give you the best performance as they usually are pre overclocked and have good gpu's for rendering. Imo quadro would be out of your budget.
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amuffin said:
the 2600k would be the better option, as you can overclock it to make rendering substantially faster. I am assuming you are buying a prebuilt system, but a gaming system would give you the best performance as they usually are pre overclocked and have good gpu's for rendering. Imo quadro would be out of your budget.


I was planning on having a friend build the computer for me..I thought that would be better for the budget. Is there a gaming computer with the 2600k that's around $1000?

sarahjoey78 said:
I was planning on having a friend build the computer for me..I thought that would be better for the budget. Is there a gaming computer with the 2600k that's around $1000?

Does your software support gpu accelleration? Also will you be willing to go a bit over $1000? So you can get an i7-3930k which has 6 cores and 12 threads and outperforms the i7-2600k in 3d rendering. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X79_Confi...

amuffin said:
Does your software support gpu accelleration? Also will you be willing to go a bit over $1000? So you can get an i7-3930k which has 6 cores and 12 threads and outperforms the i7-2600k in 3d rendering. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X79_Confi...


I guess I'm not really sure what gpu acceleration is, I can look into it though. What does that mean? Basically if my programs don't support it then that computer would be to powerful?

sarahjoey78 said:
I guess I'm not really sure what gpu acceleration is, I can look into it though. What does that mean? Basically if my programs don't support it then that computer would be to powerful?

What programs do you use?

As I've said on several other threads... I recommend using an NVidia graphics card because their OpenGL drivers are faster and more stable.

ECC RAM? I've *never* seen a difference. In theory, ECC RAM should prevent errors caused by things like random cosmic rays flipping a bit in memory... but there is no quantifiable way that THG can even test this. All you are doing by buying ECC RAM is spending extra for RAM that is often slower.
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