Building a desktop for my sister

[Cru012]

Hi, I am completely new to this forum and also new to PC building. I happened to have an opportunity to build a pc for my sister, who is arguably less tech savy than me.

 

Budget (including currency): About US$1300 (Excluding GPU/window)

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

• AutoCAD with some (relatively minimal) 3D drawing and mostly 2D construction drawing, but my sister wants a desktop that will drive any software at ease and somewhat future proof. In temrs of longevity of the build, her expectation is more like 10 years but I am more thinking about around 6 years is more reasonable.
• She pretty much does not game at all

Other details: 

• I have tested on mine (i7-8700) that AutoCAD 2021 only managed to use 3/4 of my 12 threads at her normal workload and hence single core or the performance of the few threads will be important. So I am thinking about getting i7-10700K. The choice of the K series is due to the fact that they have a higher base and boost clock, which should be useful. 
• Would be great if someone can advise a quality motherboard and should I get a Z490 motherboard if I plan to squeeze the last juice of the K processor down the road? Or is it more cost efficient to save the bucks and throw away the build say 5 years later. She wouldn't need too many expansion slots. So matx is preferred
• Also tested on my desktop with GTX1060 6GB that it will be sufficient for her use. Is it a bad idea to send her mine and get myself an upgrade. Kidding aside, it just seems AutoCAD require minimal GPU these days and there seems to be no reason to get a Quadro for her considering the cost.
• Also tested on my desktop with Hynix 16GB 2666MHz and AutoCAD plus other applications running at the same time seems fine. Should I get a really high MHz (4000+) from a reputable brand, or are they just the same if I run them at 3000MHz?
• Here are some minor details which I am not sure if they are required:
  • At most 2 monitors will be used but most likely just use one for now
  • No great demand for usb - more than 3 would be sufficient
  • Prefer to have wifi
  • only need the desktop - no need for peripherals/monitors as they already exist. 

This may be a little long winded but I would like to thank for your help in advance !

[Cru012]

32 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Your basis for not getting an AMD Ryzen chip is that it did not use all of your threads? You know it doesn't use all of your threads to avoid encroaching on other processes, right? Just buy a 3700x and B450 Tomahawk MAX or if you can wait two months for new cpus to release for better price / perf

Thanks for your reply. Yes, that's my assumption and at least that is what was observed on my desktop, but I can't really tell it is working like that to avoid encroaching or just that AutoCAD is not as well-optimised (due to the dependency structure of the computation involved, which many have cited). 

[Cru012]

5 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Honestly you should do some research on that I'm not sure if there are any Auto-CAD benchmarks but this Puget article discusses it:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Best-Workstation-PC-for-AutoCAD-Summer-2020-1826/

It basically says single core matters more but honestly your price / perf ratio isn't great, because there is a good chance Ryzen 4000 series (Zen 3) will beat it so honestly if you can wait two months for the new CPUs that would probably be your best bet. Ignore the bit about the Quadro, you can run Auto-CAD on basically any GPU the Quadros simply exist for a ton more VRAM and that's about it from the performance point of view and in your workload I don't imagine you will need more than 8gb of VRAM. The rest of the Quadro branding is really all about driver and validation and stuff which isn't applicable here.

 

Should have done a little more research on it before I jumped to the conclusion of encroaching, because a lot of the Engineering type programs are pretty different so it's really not a one size fits all solution but again if wait two months and see what AMD does with Ryzen 400 series.

Thanks - I actually did not aware it is this close to AMD's launch of the new cpu until you mentioned it. I think now I have a dilemma in choosing between getting intel vs wait two months to see if Ryzen can beat Intel. This aside, there is actually a benchmark test for AutoCAD (https://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test), but it is not as widely used as other benchmarks, so a comparison of the 10th gen cpu isn't available yet, but still thanks very much for your advice!