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Autodesk Inventor and Solidwork Hardware Recommendation

Hi, I am currently running a basic, and oddly balanced (i'll explain later) system that I use for school and gaming. I have worked with Inventor and Solidworks on it with little to no issue in the past but recently I started using flow simulations and have had some problems. The system becomes incredibly unresponsive, everything is stutters, the programs crash from time to time, and it basically prevents me from doing work. My specs are listed below and in depth on my profile and I basically am looking for recommendations for upgrades. I am a student on a tight budget - $400 CAD. 

 

Specs: AMD FX-8350 (got free from family with a HP AM3+ mobo), 8gb DDR3 ram, Radeon R7 360 gpu, Corsair CX600m psu, Corsair H60 AIO cooler, 2 Bitfenix spectre pro fans, 2 arctic cooling rev 1.2 rans, nzxt fan controller, all inside a bitfenix prodigy m case. 

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Well I can't speak about Solidworks but got some experience with Inventor. That being said, Inventor is an absolute and utter core hungry whore that will eat up your system CPU / GPU and RAM wise depending on the addins you are running and how well they are made. We got some high end dual CPU Xeon Workstations (quadros / 128GB +Ram / more cores than I can count) here that run Inventor and sometimes still get flattened by some shitty made addins, so chances are your flow simulations are leaking (hrhr, fun intended) and eat up your RAM.

 

So when you run it, first evaluate what needs to be upgraded.

Is your CPU running at 100% (sounds so from what you described)? 

is your RAM full?

Is your GPU at max load?

Check with Windows Ressource Monitor to see over a longer period what gets used how. (For the GPU use something more suitable for the job)

 

When it comes to upgrading that stuff, I don't have a clue, I barely get around the newer Intel world, but definitely not around the older AMD world :-) but I'm sure others will 

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6 minutes ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

Well I can't speak about Solidworks but got some experience with Inventor. That being said, Inventor is an absolute and utter core hungry whore that will eat up your system CPU / GPU and RAM wise depending on the addins you are running and how well they are made. We got some high end dual CPU Xeon Workstations (quadros / 128GB +Ram / more cores than I can count) here that run Inventor and sometimes still get flattened by some shitty made addins, so chances are your flow simulations are leaking (hrhr, fun intended) and eat up your RAM.

 

So when you run it, first evaluate what needs to be upgraded.

Is your CPU running at 100% (sounds so from what you described)? 

is your RAM full?

Is your GPU at max load?

Check with Windows Ressource Monitor to see over a longer period what gets used how. (For the GPU use something more suitable for the job)

 

When it comes to upgrading that stuff, I don't have a clue, I barely get around the newer Intel world, but definitely not around the older AMD world :-) but I'm sure others will 

Thanks so much for your input. I noticed that my cpu wasn't being used fully on all cores. 2 of the 8 were bouncing around the 90-100 percent utilization while the remaining stayed near 60ish. The ram was over 80 percent utilized and the gpu core was at 60 percent load... I'm not too sure about that last one. Ram is one of the things I am definitely considering but gpu wise... I can only really afford the new amd budget gaming gpus (Rx470). I'll try monitoring for longer amounts of times to see which resource get's eaten up first. 

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I have no experience with inventor but i use Solidworks a lot. Solidworks is a peculiar program, in a sense that it is very heavy on single core performance, right untill you start doing rendering. so my advice would be to indeed up the CPU to something with less cores but higher per-core performance. 

 

The problems which you noted, stuttering and stuff, do kinda point to a lack of CPU power.

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1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

I have no experiemce with inventor but i use Solidworks a lot. Solidworks is a peculiar program, in a semse that it is very heavy on single core performance, right untill you start doing rendering. so my advice would be to indeed up the CPU to something with less cores but higher per-core performance. 

 

The problems which you noted, stuttering and stuff, do kinda point to a lack of CPU power.

That's quite interesting, I know that AMD is quite rubbish in terms of single core performance (actually multicore as well when comparing to competitive intel offerings) but I don't think a processor, mobo and os purchase is possible in my budget. Definitely will keep it in mind. 

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21 minutes ago, tahmidkhan123 said:

That's quite interesting, I know that AMD is quite rubbish in terms of single core performance (actually multicore as well when comparing to competitive intel offerings) but I don't think a processor, mobo and os purchase is possible in my budget. Definitely will keep it in mind. 

If you are going to make the switch, do count in the re-sale value of your current hardware! even if it just gets you some cash, it might just be enough. :P

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22 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

If you are going to make the switch, do count in the re-sale value of your current hardware! even if it just gets you some cash, it might just be enough. :P

that's true, didn't actually consider that but I'm guessing the turnout will be minimal at best. New fx 8350 processors are going for 200 CAD on newegg without discounts or promos, mobos are even less than that... I've seen a few go below the 100 dollar mark 

 

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