PC for 3D Architectural Modelling & Rendering

[ymopuri]

Hi All, 

This is my first post in the forum & possibly a first PC build. 

I have to decided to build a PC for my friend who's an Architect. Her laptop is dying and slowing down her workflow. This PC is not going to be used for gaming/media consumption. 
She mostly does 3D modelling in AutoCAD, SketchUP. And for rendering V-Ray, Lumion are used. and Photoshop sometimes.

Can you guys suggest a good CPU, Compatible Motherboard & Graphics for this use case scenario ?

I prefer Intel CPU. But considering the budget I really don't mind having an AMD CPU if it offers better performance. 

 

Form Factor: Mini ATX\ ATX

Budget: $500 - $600 (USD; including a single monitor cost)
 

Hoping I can figure this out soon enough, 

 

Cheers,

Yashwanth.

 

[DaRedBoi]

Does she care about aesthetics? eg side panel window

[DaRedBoi]

17 minutes ago, yMopuri said:

Hi All, 

This is my first post in the forum & possibly a first PC build. 

I have to decided to build a PC for my friend who's an Architect. Her laptop is dying and slowing down her workflow. This PC is not going to be used for gaming/media consumption. 
She mostly does 3D modelling in AutoCAD, SketchUP. And for rendering V-Ray, Lumion are used. and Photoshop sometimes.

Can you guys suggest a good CPU, Compatible Motherboard & Graphics for this use case scenario ?

I prefer Intel CPU. But considering the budget I really don't mind having an AMD CPU if it offers better performance. 

 

Form Factor: Mini ATX\ ATX

Budget: $500 - $600 (USD; including a single monitor cost)
 

Hoping I can figure this out soon enough, 

 

Cheers,

Yashwanth.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FYqMPs

Alright,

 

Considering this budget we are going to have to cut back on a couple things. If you raised the budget by 100-200 dollars I could fit a 6 core- 12 thread chip and an ssd but this is life. I hope this is good enough for her.

[SilkyDistress]

19 minutes ago, yMopuri said:

-snip-

From what I know your friend is gonna benefit from Quadro GPU and since DDR4 is mainstream now and its prices skyrocketed idk except this and also that Quadro 4000 should do well. Monitor has IPS panel. : 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($159.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($60.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($95.88 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Seagate - FireCuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive  ($75.88 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: PNY - Quadro 4000 2GB Video Card  ($182.00) 
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G Mini (Black) MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($54.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($21.98 @ Newegg) 
Monitor: LG - 23MP57HQ-P 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $751.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-01-02 20:52 EST-0500

[MosltyDeaf]

I'm a mechanical engineer that uses SolidWorks all day at work building rather large assemblies and drawings. I cannot stress to you how important it is to have fast storage and vast amounts of RAM if this friend of yours is going to be working with large scale assemblies. My recently upgraded machine at work uses NVME solid state storage and runs 32GB of DDR4 RAM with an i7 7700K. (Note: Higher core count only helps you if you're going to be doing a lot of rendering, which my firm does not.) I don't recall which graphics card we use, just know it is a Quadro. 

[brob]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i3-8100 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($121.73 @ Newegg Marketplace) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte - Z370 HD3 (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($118.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($101.69 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Crucial - MX300 525GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($129.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: PNY - Quadro P600 2GB Video Card  ($161.71 @ B&H) 
Case: Antec - VSK4000E U3 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($35.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($41.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $712.08
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-01-02 22:20 EST-0500

[ymopuri]

3 hours ago, DaRedBoi said:

Does she care about aesthetics? eg side panel window

Considering the budget, not a requirement.

2 hours ago, DaRedBoi said:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FYqMPs

Alright,

 

Considering this budget we are going to have to cut back on a couple things. If you raised the budget by 100-200 dollars I could fit a 6 core- 12 thread chip and an ssd but this is life. I hope this is good enough for her.

Thanks for the list. I plan to incrementally upgrade the PC with an SSD. Maybe a 500GB HDD alongside a 120GB SSD should keep the cost low, without having hiccups while working on it ?

[ymopuri]

@brob @SilkyDistress

Thanks for the list. I have always assumed that Quadro GPUs were highly expensive. I had a GTX 1050/1060 in mind earlier. Does Quadro offer better performance over the 4GB 1050 card ? 

 

- yM

[johnukguy]

Avoid any Intel CPU's. They have a bug that is about to be fixed but the fix will mean that they can lose up to %30 (worst case scenario) of their performance. The only valid path at the moment is Ryzen and new Ryzen CPu's are being revealed in about a week from now.

[brob]

10 hours ago, yMopuri said:

@brob @SilkyDistress

Thanks for the list. I have always assumed that Quadro GPUs were highly expensive. I had a GTX 1050/1060 in mind earlier. Does Quadro offer better performance over the 4GB 1050 card ? 

 

- yM

Generally Quadro cards are less powerful in terms of raw compute power. But they may perform better doing "workstation" type work.

 

6 hours ago, johnukguy said:

Avoid any Intel CPU's. They have a bug that is about to be fixed but the fix will mean that they can lose up to %30 (worst case scenario) of their performance. The only valid path at the moment is Ryzen and new Ryzen CPu's are being revealed in about a week from now.

Providing links would help. Presumably you are referring to https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245606/security/intel-x86-cpu-kernel-bug-faq-how-it-affects-pc-mac.html. 

 

Since the patch may well affect Ryzen cpu, as noted in the link, the suggestion that Ryzen is the only "valid path" is a bit premature. Besides, Ryzen cpu IPC is sufficiently lower than Intel Coffee Lake, that the "fix" may simply lower Intel's advantage in lightly threaded apps. At this point we simply have to wait and see.

 

 

[johnukguy]

4 minutes ago, brob said:

Since the patch may well affect Ryzen cpu, as noted in the link, the suggestion that Ryzen is the only "valid path" is a bit premature. Besides, Ryzen cpu IPC is sufficiently lower than Intel Coffee Lake, that the "fix" may simply lower Intel's advantage in lightly threaded apps. At this point we simply have to wait and see.

 

 

Amd have an update that will prevent the patch being applied to any AMD CPU's. Did you not know that?

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/27/2
 

[brob]

2 minutes ago, johnukguy said:

Amd have an update that will prevent the patch being applied to any AMD CPU's. Did you not know that?

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/27/2
 

 

The link is for Linux distros. While one can hope, it doesn't mean MS will do the same.

[johnukguy]

5 minutes ago, brob said:

 

The link is for Linux distros. While one can hope, it doesn't mean MS will do the same.

AMD however are doing the same. There's nothing to indicate that they've changed their minds on this, unless you have updated information that they have? Since the AMD stock price is now surging as a result of the Intel flaw, they'd have to be really stupid to not make sure that their CPU's are not borked when they don't need to be.