What's the Best Hardware for These Heavy Work Applications?

[Luddy †]

A friend of mine is having some issues with his work-PC (laptop). He's using programs such as Solidworks, Vray, Sketchup and Unreal engine. While using these his PC is slow and crashes a lot. 

 

It has a i7-6700hq CPU, 16GB Ram, GTX 970 (or better cant remember correctly).

 

What I'm asking is this: What would be the best hardware to put together for a PC to run all these applications smoothly? What should be a priority hardware wise?

 

Recomendations for a "budget build" and a "ultimate build" is apprecitated. 

[Firewrath9]

budget:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3 GHz 8-Core Processor	$159.99 @ Newegg Business
Motherboard	MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard	$94.18 @ OutletPC
Memory	G.Skill - Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2800 Memory	$69.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Inland - 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$49.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate - Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$74.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	Gigabyte - GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card	$359.99 @ Amazon
Case	Phanteks - Eclipse P300 Tempered Glass (Black/White) ATX Mid Tower Case	$49.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Cooler Master - MasterWatt 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply	$59.95 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$949.07
	Mail-in rebates	-$30.00
	Total	$919.07
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-28 11:34 EDT-0400

 

Higher budget:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 GHz 8-Core Processor	$223.89 @ OutletPC
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC - Freezer 34 eSports DUO CPU Cooler	$39.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI - X470 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard	$119.99 @ Newegg
Memory	Team - Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$77.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	Team - MS30 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$103.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate - Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate - Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	PNY - Quadro RTX 4000 8 GB Video Card	$892.99 @ Amazon
Case	NZXT - H500 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$69.17 @ Amazon
Power Supply	SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$61.98 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1734.87
	Mail-in rebates	-$35.00
	Total	$1699.87
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-28 11:37 EDT-0400

higherer budget:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor	$519.99 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	Noctua - NH-U14S TR4-SP3 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler	$79.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock - X399 Taichi ATX TR4 Motherboard	$304.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$169.99 @ Newegg
Storage	HP - EX920 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$134.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	HP - EX920 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$134.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	Toshiba - X300 5 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$115.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	Toshiba - X300 5 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$115.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Fractal Design - Define C TG ATX Mid Tower Case	$88.38 @ Amazon
Power Supply	SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$119.86 @ Amazon
Other	PNY QUADRO RTX 6000 Graphic Card - 16 GB GDDR6 - Dual Slot Space Required - 4096 bit Bus Width - Fan Cooler - OpenACC, OpenGL 4.5, DirectX 12, OpenCL, DirectCompute 5.0, Vulkan 1.0-4 x DisplayPort -	$2220.00 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$4064.66
	Mail-in rebates	-$60.00
	Total	$4004.66
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-28 11:40 EDT-0400

 

[Jurrunio]

13 minutes ago, Luddy † said:

While using these his PC is slow and crashes a lot. 

maybe just thermal throttling, thermal paste age and get worse over time

 

13 minutes ago, Luddy † said:

GTX 970 (or better cant remember correctly)

970M? Half speed of desktop 970 I think

 

14 minutes ago, Luddy † said:

What I'm asking is this: What would be the best hardware to put together for a PC to run all these applications smoothly? What should be a priority hardware wise?

 

Recomendations for a "budget build" and a "ultimate build" is apprecitated. 

budget will determine what you can do

[LukeSavenije]

1 minute ago, Firewrath9 said:

Motherboard MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard $94.18 @ OutletPC

the b350 msi line had some problems iirc... I'd rather get a pro4 than that

 

1 minute ago, Firewrath9 said:

Power Supply SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $61.98 @ Newegg

ocp issues

 

2 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

Power Supply SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $119.86 @ Amazon

ocp issues too

[Firewrath9]

47 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

ocp issues

 

ocp issues too

well its on the A tier on your magical list, the RMx and TXm also have OCP issues.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seasonic-prime-ultra-titanium-1000w-psu,5510-6.html

not like the prime did much better, 140% OCP, which is roughly the same as the 650 G3.

[LukeSavenije]

14 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seasonic-prime-ultra-titanium-1000w-psu,5510-6.html

it's just set high, and at least triggers... unlike some focus models. 

 

and it would've been tier a+ if it all worked properly

Edited April 28, 2019 by LukeSavenije

[NickPickerWI]

People recommending Threadrippers don't understand the limitations of CAD and 3D modeling software. I use this stuff daily for my job (I use Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks). Threadrippers are great for video encoding, streaming, and a host of other software that can use hyperthreading. But there's some learning to be done here to best help your friend.

 

SolidWorks and Sketchup don't use hyperthreading whatsoever. VRay has to be told to, and it can struggle with it. Unreal Engine can use it on the developer end, I don't have much experience with it though.

 

Your friend's laptop CPU is suffering and struggling to keep up - laptop CPU's are never as powerful as desktop CPU's because they can't be cooled anywhere near as well (so they are basically undervolted and uncerclocked versions of desktop CPU's). Also, that laptop has flat-out the wrong hardware for a workstation load, and for those programs.

 

Workstations in specific usually use Xeon processors, not the i5/i7/i9 processors made for consumers. Xeons have a MUCH larger L3 cache (think of the CPU's digital data warehouse, where it stores quickly-needed data), Xeons use ECC RAM, they have massive hyperthreading, longer life under extreme performance conditions, etc. They are more expensive, don't support overclocking and don't have onboard video, but the more expensive ECC RAM used with them leads to fewer program crashes and a higher stability when using the kind of software he's using. Even though Xeons are purpose-built for hyperthreading, they will continue to be the recommended CPU for a CAD/3D workstation for some time for all the other reasons I listed.

 

If you don't want to go the Xeon route due to overall cost being higher (processor, ECC RAM, and sometimes motherboards), the next best bet is to use a consumer CPU with a very high single core speed, like a 7700k or a 7480X, preferably overclocked. The 7480x has some considerations for use, though - it only allows dual-channel RAM support, so your pretty X299/X399 motherboard will only be able to use half of the 8 RAM slots. He could also take a crack at overclocking an 8700k, 8086k, 9700k or a 9900k.

 

High-end graphics cards for consumers (GTX/RTX) are not where you want to spend your money, either. Your friend will want an NVidia Quadro graphics card, which can be very costly depending on how much he wants to spend for how much performance he wants. Workstation graphics cards are purpose-built to handle the software he's running. Gaming graphics cards don't handle the precise polygon counts and precision calculations that his software is doing. But, if he wants to do any kind of gaming, Quadro will let him down. A better-than-GTX 1070 ti graphics card will be what he wants.

 

Once you have that figured out, throw as much RAM into the machine as you can, at least 16GB, 32GB of RAM at 3200MHz or higher if you can for best performance. 8GB is not really enough for those applications, no matter what the software specifications might tell you.

 

Once you have that figured out, an M.2 or SATA SSD drive is critical to load different software modules, textures and image maps, and flip between commands quickly.

Edited April 28, 2019 by NickPickerWI
Clarifying my comments on Unreal Engine.

[Firewrath9]

1 minute ago, NickPickerWI said:

 

High-end graphics cards for consumers (GTX/RTX) are not where you want to spend your money, either. Your friend will want an NVidia Quadro graphics card, which can be very costly depending on how much he wants to spend for how much performance he wants. Workstation graphics cards are purpose-built to handle the software he's running. Gaming graphics cards don't handle the precise polygon counts and precision calculations that his software is doing. But, if he wants to do any kind of gaming, Quadro will let him down. A better-than-GTX 1070 ti graphics card will be what he wants.

a RTX 2060 will beat a Quadro P1000 in most software, the only one that really requires a quadro is solidworks.

autocad should be fine, but they reccommend a quadro, but nvidia tax so rip.

Quote

If you don't want to go the Xeon route due to overall cost being higher (processor, ECC RAM, and sometimes motherboards), the next best bet is to use a consumer CPU with a very high single core speed, like a 7700k or a 7480X, preferably overclocked. The 7480x has some considerations for use, though - it only allows dual-channel RAM support, so your pretty X299/X399 motherboard will only be able to use half of the 8 RAM slots. He could also take a crack at overclocking an 8700k or a 9900k.

TR can get quite decent 1t speed, 4.3ghz with PB, wtf is a 7480X?

7740X? are you talking about that meme machine?

Quote

People recommending Threadrippers don't understand the limitations of CAD and 3D modeling software. I use this stuff daily for my job (I use Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks). Threadrippers are great for video encoding, streaming, and a host of other software that can use hyperthreading. But there's some learning to be done here to best help your friend.

He also uses V-ray

1950x is only a bit behind 2950x

 

"Chaos Group has two different versions of their rendering engine: V-Ray Next CPU and V-Ray Next GPU (previously V-Ray Adv and V-Ray RT, respectively). The first is a CPU-based rendering engine that benefits greatly from having a high number of CPU cores. In fact, it scales almost perfectly with more cores which makes a high core count CPU - and even configurations with multiple physical CPUs - excellent for performance. For that version we strongly recommend a dual CPU configuration, which we offer in both tower and rackmount form factors. If you are on a budget then a single, high core count CPU will work too.

On the other hand, V-Ray Next GPU (V-Ray RT) uses GPUs - as the name indicates - to perform the rendering calculations. If that is your focus, we recommend maxing-out the speed and quantity of video cards - within your budget and available space - before worrying about the CPU. However, starting in V-Ray 3.6 the CPU can be used alongside the GPUs to further boost rendering speed. Chaos Group calls this Hybrid Rendering, so if you are using 3.6 or higher the CPU should still be a factor in your purchasing decision. Check out this article for more information."

Quote

Workstations in specific usually use Xeon processors, not the i5/i7/i9 processors made for consumers. Xeons have a MUCH larger L3 cache (think of the CPU's digital data warehouse, where it stores quickly-needed data), Xeons use ECC RAM, they have massive hyperthreading, longer life under extreme performance conditions, etc. They are more expensive, don't support overclocking and don't have onboard video, but the more expensive ECC RAM used with them leads to fewer program crashes and a higher stability when using the kind of software he's using. Even though Xeons are purpose-built for hyperthreading, they will continue to be the recommended CPU for a CAD/3D workstation for some time for all the other reasons I listed

TR can handle ECC (non-buffered), TR has 32MB of cache, more than most xeons. Epyc has 64 (or 128 IIRC), and just dominates, compared to a 8180 (flagship) with 36mb.

 

[NickPickerWI]

12 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

TR can get quite decent 1t speed, 4.3ghz with PB, wtf is a 7480X?

7740X? are you talking about that meme machine?

Yes, I was talking about that one. I guess I was looking mostly into single-threaded applications, speaking about what I know about SW. I understand that the OP is using a variety of software, and some of the software will benefit from a TR, but the benefits of a hyperthreading Xeon with better single-core performance seems to outweigh a Threadripper when considering ALL of the software he's trying to run.

 

 

[Firewrath9]

4 minutes ago, NickPickerWI said:

Yes, I was talking about that one. I guess I was looking mostly into single-threaded applications, speaking about what I know about SW. I understand that the OP is using a variety of software, and some of the software will benefit from a TR, but the benefits of a hyperthreading Xeon with better single-core performance seems to outweigh a Threadripper when considering ALL of the software he's trying to run.

 

 

Find a 500$ xeon that will suit his purpose better.

besides having double the speed in one software is better  than having 10-20% more speed in 3 softwares.

[NickPickerWI]

21 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

a RTX 2060 will beat a Quadro P1000 in most software, the only one that really requires a quadro is solidworks.

autocad should be fine, but they reccommend a quadro, but nvidia tax so rip.

There's also the P5000 and all of the RTX cards in the Quadro series, the 10 or so current cards that are better than a P1000.

1 minute ago, Firewrath9 said:

Find a 500$ xeon that will suit his purpose better.

besides having double the speed in one software is better  than having 10-20% more speed in 3 softwares.

Where did the OP mention that he wanted to spend $500 on a CPU, or less than X on a GPU?

 

OP wants to know what high end and budget look like. I'm recommending higher end stuff. High end looks a lot like spending $10k - $15k on a PC.

 

Sure, I threw in the 9900k and other CPU's, which you could argue could be replaced by a Threadripper for most cases. But it will suffer in any CAD programs, and suffer greatly.

 

And I would think that this depends on the balance of work. If 90% of my day consisted of one software package, sure, I'd agree with you. If 90% of my day consisted of using those three software packages, well, I would disagree with you.

 

To me, running three programs at 70-90% speed while running one program at 100% speed outweighs running two programs at 90-100% speed, and two at 40-60% speed. I also trust in Intel's and NVidia's stability gains in their purpose-built workstation products (even though I really want a TR, or even a Zen 3 CPU, for my personal machine, and screwed up when planning it).

 

By virtue of asking on a public forum, OP is asking for opinions. These are mine.

[Firewrath9]

11 minutes ago, NickPickerWI said:

There's also the P5000 and all of the RTX cards in the Quadro series, the 10 or so current cards that are better than a P1000.

Where did the OP mention that he wanted to spend $500 on a CPU, or less than X on a GPU?

 

OP wants to know what high end and budget look like. I'm recommending higher end stuff. High end looks a lot like spending $10k - $15k on a PC.

 

Sure, I threw in the 9900k and other CPU's, which you could argue could be replaced by a Threadripper for most cases. But it will suffer in any CAD programs, and suffer greatly.

 

And I would think that this depends on the balance of work. If 90% of my day consisted of one software package, sure, I'd agree with you. If 90% of my day consisted of using those three software packages, well, I would disagree with you.

 

To me, running three programs at 70-90% speed while running one program at 100% speed outweighs running two programs at 90-100% speed, and two at 40-60% speed. I also trust in Intel's and NVidia's stability gains in their purpose-built workstation products (even though I really want a TR, or even a Zen 3 CPU, for my personal machine, and screwed up when planning it).

 

By virtue of asking on a public forum, OP is asking for opinions. These are mine.

and P5000 costs what, 2000$?

for 10k-15k, I'd just get 2 seperate PCs, one with heavy multicore, and one with singlecore

or perhaps a dual socket Epyc 7371 for a mix of both.

 

If his work PC is a laptop w/ a 970, then he probably can't spend 10-15k$.

[NickPickerWI]

35 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

and P5000 costs what, 2000$?

for 10k-15k, I'd just get 2 seperate PCs, one with heavy multicore, and one with singlecore

or perhaps a dual socket Epyc 7371 for a mix of both.

 

If his work PC is a laptop w/ a 970, then he probably can't spend 10-15k$.

I didn't come here to argue with you, I came to give my opinion. My opinion was given, so I'm going to do something else.

 

And I'd be careful making assumptions about people like this.

[Firewrath9]

2 hours ago, NickPickerWI said:

And I'd be careful making assumptions about people like this.

Why would I?(actually want to know, not trying to argue)

[NickPickerWI]

56 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

Why would I?(actually want to know, not trying to argue)

It's a tact thing. You make valid points without having to assume, and without having to risk coming off the wrong way or insulting someone.

 

We have no idea where the OP's friend is at, or what kind of budget he has now or will have in five years. We have no idea what his plans are - he could make a business case and get a loan for a $10k PC if the performance would be that much better.

 

We only know the title of this thread, exactly what was asked for, and other information the OP provided. We don't know anything more than that.