£1500 Build for small architecture firm

[Rerskine]

Hi, The small architecture practice i work for is getting a new machine (yay) (for size of company there are 3 of us)

 

My boss has only ever used apple hence wants to buy a recent used or refurbed imac 27"

i suggested we look at a PC due to upgradability and value for money. 

 

Could I get some advice on a good system build or minimum spec Imac we should be looking for + a good monitor to find. 

We are happy to go used but would rather new/refurb.

 

1. UK £1500

 

2. We will be using the system for: 3D Vectorworks, adobe indesign, illustrator, photoshop, sketchup, VRay. 

so basically 3D and photo editing work however the 3D files that we work with are not huge as we mainly do private residential and art installations. 

 

4. No need for peripherals, but we would need to buy windows 10

 

5. I currently run a 2011 Macbook pro 15inch and it cannot do Vectorworks parametric modelling at all. 

 

Cheers

 

[TheNaitsyrk]

1 minute ago, Rerskine said:

Hi, The small architecture practice i work for is getting a new machine (yay) (for size of company there are 3 of us)

 

My boss has only ever used apple hence wants to buy a recent used or refurbed imac 27"

i suggested we look at a PC due to upgradability and value for money. 

 

Could I get some advice on a good system build or minimum spec Imac we should be looking for + a good monitor to find. 

We are happy to go used but would rather new/refurb.

 

1. UK £1500

 

2. We will be using the system for: 3D Vectorworks, adobe indesign, illustrator, photoshop, sketchup, VRay. 

so basically 3D and photo editing work however the 3D files that we work with are not huge as we mainly do private residential and art installations. 

 

4. No need for peripherals, but we would need to buy windows 10

 

5. I currently run a 2011 Macbook pro 15inch and it cannot do Vectorworks parametric modelling at all. 

 

Cheers

 

You're looking to build or buy built?

[FlappyBoobs]

Go to DELL. Buy the best machine you can with their 3 year onsite package. (You can get a pretty decent workstation for that money)

 

It's for business, do not self build, do not skimp on warranty or support, it pays for its self the moment that you have a problem where you are without a PC.

 

Self building is fine for companies that have tons of (relevant and recent) hardware laying around, but for ones that don't it's just not worth it, I've worked in small companies that self build before, the moment a machine goes down you are at home for 3 days whilst you wait for IT to order and replace the parts. 

 

I recommend Dell because they have worldwide same day service for on-site support. A local PC shop will not be able to offer that level of support.

[LeSheen]

10 minutes ago, FlappyBoobs said:

Self building is fine for companies that have tons of (relevant and recent) hardware laying around, but for ones that don't it's just not worth it, I've worked in small companies that self build before, the moment a machine goes down you are at home for 3 days whilst you wait for IT to order and replace the parts.

It's not. The spend resources (working hours of engineers) are not even close to worth it. In our case we just buy workstations from hp. If something breaks like an ssd or RAM then I'm not even allowed to switch it out with working parts from a spare workstation. We just replace the whole computer and ask for an hp engineer. Same thing in our datacenter. We can't touch the hardware, not even a harddisk. There is an SLA for everything. If you replace anything yourself you void warranties, not worth it in servers that expensive with same day support.

[FlappyBoobs]

42 minutes ago, LeSheen said:

It's not. The spend resources (working hours of engineers) are not even close to worth it. In our case we just buy workstations from hp. If something breaks like an ssd or RAM then I'm not even allowed to switch it out with working parts from a spare workstation. We just replace the whole computer and ask for an hp engineer. Same thing in our datacenter. We can't touch the hardware, not even a harddisk. There is an SLA for everything. If you replace anything yourself you void warranties, not worth it in servers that expensive with same day support.

 

Dell machines don't void the warranty when you replace parts your self. The fact that you can't even swap a harddisk on your machines without breaking warranty is just bullshit, I am glad that I never went with HP if you can't even swap a HDD out, that's a really shitty warranty service.

 

You may be able to swap out the computer then call support, but that involves OP buying 2 new PCs to be able to do that, and OP is in a company with just 3 total employees, that is not practical.  Either way, I still say it's not worth it as well, and to just get the machine with warranty.

 

I get why you said what you said, but you are incorrect that "The spend resources (working hours of engineers) are not even close to worth it", it costs 15 minutes of supports time to swap out a harddisk, and unless your engineers are being paid around $4000 an hour, then it is cheaper to just swap the drive than to buy an entire spare computer of the same spec to have laying around just in case. But as I alluded to, this conversation is not relevant for OPs situation, and is just causing confusion on the subject. 

 

 

[LeSheen]

@FlappyBoobs 

 

I'm curious if you ever were employed in the sector? It is way more cost effective to just swap out the computer and send back the other for repair. Every decent it-department should have spares ready to ensure productivity. 

 

33 minutes ago, FlappyBoobs said:

You may be able to swap out the computer then call support, but that involves OP buying 2 new PCs to be

I assumed you meant a sizeable company since you assumed they "tons of hardware lying around". Warranty is maybe a bad choice of words (not a native english speaker). We are not allowed to exchange anything in our datacenters. This is because if we did and messed up we are responsible. If a dell/hp/bullion/ibm engineer fucks up they are responsible. 

 

40 minutes ago, FlappyBoobs said:

it costs 15 minutes of supports time to swap out a harddisk, and unless your engineers are being paid around $4000 an hour

I get you perspective. But we only have senior engineers employed working on expensive projects. So you don't need to look at his payrol, but at the cost of not having him on the projects. You could hire some engineers for  this. But I think some spare workstations are cheaper then extra people on the payroll. Still uptime is the first concern, cost a close second.