Building Workstation for College Engineering for $1200

[Martian Calculator]

I am trying to figure out what all I need to put into a PC for light-to-medium CAD, light simulation, some editing, and a bit of gaming.

The purpose would be to get me through undergrad college engineering and either be upgraded to a full blown workstation a year or so after graduation or repurposed into a general gaming station.

 

I have looked into Digital Storm builds and PC Part Picker's builds but am overall very new to building computers

 

Budget:

I was looking to spend $1000 but seems unrealistic. Reality is $1250. Maximum I am willing to spend at this time is $1500.

Desired: $1000

Reality: $1250

Maximum: $1500

 

My thoughts as to what I might want/need:

CPU- Ryzen 7 3700

GPU- RTX 2060 Super

RAM- 16 GB of RAM (2 8 GB sticks hopefully to be upgraded to 2 16s then adding another 2 16s in the farther future)

SSD- 512 GB (Figure that should be enough)

HDD- 1TB (maybe a 2 or 3)

MB- Mother Board I have no idea with I know I would want something that I would at least not have to upgrade in addition if I tried to update my processor, graphics Card, or Ram.

PSU- EVGA 750 Watt gold Certified (whether or not that is too much/little will depend on everything else I know but seemed good based off what I have been seeing elsewhere. I also do not know if it is imperative that I get a gold certified PSU)

Case- No clue

Cooling- probably not water cooling

 

Any ideas on what I may be over or under spending on is welcome and of course all advice and tips.

Also any ideas for auxiliaries would be appreciated

[trevb0t]

Do you plan to do any gaming on it?

What software are you using?

 

I've put together a build that is less suited to gaming and very powerful for workload processing (though it would do just fine at 1080p high/ultra gaming.)

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor	$499.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard	$209.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$119.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$106.69 @ Amazon
Storage	Hitachi Ultrastar 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$30.88 @ Amazon
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB GAMING OC Video Card	$209.99 @ Walmart
Case	Cougar MX330 ATX Mid Tower Case	$42.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply	BitFenix Whisper M 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$79.98 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1300.50
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-06 17:57 EST-0500

 

• 3900X for an incredible workload CPU
• Solid NVMe SSD for content creation
• 32GB Ram
• GTX 1660 for inexpensive Cuda cores. (And high/ultra settings 1080p gaming.)
• I really like the MX330 for budget builds. It's really easy to build in, looks nice, great cable management and PSU shroud, lots of HDD space, and a mesh front for airflow. (It only comes with the one exhaust fan, but it gives room to grow into better cooling if you've got a few bucks here and there.)

If solid gaming is a desire, you could sub in these parts for a more rounded build:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$327.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Video Card	EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB SC ULTRA GAMING Video Card	$423.98 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$866.96
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-06 18:08 EST-0500