CAD/CNC-programming Workstation

[PFitzGerald]

Budget (including currency): €4000

Country: Ireland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

I am looking to build a workstation PC which is mainly used for Autocad and Solidworks + various CNC programs.

I perforate metal and often manage 100.000+ holes in drawing and model space. So single core performance is key.

 

I am currently working on older HP Workstations with 2 Xeon processors, which needs replacing as I need to go over to windows 11 for the upkeep of security updates. 

 

The need is to acquire all new PC, my thoughts on components so far are:

• CPU with strong single core performance can be either AMD AM5, or Intel based. It doesn't need to be newest of the newest. 
• RAM 64GB (or more) DDR5 5600Mhz+
• Motherboard, a reliable workhorse, Wifi/bluetooth not needed, but "future proofing" would be nice. 
• GPU, use what I have P6000.   
• Case, standard with good dust filtration and min. 4 USB 2.0/3.0 front IO
• PSU, something reliable and slightly overkill. 
• Cooling. Air cooling should be fine. 

 

Other details  Reliability is very important, so it has to be factored in. 

 

[Why_Me]

https://geizhals.eu/ 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 3.7 GHz 24-Core Processor  (€575.56 @ Caseking) 
CPU Cooler: *ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (€84.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Motherboard: *Asus TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI ATX LGA1851 Motherboard  (€249.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: *Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory  (€224.98 @ Proshop) 
Video Card: *Zotac GAMING SOLID OC GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB Video Card  (€2410.33 @ Caseking) 
Case: *Antec FLUX SE ATX Mid Tower Case  (€117.44 @ Proshop) 
Power Supply: *MSI MPG A1250GS PCIE5 1250 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€225.90 @ Alza) 
Total: €3888.20
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-09-25 13:14 CEST+0200

 

https://www.antec.com/product/case/flux-se

 

https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-z890-plus-wifi/

 

https://www.msi.com/Power-Supply/MPG-A1250GS-PCIE5  

 

https://www.zotac.com/us/product/graphics_card/zotac-gaming-geforce-rtx-5090-solid-oc

[PFitzGerald]

13 minutes ago, Why_Me said:

https://geizhals.eu/ 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 3.7 GHz 24-Core Processor  (€575.56 @ Caseking) 
CPU Cooler: *ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (€84.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Motherboard: *Asus TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI ATX LGA1851 Motherboard  (€249.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: *Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory  (€224.98 @ Proshop) 
Video Card: *Zotac GAMING SOLID OC GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB Video Card  (€2410.33 @ Caseking) 
Case: *Antec FLUX SE ATX Mid Tower Case  (€117.44 @ Proshop) 
Power Supply: *MSI MPG A1250GS PCIE5 1250 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€225.90 @ Alza) 
Total: €3888.20

Thank you Why_Me.
I think you might have just seen the budget, without reading requirements. 
I wont be needing a GPU, and would likely choose air cooling rather than liquid cooling

Also will you say that the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is best single core performance from what you could buy today? Or rather, what is the reason that you picked this one? 

[Why_Me]

15 minutes ago, PFitzGerald said:

Thank you Why_Me.
I think you might have just seen the budget, without reading requirements. 
I wont be needing a GPU, and would likely choose air cooling rather than liquid cooling

Also will you say that the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is best single core performance from what you could buy today? Or rather, what is the reason that you picked this one? 

Amazon.de ships to Ireland.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-ultra-9-285k/

 

Switch up the cpu to this one since you're going with air cooling.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241061/intel-core-ultra-9-processor-285-36m-cache-up-to-5-60-ghz/specifications.html

https://geizhals.eu/intel-core-ultra-9-285-bx80768285-a3385429.html 

Intel Core Ultra 9 285 €564,99 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/thermalright-royal-pretor-130-review 

 

https://geizhals.eu/thermalright-royal-pretor-130-black-a3469582.html

Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 €52,39

 

[brob]

1 hour ago, PFitzGerald said:

Budget (including currency): €4000

Country: Ireland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

I am looking to build a workstation PC which is mainly used for Autocad and Solidworks + various CNC programs.

I perforate metal and often manage 100.000+ holes in drawing and model space. So single core performance is key.

 

I am currently working on older HP Workstations with 2 Xeon processors, which needs replacing as I need to go over to windows 11 for the upkeep of security updates. 

 

The need is to acquire all new PC, my thoughts on components so far are:

• CPU with strong single core performance can be either AMD AM5, or Intel based. It doesn't need to be newest of the newest. 
• RAM 64GB (or more) DDR5 5600Mhz+
• Motherboard, a reliable workhorse, Wifi/bluetooth not needed, but "future proofing" would be nice. 
• GPU, use what I have P6000.   
• Case, standard with good dust filtration and min. 4 USB 2.0/3.0 front IO
• PSU, something reliable and slightly overkill. 
• Cooling. Air cooling should be fine. 

 

Other details  Reliability is very important, so it has to be factored in. 

 

 

I tend to favour Intel for productivity builds, but an AMD 9950X would be a reasonable alternative.

 

I've used the German pcpartpicker as available 2x64GB memory kit choices were sparse on the Irish site.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

 

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 3.7 GHz 24-Core Processor (€575.56 @ Caseking) 

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 BLACK 81.88 CFM CPU Cooler (€83.86 @ Computersalg) 

Motherboard: MSI PRO Z890-P WIFI ATX LGA1851 Motherboard (€231.30 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Memory: Crucial CP2K64G56C46U5 128 GB (2 x 64 GB) DDR5-5600 CL46 Memory (€339.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€162.79 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Video Card: PNY VCQP6000-PB Quadro P6000 24 GB Video Card (Purchased For €0.00) 

Case: Fractal Design Define 7 ATX Mid Tower Case (€163.89 @ Computeruniverse) 

Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€209.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Total: €1766.30

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-09-25 14:40 CEST+0200

[PFitzGerald]

1 hour ago, brob said:

 

I tend to favour Intel for productivity builds, but an AMD 9950X would be a reasonable alternative.

 

I've used the German pcpartpicker as available 2x64GB memory kit choices were sparse on the Irish site.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

 

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 3.7 GHz 24-Core Processor (€575.56 @ Caseking) 

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 BLACK 81.88 CFM CPU Cooler (€83.86 @ Computersalg) 

Motherboard: MSI PRO Z890-P WIFI ATX LGA1851 Motherboard (€231.30 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Memory: Crucial CP2K64G56C46U5 128 GB (2 x 64 GB) DDR5-5600 CL46 Memory (€339.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€162.79 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Video Card: PNY VCQP6000-PB Quadro P6000 24 GB Video Card (Purchased For €0.00) 

Case: Fractal Design Define 7 ATX Mid Tower Case (€163.89 @ Computeruniverse) 

Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€209.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Total: €1766.30

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-09-25 14:40 CEST+0200

Hey brob,

 

Thanks for your suggestion. 

I've heard that you for the memory would rather go with a faster CL, but weather it actually matters all that much for what I need it to do, I'm uncertain of. Any insight on this? 

[brob]

23 minutes ago, PFitzGerald said:

Hey brob,

 

Thanks for your suggestion. 

I've heard that you for the memory would rather go with a faster CL, but weather it actually matters all that much for what I need it to do, I'm uncertain of. Any insight on this? 

 

I chose the memory kit based on cost and known stability. Undoubtedly higher speed, lower CL would offer better performance, but I could not find any applicable benchmarks to illustrate the difference.

[BillBill]

4 hours ago, PFitzGerald said:

Budget (including currency): €4000

Country: Ireland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

I am looking to build a workstation PC which is mainly used for Autocad and Solidworks + various CNC programs.

I perforate metal and often manage 100.000+ holes in drawing and model space. So single core performance is key.

 

I am currently working on older HP Workstations with 2 Xeon processors, which needs replacing as I need to go over to windows 11 for the upkeep of security updates. 

 

The need is to acquire all new PC, my thoughts on components so far are:

• CPU with strong single core performance can be either AMD AM5, or Intel based. It doesn't need to be newest of the newest. 
• RAM 64GB (or more) DDR5 5600Mhz+
• Motherboard, a reliable workhorse, Wifi/bluetooth not needed, but "future proofing" would be nice. 
• GPU, use what I have P6000.   
• Case, standard with good dust filtration and min. 4 USB 2.0/3.0 front IO
• PSU, something reliable and slightly overkill. 
• Cooling. Air cooling should be fine. 

 

Other details  Reliability is very important, so it has to be factored in. 

 

 

4 hours ago, PFitzGerald said:

Budget (including currency): €4000

Country: Ireland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

I am looking to build a workstation PC which is mainly used for Autocad and Solidworks + various CNC programs.

I perforate metal and often manage 100.000+ holes in drawing and model space. So single core performance is key.

 

I am currently working on older HP Workstations with 2 Xeon processors, which needs replacing as I need to go over to windows 11 for the upkeep of security updates. 

 

The need is to acquire all new PC, my thoughts on components so far are:

• CPU with strong single core performance can be either AMD AM5, or Intel based. It doesn't need to be newest of the newest. 
• RAM 64GB (or more) DDR5 5600Mhz+
• Motherboard, a reliable workhorse, Wifi/bluetooth not needed, but "future proofing" would be nice. 
• GPU, use what I have P6000.   
• Case, standard with good dust filtration and min. 4 USB 2.0/3.0 front IO
• PSU, something reliable and slightly overkill. 
• Cooling. Air cooling should be fine. 

 

Other details  Reliability is very important, so it has to be factored in. 

 

Your HP workstation might have a TPM model or at least a TPM header on the motherboard. I would check into that before building a brand new machine. 

[PFitzGerald]

3 hours ago, BillBill said:

 

Your HP workstation might have a TPM model or at least a TPM header on the motherboard. I would check into that before building a brand new machine. 

My current workstation was bought used, and has a dual socket motherboard with 2 Intel® Xeon® Gold 6138 Processor which is great if I was using all the cores, but I find that my general workload is single core heavy, and the xeons only boosts to 3.7ghz. So a newer system is very welcome, as I can feel the lack of snappyness. - also max ram speed is 2666mhz. 

Anyway, my local it support had a look at the system and confirmed that it wouldn't be able to upgrade to windows 11, which I will need due to security updates. 

 

So it might be a grand old workstation, but I do feel a need for something fresh and quicker. 

 

But thank you for the suggestion! Much appreciated! 

[BillBill]

40 minutes ago, PFitzGerald said:

My current workstation was bought used, and has a dual socket motherboard with 2 Intel® Xeon® Gold 6138 Processor which is great if I was using all the cores, but I find that my general workload is single core heavy, and the xeons only boosts to 3.7ghz. So a newer system is very welcome, as I can feel the lack of snappyness. - also max ram speed is 2666mhz. 

Anyway, my local it support had a look at the system and confirmed that it wouldn't be able to upgrade to windows 11, which I will need due to security updates. 

 

So it might be a grand old workstation, but I do feel a need for something fresh and quicker. 

 

But thank you for the suggestion! Much appreciated! 

Well you can build a new machine and maybe repurpose the old one.  

[PFitzGerald]

1 hour ago, BillBill said:

Well you can build a new machine and maybe repurpose the old one.  

That's the thought.

[PFitzGerald]

6 hours ago, brob said:

 

I chose the memory kit based on cost and known stability. Undoubtedly higher speed, lower CL would offer better performance, but I could not find any applicable benchmarks to illustrate the difference.

Stability is very important for me, and regardless, the newer ram will make it feel much better compared to the 2666mhz I'm using now.