Help building a GIS rig

[danpdx30]

I have gotten into GIS as of late, and I have come to realize that my laptop while putting up a valiant effort is not completely up for the job.  So I have decided to invest the money to build my own rig, but I am having trouble getting started. Does anyone have experience running ArcGIS, and what do you recommend to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible? 

[Streetguru]

I have gotten into GIS as of late, and I have come to realize that my laptop while putting up a valiant effort is not completely up for the job.  So I have decided to invest the money to build my own rig, but I am having trouble getting started. Does anyone have experience running ArcGIS, and what do you recommend to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible? 

http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/desktop/latest/get-started/system-requirements/arcgis-desktop-system-requirements.htm

Best bet is probably going to be something like this given that part of it seems to be a virtualization workload, which AMD is good at

http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/get-started/arcgis-pro-system-requirements.htm

Higher Requirements there

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZdpkMp

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZdpkMp/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320E 3.2GHz 8-Core Processor  ($123.99 @ NCIX US)

Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard  ($56.99 @ Newegg)

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($35.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($34.99 @ Amazon)

Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card  ($27.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($39.99 @ Amazon)

Total: $319.94

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-16 23:33 EST-0500

At least on the cheap anyways

[skywake]

I'd strongly suggest putting most of your money into a higher resolution monitor, 4K if possible. Also more cores will help a lot especially if you want to do a bit of image processing but they need to be faster cores for it to be worthwhile. RAM will also help but you don't need to go as crazy as you would if you were building a video editing workstation. Stuff like image classification can really hammer multiple cores even with fairly small datasets. If you're working with a large amount of data? You'll really need something more beefy. And while we're here It's worth noting that it's unlikely that your GPU will matter much at all. There are some tasks that can be GPU accelerated but AFAIK it's mostly all about the CPU. Just make sure you can drive that monitor, you can probably almost get away with the integrated GPU.

 

I'd go for something along the lines of this, though it's probably a bit overkill if it's just a hobby:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BnRRcf

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BnRRcf/by_merchant/

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($399.99 @ Newegg) 

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($69.89 @ OutletPC) 

Motherboard: Asus B150M-A D3 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($76.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($68.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($69.00 @ Amazon) 

Case: Fractal Design Define S ATX Mid Tower Case  ($71.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($24.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $781.84

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-17 00:03 EST-0500

 

and then get a decent GPU ontop of that if you want to do some gaming on the side. Though if you go that route you might want to also get a bigger PSU.

[danpdx30]

 

I'd strongly suggest putting most of your money into a higher resolution monitor, 4K if possible. Also more cores will help a lot especially if you want to do a bit of image processing but they need to be faster cores for it to be worthwhile. RAM will also help but you don't need to go as crazy as you would if you were building a video editing workstation. Stuff like image classification can really hammer multiple cores even with fairly small datasets. If you're working with a large amount of data? You'll really need something more beefy. And while we're here It's worth noting that it's unlikely that your GPU will matter much at all. There are some tasks that can be GPU accelerated but AFAIK it's mostly all about the CPU. Just make sure you can drive that monitor, you can probably almost get away with the integrated GPU.

 

I'd go for something along the lines of this, though it's probably a bit overkill if it's just a hobby:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BnRRcf

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BnRRcf/by_merchant/

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($399.99 @ Newegg) 

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($69.89 @ OutletPC) 

Motherboard: Asus B150M-A D3 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($76.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($68.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($69.00 @ Amazon) 

Case: Fractal Design Define S ATX Mid Tower Case  ($71.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($24.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $781.84

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-17 00:03 EST-0500

 

and then get a decent GPU ontop of that if you want to do some gaming on the side. Though if you go that route you might want to also get a bigger PSU.

 

 

I wasn't too sure about the graphics card. You'd figure that something that is vector and raster heavy would benefit from a GPU, but this is ESRI we're talking about and nothing makes sense. My current systsem is a Dell with a i5 4120U and 8gb of ram. The lag time and the random crashes make getting any work or school work done a chore. How does Arc 10.3 fair running on an SSD, and should I port my data base over to ssd as well. (I've learn to love personal geo-database)

 

Thanks for the help...

[skywake]

I wasn't too sure about the graphics card. You'd figure that something that is vector and raster heavy would benefit from a GPU, but this is ESRI we're talking about and nothing makes sense. My current systsem is a Dell with a i5 4120U and 8gb of ram. The lag time and the random crashes make getting any work or school work done a chore. How does Arc 10.3 fair running on an SSD, and should I port my data base over to ssd as well. (I've learn to love personal geo-database)

 

Thanks for the help...

Well I haven't run it myself in a few years but when I did it was very CPU heavy and they didn't use the GPU at all. It was noticeable because at the time I was running a Core2Duo. A quick google and it doesn't seem as if much has changed. I'd assume that there is probably some stuff that can take advantage of your GPU and maybe ESRI have implemented it at this point. I honestly don't know. If you know you'll use it then it might well be a worthwhile addition. But I'd probably still focus on getting a decent CPU first.

 

As for SSDs I think that's probably one of the more important components. Database performance hugely benefits from running on an SSD over a HDD. Think about it, a database typically runs by having lots of small random transactions. That's the bread and butter of an SSD. Of course if you have a massive dataset then an SSD probably isn't practical and if you have a very small one it probably won't matter. But that huge space in the middle? SSDs are king.

 

tl;dr

1. High resolution monitor (GIS is the field that demands 4K more than any other)

2. Lots of fast CPU cores and a reasonable amount of RAM

3. Fast storage