Basic Workstation Build - Light Cad/Solidworks

[Josh]

Hey all,

I was hoping some of you might be able to help me put together a basic build for a friend of mine at university. The computer will mostly be used for basic word processing, browsing the internet etc and occasionally Solidworks or Autocad/Inventor.

 

It's been a while since I've follow tech closely and I'm not really sure whats the go with the current generation of processors so I was hoping for a little help getting a build together. The budget will be about $1200 AUD for just the computer. Not sure whether it's worth including a graphics card as this system won't be used for gaming at all, mostly need help deciding on a CPU and motherboard combo.

 

Any input appreciated, hopefully this is enough information otherwise feel free to ask questions.

Cheers

[alexhelvetica]

PC Case Gear - Shared Shopping Cart
1 x Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H-A Motherboard - $119.00ea
1 x Intel Xeon E3 1231 V3 - $369.00ea
1 x G.Skill F3-1600C11D-16GNT 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 - $109.00ea
1 x Silverstone Precision PS08 Micro ATX Case Black - $49.00ea
1 x XFX TS Series 550W Power Supply - $79.00ea
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003 - $75.00ea
1 x SanDisk Ultra II 240GB 2.5in SSD - $109.00ea
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 WindForce OC 2GB - $235.00ea
Total: $1,144.00 - @pccasegear.com 03/03/2016

[Streetguru]

25 minutes ago, Josh said:

Hey all,

Xeon 1231v3 is probably going to be the best CPU to get given the price increase for the 6700

 

and GPU acceleration is going to help a lot, more so with a workstation GPU, at least on the PC part picker the W4100 is your only choice in AUS last I checked.
 

PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/BFVZkL
Price breakdown by merchant: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/BFVZkL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($369.00 @ CPL Online)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($107.80 @ Newegg Australia)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($105.00 @ IJK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($71.00 @ IJK)
Video Card: AMD FirePro W4100 2GB Video Card  ($325.00 @ CPL Online)
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case  ($49.99 @ Mwave Australia)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($79.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Total: $1106.79
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-03 17:35 AEDT+1100

[brob]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($458.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Motherboard: Asus B150M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($125.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($103.40 @ Newegg Australia)
Video Card: Leadtek Quadro K620 2GB Workstation Card  ($269.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($99.00 @ Centre Com)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1300 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($69.00 @ CPL Online)
Power Supply: Corsair 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($69.00 @ IJK)
Total: $1192.40
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-03 18:48 AEDT+1100

[Streetguru]

26 minutes ago, brob said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

If I'm not mistaken the K620 only uses GDDR3, it's probably going to be slower overall than the W4100, also solidworks like AMD more than nvidia doesn't it?

[brob]

10 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

If I'm not mistaken the K620 only uses GDDR3, it's probably going to be slower overall than the W4100, also solidworks like AMD more than nvidia doesn't it?

There is > AU$50 price difference. I picked the K620 to fit the budget. Sadly, I can't find any real benchmarks. The K620 does have its own advantages, particularly floating point performance. But in my experience with a few exceptions, price ultimately indicates relative performance.