Need Help with CAD Workstation

[Kurtnelle]

Yesterday, I was cleaning out my workstation as part of a PSU replacement (Corsair AX860i). After I turned the power on, I could smell burning electronics coming from the case. The PSU cut off within 1 second of the machine trying to start up. I power cycled the switch and tried again. This time I saw a wisp of smoke emerge from the case. Now my motherboard (Asus Z9PA-08) won't turn on. I used this system for three (3) things: 3D Modeling of complex assemblies (+500 parts; Autodesk Inventor), as a DAW (Propellerhead Reason) and for Software Development (Microsoft Visual Studio). I suspect that my processors (dual xeon hex cores @ 2.0GHZ) could also be dead, along with my six (6) sticks of ram and GPU ( a GTX 670). For the three aforementioned uses all of them tax the CPU heavily. (*cry* well it used to).

 

So, I need to potentially replace everything including the case (AnanTech twelve hundred) with the exception of my drives (assorted) and the brand new PSU.

 

Should I:

1. Try to replace the board with the existing socket to retain use of the dual LGA2011 processors
2. Upgrade to a Socket SP3 or LGA2066 with new processor(s) and ram (and potentially GPU)

I am not adverse to "going back down" to a single CPU, however I got those chips use like new at a price point that made more sense than a single new CPU of similar performance (NB My performance benchmarks were not made based on empirical objective data). I must have a CPU that supports ECC since ray tracing is a part of the 3D modeling that I do. My previous/current setup was good enough for ray tracing and software development, however more power would be better. With the DAW however, I noticed that sometimes Reason would overload the machine, and the song would stop due to "computer to slow" error. I'd like to fix that with hardware.

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Kurtnelle said:

 

What's your budget/country for the upgrade and do you just need a lot of cores?

[Kurtnelle]

Country is Trinidad, I guess my budget is 2K USD (for board chip and ram) and I need to render 3d models (so potentially a RTX2080 could be in my future). For my software work, I definitely want more cores (I had 12 cores + hyperthread on 2 cpus); yes I want as many cores as I can fit into my budget.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Kurtnelle said:

Country is Trinidad, I guess my budget is 2K USD (for board chip and ram) and I need to render 3d models (so potentially a RTX2080 could be in my future). For my software work, I definitely want more cores (I had 12 cores + hyperthread on 2 cpus); yes I want as many cores as I can fit into my budget.

Should probably go X399 then for more cores that maintain solid performance.

 

And I'd look for a used Vega FE card if your software can use OpenCL, as that has 16GBs of VRAM on the cheap.

There are better TR4 coolers that are about to come out.
 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PDLKkd
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PDLKkd/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1920X 3.5GHz 12-Core Processor  ($499.00 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U14S TR4-SP3 140.2 CFM CPU Cooler  ($79.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X399-A EATX TR4 Motherboard  ($279.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: AMD - Vega Frontier Edition 16GB Frontier Edition Video Card
Total: $1117.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-04 23:01 EDT-0400

[Kurtnelle]

My cad software uses DirectX. Does that mean that the new RTX 2080 will give it's ray tracing a boost? I don't like the Vega Card.
 

So based on your costing, this 500 dollar processor can outperform my previous setup with both a single cpu and frequency?

 

I'll be using liquid cooling this rounds. I want to do a dust free case (if there is such a thing)