Putting together a workstation for 3D/AutoCAD rendering

[ZenDragon]

A friend of mine, an Architect, asked me to spec out a system for him for 3D/Architectural rendering. All of my builds have been mid-range gaming systems, so I dont have a whole lot of experience choosing hardware for this sort of task. We have a $2000ish budget for the build, most of which Im assuming will go into video cards and memory. This is NOT including the displays by the way. I know this wont build a super high end rig right off the bat here, but Im trying to keep upgrade potential in mind. So, Im looking for a Mobo with at least 6 memory slots, and 3-4 way SLI support so he can add on to it later. And yes, he can wait till Sandy Bridge processors come out, if that is what you all would suggest. We're going to be piecing this thing together over a couple months so we can pick up memory, and other hardware now and get that stuff last. Anyhow I was hoping you all could suggest some hardware to give me an idea of what we're looking at here.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks guys you rock!

 

[Dangman]

Unfortunately a lot our advice/recommendations can be out of date in as little as month some times. So if you really want a GOOD idea of what to buy, then your best bet would be to wait about 2-3 weeks before you actually build/buy date and ask for hardware advice then. In addition, outside of really really awesome deals, you're better off just buying all the parts in one go. You save money and keep the parts up-to-date that way.

Oh and the current Sandy Bridge motherboards do not have more than 4 RAM slots. And SLI doe not have an effect on 3D rendering and such.

 

[IronMan77]

The first thing you have to do is find out what software he uses.

Once you know that you can look online and see if the software offers GPU acceleration. If it does you need to find out what GPU's it offers GPU acceleration on. If GPU acceleration is not an available of that particular piece of software or revision then you know you do not have to spend much money on the GPU (just get a cheap video card and put more money towards the CPU and RAM).

Besides getting a powerful CPU and as much RAM as you can fit in your budget you will want to make a plan for the hard drive situation. You will want a fast OS/application drive and one or more additional hard drives for a scratch disk and project file storage.

The good news is that today $2,000 will build you quite the nice workstation.

 

[Denominative Vomit]

ok this is probably the one any one time you will ever hear me recommend a 6 core cpu EVER!
so that means the newest i7 6 core.

A friend of mine, an Architect, asked me to spec out a system for him for 3D/Architectural rendering.

this kind of software was setup from day one with Symmetric multiprocessing in mind and the more cpu cores the better when it comes to this kind of thing.

your all so going to want buffered eec ram for this kind of thing and piles of ram as well as a computer that like a bulldozer and system stability comes first and foremost and 95% of all the computer hardware reviews out their don't apply to you on this kind of thing \ kind of computer setup.

btw if you want as well theirs ways of {patching} your video card depending on the software used so you can use a normal video card with out getting robed on the price of the video card,probably going to want one as well with piles of texture ram.

might i recommended as well hardware based raid 0+1

if you want i can whip you up a $2000 workstation class computer on paper for industrial software allocations {only} in no time.

you need only ask

btw do you have any hardware brand avoidance's ?

 

[CMadki4]

If the purpose of this build is for 3D rendering and CAD work you don't need a super computer. SLI is overkill for sure. And all that extra RAM won't really be used by any one rendering software. Here at work I run 3Divia, Solidworks, Inventor, Rhino and Rivet. I have the most humble rig possible with a E6850 and 9500GT 1GB GPU running two (2) 22" Dells. It rocks all day long. Can't say I wouldn't mind a nice upgrade, but the lesson is that most CAD software is mainly CPU dependent and not all that heavy. $2k will build a great future proof PC for all any CAD software to come.