Personal Computer For FEA [Archive]

Adambomb

06-04-2011, 10:58 PM

Yeah, I'm also running 64 bit SW 2010, I believe the solver is still one core, don't remember on the mesher, but Photoworks would do as many as you could throw at it. Based on what I know about the nature of what the solver's doing, unless they do some major changes I wouldn't expect it to be something that multi-threads anytime soon. I know for most of us the mesher and solver performance is what's most important, so again I'd take more clock speed over more cores.

As for gaming cards, if you want the most bang for the buck, it WON'T be with a workstation video card. For the past several years they've used the same GPUs as gaming cards, and are typically about a generation behind. Gaming cards will have more shaders, etc., but the memory standards, etc. are all the same. The biggest difference is in the drivers, as gaming cards are optimized for DirectX, while workstation cards are optimized for OpenGL. The main reason workstation cards cost more is the market...businesses and universities vs. gamers.

As an example, check out these two video cards:
$115 workstation card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195064)
$110 Gaming card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102878&cm_sp=Cat_Video_Cards_%26%2338%3b_Video_Devices-_-Daily_Deals-_-14-102-878)

The workstation card looks to be about the same architecture as the Radeon 1300, same RAM and memory standard, which is discontinued, could be had for $25 three years ago, and will offer tolerable performance for assemblies of up to 3 parts, as long as they are simple. With the better FireGL drivers it might be competitive with a typical current integrated laptop gaming processor, like a Radeon 4200. The DDR2 RAM, with most likely a 64 bit interface (not specified), will keep it from ever performing decently. Also, I would set 512 MB as an absolute minimum amount of memory for FSAE use, and 1GB if you want to be happy with it for more than a couple years.

Now the gaming card, for $5 less, has 4 times the memory, and GDDR5 which is over twice as fast, and a 256 bit memory interface. Hard to compare GPU performance since the workstation's isn't specified, but a Radeon 5830 vs. what's probably a Radeon 1300 GPU, it probably scales similarly to the 4x memory performance increase. Even with its "lesser" Radeon drivers, it will still probably be at least twice as fast in Solidworks, and handle a whole car model a whole ton better with its extra memory.

So now that we've compared the hardware, let's look at the drivers a bit more. Aside from enabling pretty Realview, you also get a huge jump in performance as it does a lot better job with hardware acceleration in OpenGL. I've heard of performance increases of 150-300% by just switching drivers. So then the $1 million question is, can I make workstation drivers work on a gaming card? If you have an older Nvidia card, check this out:
GeForce to Quadro hack (http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=0)

I got it to work great on my GeForce 7900GS and the GeForce 8600GTs we have in the lab, on both XP and Win 7. No bugs, no glitches, no reliability issues, but you get Realview and probably a solid double the performance. The only bad news is is doesn't work with any decent cards that are still in production as far as I know, couldn't get it to work with our GTX 260, and from what I hear the 8000 series are the newest it works with. The article is good though, it at least gives charts to compare GPUs from gaming cards to workstation cards.

Here's another thread about doing the same thing with ATI cards, and it's a lot more recent too. I haven't messed with it yet, but I'm looking to upgrade cards in some of our lab computers so I'd like to try it out:
FireGL Softmod (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313065)

Nick Renold

06-05-2011, 08:20 PM

Adambomb is right on about the gaming vs workstation cards.

I built our team a workstation for $1k. We run this system, with the graphics driver name hacked to say it is a workstation card, and it runs most everything we can throw at it. It doesn't load big assemblies from memory very fast, so I would recommend a SSD upgrade although I heard that 2011 is better with that.

specs:
Simple case and PSU:
CASE APEX|PC-389-C RT
PSU ANTEC|EA650 RT

Asus motherboard, they typically have good quality:
MB ASUS|M4A78LT-M AM3 R

Asus graphics card, 1 gig of DDR5
VGA ASUS|EAH5830 DIRECTCU/2DIS/1GD5

6-core CPU:
CPU AMD|PH II X6 1075T 3.0G AM3 RT

8 gig memory (fast FSB speed as well)
MEM 4Gx2|CORSAIR CMX8GX3M2A1600C9 R

2x 1TB hard drives for mirrored array (we had one fail, so we are glad we did this!):
HD 1T|SEAGATE 7K ST31000528AS OEM

23 inch monitor:
MNTR ASUS|LCD 23.6" 5MS VH242H RT

Nick Renold

06-05-2011, 08:33 PM

Let me elaborate on how to change any graphics card to the model that you need for SolidWorks.
I did this a while ago so I don't remember the exact details, but with a little trial and error you can get it.

When you install your graphics card driver, in the driver files there should be an .ini file that contains names of graphics cards, associated by device IDs or something. Just open up any .ini files in your driver setup files and you should find this eventually. Pick out the name of one of the compatible graphics cards, then find places where the name of your current graphics card occurs and replace them with the compatible name.

Most likely, these names will all be encased in quotes and should be easy enough to find.

Check out here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313065

Adambomb

06-05-2011, 10:30 PM

Originally posted by Nick Renold:
I built our team a workstation for $1k. We run this system, with the graphics driver name hacked to say it is a workstation card, and it runs most everything we can throw at it. It doesn't load big assemblies from memory very fast, so I would recommend a SSD upgrade although I heard that 2011 is better with that.

That's awesome you got the 5830 working with a soft mod! I'm stoked, will be shopping for some ATI cards to upgrade a bunch of old Core2 Duo machines we just inherited from the university.

To get a bit more hard drive speed, we're running Seagate Barracudas in RAID 0. Looked to be the way to get the speed of SSD with less than half the cost and several times the capacity. The Barracudas are great, only a tad slower than a WD Velociraptor (on the outer portion of the platter at least), and a couple years ago when we built our system it was $40 for 160 GB. To get max speed (since the small Barracuda is a single platter 7200 rpm drive, there is a large difference in speed from the outside of the platter to the inside), set up a c: partition first to keep your OS on the "fast part," then use the rest for storage. I've got two in RAID 0 in my personal computer a couple years ago, and was getting 200 MB/s transfer rates. When we built our last workstation I decided to go all out with 4 of them in RAID 0, but only got 250 MB/s, most likely due to a combination of diminishing returns with putting 4 vs. 2 in RAID, and maxing out the onboard RAID controller. Will probably get a new RAID controller one of these days, hoping that will help a bit.

Here's the specs for the latest system we put together in 2009, cost us just over $800 (it's about 2/3 of the way through the album):
2009 Workstation, "Mad Max" (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.715113400020.2357280.16912542&l=c07e2e72db)

Case: Found a late '90s vintage EATX case outside of the virtual reality lab. Rattle canned it satin black and added this 20 in 1 card reader, USB, eSATA, audio port dealy that installed in a 3.5" bay that we found for $15 as the ancient case did not have front panel USB or audio.

PSU: Found a good deal on a 750W Antec known to cleanly put out more like 850W

We also went with the Asus motherboard as they are solid, also considered Gigabyte since we have had good luck with those as well. Made sure it was AM3 and supported Hypertransport 4.0 and DDR3 (that was a bit new and exotic in 2009), as well as the 125W CPU we were getting.

CPU: What was then the "2nd from the top" CPU. Those are generally about the best value, as getting the top of the line CPU meant spending 30% more for 3.4 GHz vs. 3.2 GHz. We got a 4 core 3.2 GHz Phenom II x4 955. The stock cooler was a bit marginal with this near-the-top processor, so we shelled out $30 for a massive Cooler Master cooler with a 120 mm fan. CPU idle temps dropped like 30º C, so it should last a good bit longer. Messed around briefly with overclocking, but couldn't get anything stable.

Graphics: GTX 260, overclocked about 20%. Again, good bang for the buck, as the 280s cost a good bit more, and the 295s were super spendy. The 260s had good overclocking headroom, haven't had any stability issues with it.

Memory: DDR3 1600, dual channel. DDR3 was still new and expensive, so we just put in 4GB, leaving two slots open, with plans to upgrade when the price went down. Now that prices are down I'm thinking we'll throw in another 8 to bring it up to 12GB, which should be fine for several years; possibly the rest of its life. The board supports 16 GB.

Hard drives: 4x 160 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11's in RAID 0, for a total of 640 GB. Not terribly concerned with storage space or data loss since we have everything of value stored on the school's server. Looking to upgrade the RAID controller to something a bit faster. Although with 4 drives, if there isn't much speed difference due to RAID scaling issues, if we ever end up re-formatting it it might be good to switch to RAID 0+1, so if something does happen you don't have to mess around re-configuring the system.

Monitors: Beastly old pair of Dell (Sony) Triniton 20" CRTs we got for free. Beautiful picture, and running 1920x1440 resolution each for a combined desktop size of 3840x1440. Only downside is that they kick off like 440W of excess heat, necessitating AC upgrades in the office. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

I'd personally recommend going this route, this powerhouse should be good for CAD for probably the next 6 years. Bear in mind that we are also running old Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 desktops from 2004 with stripped down XP, also one surviving Dell Precision 650 from 2002, they're not great but good enough to design tabs and a lot of the more basic parts, also for reports, internet, etc., and teaching people how to use Solidworks.

Adambomb

06-05-2011, 11:08 PM

...also here's what I'm running for my personal setup, it's a combination of FSAE style with a touch of redneck and tactical flavor. It's about 50% 2006 and 50% 2009 hardware, so nothing impressive by today's standards, but the setup is interesting.
Adambomb's Tactical Phenom (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.511784862040.2136876.16912542&l=e4aa814ea6)

Case: 1981 vintage IBM 5150 "Personal Computer" case with riveted-in ATX motherboard/card base, polished Al diamond plate back panel, massive 5.25" floppy drive milled out and converted to a modular dual hard drive bay, front panel USB and audio pilfered from some other case, Radio Shack old-skool pushbutton for power switch, fabbed drive bay for standard DVD burner

PSU: 550W Antec

Motherboard: MSI, supports Hypertransport 3.0 and DDR2 8500, 95W CPU

CPU: quad core Phenom x4 9600, 2.3 GHz. I wasted many hours attempting to get any overclock, to later discover that these are about the worst ever to attempt to overclock.

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 7900GS, soft-modded to Quadro FX 3500, processor overclocked 20 MHz from the factory, memory overclocked 20%. Was a fairly hot card in 2006.

Memory: DDR2 PC2 6400, dual channel, 4GB

Hard drives: 2x 160 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11's in RAID 0, 200 MB/s transfer rate

Monitors: Same beastly Dell's as above, paid $13 for the pair at university surplus sales.

t21jj

06-06-2011, 10:41 AM

Originally posted by Adambomb:
Monitors: Beastly old pair of Dell (Sony) Triniton 20" CRTs we got for free. Beautiful picture, and running 1920x1440 resolution each for a combined desktop size of 3840x1440. Only downside is that they kick off like 440W of excess heat, necessitating AC upgrades in the office. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Not any more as far as I know. Last time I was back in Ames they had 4 lcd flat screen monitors set up on that computer. I'm pretty sure that the CRT's are all gone now. I want to say that they got the lcd's free from some department.

t21jj

06-06-2011, 11:06 AM

Originally posted by Adambomb:
...also here's what I'm running for my personal setup, it's a combination of FSAE style with a touch of redneck and tactical flavor. It's about 50% 2006 and 50% 2009 hardware, so nothing impressive by today's standards, but the setup is interesting.
Adambomb's Tactical Phenom (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.511784862040.2136876.16912542&l=e4aa814ea6)

Case: 1981 vintage IBM 5150 "Personal Computer" case with riveted-in ATX motherboard/card base, polished Al diamond plate back panel, massive 5.25" floppy drive milled out and converted to a modular dual hard drive bay, front panel USB and audio pilfered from some other case, Radio Shack old-skool pushbutton for power switch, fabbed drive bay for standard DVD burner

PSU: 550W Antec

Motherboard: MSI, supports Hypertransport 3.0 and DDR2 8500, 95W CPU

CPU: quad core Phenom x4 9600, 2.3 GHz. I wasted many hours attempting to get any overclock, to later discover that these are about the worst ever to attempt to overclock.

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 7900GS, soft-modded to Quadro FX 3500, processor overclocked 20 MHz from the factory, memory overclocked 20%. Was a fairly hot card in 2006.

Memory: DDR2 PC2 6400, dual channel, 4GB

Hard drives: 2x 160 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11's in RAID 0, 200 MB/s transfer rate

Monitors: Same beastly Dell's as above, paid $13 for the pair at university surplus sales.

On our CAD stations at work we are currently running Dell T7500's with Intel Xeon E5507 Quad Core Processor's (2.26GHz), 6GB DDR3 1333 ECC (3x2GB), NVidia Quadro FX 3800 GPU, and dual Dell 2209WA monitor's (these are really nice). It's been a great setup but now my bottleneck is the processor. When we upgraded I pushed for a much faster Xeon but they insisted on the cheapest quad core they could get. When it came down to it they let me have the graphics card I wanted but screwed me on the processor.

Moral of the story is for SAE I'd get the cheapest entry level Workstation graphics card you can get (200-300$), 4 plus gig of memory, and the fastest processor you can get your hands on.

The Quadro FX 580 can be had from Amazon for $150 and is a great card for SolidWorks. And it should run circles around those older softmoded NVidia gaming cards.

Hector

06-07-2011, 12:43 PM

We got a sponsorship from computer hardware company a while back. They gave us a large amount of money to spend through Dell. I specced out the station. We ended up with a Dell Precision T7400.

Dual Quad-core Xeons at 3.0 ghz.
8 GB DDR3 fully buffered
10k RPM HD (80 GB?)
7400 RPM HD (500 GB)
Quadro FX 4800

It would easily max out all 8 cores during rendering. The FEA solver would only use about 40% of total processor capability. It handled large assemblies with ease.

We chose the higher speed HD to store the models we were currently analyzing, because we found that Solidworks FEA did quite a bit of read/writes, and we had a bottleneck on our older system. SSDs were still too expensive two years ago when the system was built.

Ran some 3D Mark tests on it when it was new but I don't remember the results. I was able to overclock the video card by about 15% on both memory and clock, and saw roughly equal improvement in 3dMark scores. I removed the overclocking after the benchmarking because I don't touch the team to keep an eye on the temps and such. They blow up enough engines as it is http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

Dash

06-07-2011, 07:52 PM

Wow, glad I got all these responses. Think I'm going to take the dive and build my computer from scratch now.
Just to throw this out there, I just ran a test on my laptop though ( Core 2 Duo Processor and Solidworks 2011 ), and it seems that solidworks is sharing the Solver computation on both cores.

Ben K

06-07-2011, 08:16 PM

Originally posted by Dash:
Wow, glad I got all these responses. Think I'm going to take the dive and build my computer from scratch now.
Just to throw this out there, I just ran a test on my laptop though ( Core 2 Duo Processor and Solidworks 2011 ), and it seems that solidworks is sharing the Solver computation on both cores.

If Solidworks made the solver multi-core, we all just saved hours on thermal or multi-body simulations. Huzzah.

Ben

RollingCamel

06-10-2011, 10:56 PM

A good start would be a Quadro 2000, Corei7, SSD with HDD, 8 GB of ram min.

For the SSD there is the 250GB OCZ Vertex 3. For lower capacity you may check the 128GB Intel 510.

It was proven that a softmodded graphics card is not as fast as a low cost Quadro.

Dash

06-12-2011, 09:17 AM

Hey guys, still working on picking out items for my build. Trying to decide on a hard drive now ( keep in mind that I'm trying to stick to <$1000 budget total.) Two hard drive options that I have come across are very similar, and not much $$ difference. The main difference is the cache. Didn't know if it was worth it to throw down $20 extra bucks. I'm not too picky on hard drive size, and rarely have I used more than 150gigs of memory on a computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16822136795 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16822136770 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136770)

My other big question is about the video cards. I found two, and its kind of a toss-up between them. Realview graphics aren't a big deal to me, but I do like being able to duel-screen. That said, still looking for a little guidance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16814127510 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16814133354 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133354)

Hoping you guys can help me make up my mind!

t21jj

06-12-2011, 12:48 PM

Originally posted by Dash:
Hey guys, still working on picking out items for my build. Trying to decide on a hard drive now ( keep in mind that I'm trying to stick to <$1000 budget total.) Two hard drive options that I have come across are very similar, and not much $$ difference. The main difference is the cache. Didn't know if it was worth it to throw down $20 extra bucks. I'm not too picky on hard drive size, and rarely have I used more than 150gigs of memory on a computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16822136795 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16822136770 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136770)

My other big question is about the video cards. I found two, and its kind of a toss-up between them. Realview graphics aren't a big deal to me, but I do like being able to duel-screen. That said, still looking for a little guidance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16814127510 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16814133354 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133354)

Hoping you guys can help me make up my mind!

I'd go with the WD Caviar Black out of those two hard drives. I've got 3 of the 1TB versions in my personal computer and they are fast and work great.

And out of those two video cards I'd go with the Quadro 600. Both support dual monitors but that 460GTX will be of no help in SolidWorks or any other similar software. The Quadro 600 uses a display port to DVI adapter for the second monitor. When using a consumer grade graphics card SolidWorks does all the open gl acceleration using software emulation with the processor as apposed to hardware acceleration with a professional card. And the gpu is way better at it than the processor.

Adambomb

06-13-2011, 03:52 AM

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
It was proven that a softmodded graphics card is not as fast as a low cost Quadro.

Have any link to that? I've seen that, for example, a GeForce 7900GS, soft-modded to a Quadro 3550 was like 20% slower than a real Quadro 3550, although I haven't seen any comparison between, for example, a GeForce 7900GS and a Quadro card that costs the same price as a GeForce 7900GS. I do know that my soft-modded 7900GS absolutely blows the doors off the Quadro NVS 285 in the Precision 390 in my lab, which back when you could still buy either of those cards still cost a good bit more, like over twice as much. So for 2-3 times the price you get 20-30% more performance GPU to GPU...naturally much less dollar to dollar.

Although, after doing some more research, it looks like video card producers have wised up a bit since I last looked at this very seriously a couple years ago. It does look like bottom-end workstation cards have become more competitive in price and performance to what you can soft-mod.

Currently you can't even buy an Nvidia card worth soft-modding, and the best ATI card that is known (at least by the forums I'm looking at) to take a soft-mod that you can buy new is a Radeon 4650, which is a $50 card these days. The cheapest workstation card on Newegg is a FirePro 3700 at $80, which raw hardware-wise looks like a small step down from the Radeon 4650, but realistically probably would still be like 10-20% faster, being a true FirePro. Plus you don't have to mess around with a soft-mod.

t21jj, you sure on hardware acceleration not being part of the soft-mod? From what I've heard that is what is primarily responsible for the 150-300% increase in performance in Solidworks.

So in a nutshell, it now appears that unless somebody figures out how to soft-mod more recent cards, it's really only good (or even available for that matter) for up to about a $50 card, at which point the market transitions quite nicely to low-end workstation cards.

t21jj

06-13-2011, 08:08 AM

Originally posted by Adambomb:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RollingCamel:
It was proven that a softmodded graphics card is not as fast as a low cost Quadro.

Have any link to that? I've seen that, for example, a GeForce 7900GS, soft-modded to a Quadro 3550 was like 20% slower than a real Quadro 3550, although I haven't seen any comparison between, for example, a GeForce 7900GS and a Quadro card that costs the same price as a GeForce 7900GS. I do know that my soft-modded 7900GS absolutely blows the doors off the Quadro NVS 285 in the Precision 390 in my lab, which back when you could still buy either of those cards still cost a good bit more, like over twice as much. So for 2-3 times the price you get 20-30% more performance GPU to GPU...naturally much less dollar to dollar. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'd post the link but that would take a week. So check your email. The real current generation Quadro was like 50% faster.

Originally posted by Adambomb:
t21jj, you sure on hardware acceleration not being part of the soft-mod? From what I've heard that is what is primarily responsible for the 150-300% increase in performance in Solidworks.

So in a nutshell, it now appears that unless somebody figures out how to soft-mod more recent cards, it's really only good (or even available for that matter) for up to about a $50 card, at which point the market transitions quite nicely to low-end workstation cards.

Adam, I didn't say that it didn't just that a real workstation card will be faster and a stock gaming card will do you zero good in SolidWorks or any other CAD program. Especially when you take into consideration that no current cards can be soft-moded. And prices for entry level workstation cards have come down to a price point that makes the hassle of soft-moding not worth it. You also won't have to worry about some idiot messing with your settings and bricking the computer because they think they know computers. Last I checked that type of thing was still a problem at ISU (cough...baja...cough).

And if you're going to go with an ATI card I'd go with the Firepro V3800 (newer version of the Firepro V3700) as it has more memory and supports the latest graphics standards. It's also not that much more expensive. That said I'd still spend a little more and go with the NVidia card.

P.S. My 1065 feature SolidWorks Camaro model that I've been working on is kicking my computers butt. I really wish I had a faster processor. Every time I go to edit a feature or rebuild my computer comes to a stop. Also SolidWorks 2011 has a built in benchmarking application now to test hardware.

Dash

06-13-2011, 01:46 PM

Alright. Seems as though I've been convinced to pick the quadro 600 now. Next thing I was going to ask may just be an opinion based idea. Would you go for the new Sandy Bridge chipset for a processor, or pick an AMD? Reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at the AMD models ( 3.4-3.7 Ghz Phenom II ) and its Intel counterparts seem to be more expensive across the board. The Core i-5 seem to be a viable option as an alternative since they boast Turbo-boost technology ( power when you need it if possible). Just trying to gauge what yall might think about the difference companies, and if I should pick one over the other.

t21jj

06-13-2011, 08:07 PM

Originally posted by Dash:
Alright. Seems as though I've been convinced to pick the quadro 600 now. Next thing I was going to ask may just be an opinion based idea. Would you go for the new Sandy Bridge chipset for a processor, or pick an AMD? Reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at the AMD models ( 3.4-3.7 Ghz Phenom II ) and its Intel counterparts seem to be more expensive across the board. The Core i-5 seem to be a viable option as an alternative since they boast Turbo-boost technology ( power when you need it if possible). Just trying to gauge what yall might think about the difference companies, and if I should pick one over the other.

Both will work fine, I'd pick the fastest processor you can get that fits in your budget. I'd go with AMD for a budget SAE build.

Scott Wordley

06-14-2011, 08:15 PM

The new sandy bridge stuff looks hard to go past.

Just before they were released we built up 5 watercooled, overclocked i7-930s, and even one 990x. The 990X wasnt appreciable faster in our benchmarks than the 930s, specially considering the massive price difference. I should note that these computers weren't for FSAE, but rather PhD students working on CFD stuff. If we are lucky we get to use them occasionally!

With ANSYS CFX massive ram is crucial to enable big mesh sizes, so we have been running 24GB kits from Corsair.

We have an 128GB PCI SSD in the 990X and is speeds up booting but not much difference otherwise.

If I was mainly doing FEA, which can be a mix of single thread and multithread applications usage I would go for the i7-2600K, watercool it and overclock it. I hear people are getting around 4.5GH out of them easily.

Nothing will beat that in single thread applications, even the 990X at 3 tmies the price. Only downside is you are limited to around 16GB of RAM at the moment, until the new dual channel 32GB kits come out, but that shouldnt be a problem for FEA.

Others are better qualified to discuss the graphics cards options, but we have been running GTX460s which no serious issues, CAD seems to be less graphics intensive than the current crop of games.

t21jj

06-15-2011, 04:17 AM

The new Sandy Bridge stuff is very nice, I'm a Intel fan myself. I've got a i7 920 in my personal computer. The i7-2600K would be my choice if I was building a computer right now as they can be overclocked to 4.5-5Ghz (even with good air cooling). However when sticking to a budget the AMD chips would not be a bad option. I wouldn't go with any other Sandy Bridge chip but the i7-2600K.

RollingCamel

06-15-2011, 12:38 PM

Originally posted by Adambomb:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RollingCamel:
It was proven that a softmodded graphics card is not as fast as a low cost Quadro.

Have any link to that? I've seen that, for example, a GeForce 7900GS, soft-modded to a Quadro 3550 was like 20% slower than a real Quadro 3550, although I haven't seen any comparison between, for example, a GeForce 7900GS and a Quadro card that costs the same price as a GeForce 7900GS. I do know that my soft-modded 7900GS absolutely blows the doors off the Quadro NVS 285 in the Precision 390 in my lab, which back when you could still buy either of those cards still cost a good bit more, like over twice as much. So for 2-3 times the price you get 20-30% more performance GPU to GPU...naturally much less dollar to dollar.

Although, after doing some more research, it looks like video card producers have wised up a bit since I last looked at this very seriously a couple years ago. It does look like bottom-end workstation cards have become more competitive in price and performance to what you can soft-mod.

Currently you can't even buy an Nvidia card worth soft-modding, and the best ATI card that is known (at least by the forums I'm looking at) to take a soft-mod that you can buy new is a Radeon 4650, which is a $50 card these days. The cheapest workstation card on Newegg is a FirePro 3700 at $80, which raw hardware-wise looks like a small step down from the Radeon 4650, but realistically probably would still be like 10-20% faster, being a true FirePro. Plus you don't have to mess around with a soft-mod.

t21jj, you sure on hardware acceleration not being part of the soft-mod? From what I've heard that is what is primarily responsible for the 150-300% increase in performance in Solidworks.

So in a nutshell, it now appears that unless somebody figures out how to soft-mod more recent cards, it's really only good (or even available for that matter) for up to about a $50 card, at which point the market transitions quite nicely to low-end workstation cards. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

According to Tech ARP softmodding guide and performance comparison, the FX1700, which is quite low midrange card, was roughly 2x faster than a softmodded FX4600.

The Quadro 2000 is quite good for the money. As for the ATI/AMD the problem with them was and still is the drivers. Last time I checked they seriously need to do something about it.

RollingCamel

06-16-2011, 01:35 AM

I have configured a system for $1067 (excluding shipping) without an optical drive nor input devices or monitors. All prices from Newegg....

CPU: Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge -- $210
Motherboard: Gigabyte GIGABYTE GA-P67A-D3-B3 -- $110
RAM: 8GB Patriot Viper Xtreme -- $88 ($20 Mail-in Rebate)
GPU: Quadro 2000 -- $450 ($50 Mail-in Rebate)
HDD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3R HE103SJ 1TB -- $80
PSU: Antec EarthWatts 500W -- $59.99
Case: Antec 300 -- $70

Dash

06-16-2011, 11:55 AM

I've got a set of components in the cart. Right at $1117 after rebates, but before shipping. Thinking of putting the order through early next week.

t21jj

06-16-2011, 01:13 PM

3 can play at this game.

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K $314.99
DVD Drive: SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black EIDE / ATAPI Model SH-S222A - OEM Free with i7-2600K
Motherboard: MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $179.99
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 $94.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99
Power Supply: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-550VX 550W $89.99
Video Card: NVidia Quadro 600 $169.99
Case: Antec 900 $99.99

Total: $1009.93 after rebates and before shipping.

Or with AMD processor.
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDZ980FBGMBOX $189.99
DVD Drive: LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 - OEM $19.99
Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 AMD 890FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard $209.99
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 $94.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99
Power Supply: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-550VX 550W $89.99
Video Card: NVidia Quadro 600 $169.99
Case: Antec 900 $99.99

Total: $934.92 after rebates and before shipping.

One could reduce both of those totals by 100-200 if you went with cheaper components.

RollingCamel

06-16-2011, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by t21jj:
3 can play at this game.

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K $314.99
DVD Drive: SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black EIDE / ATAPI Model SH-S222A - OEM Free with i7-2600K
Motherboard: MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $179.99
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 $94.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99
Power Supply: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-550VX 550W $89.99
Video Card: NVidia Quadro 600 $169.99
Case: Antec 900 $99.99

Total: $1009.93 after rebates and before shipping.

IMO, the power supply, cpu and mobo are an overkill and overpriced. If you check Anandtech's review the performance gap between the i7 2600K and i5 2500K isn't worth the extra $180, where is the Quadro 2000 with the i5 and lower spec mobo would be a better price/performance ratio and in fact the better GPU will probably give you better performance in GPU heavy applications and CUDA.

I believe that the i5 system would be a better value overall.

Btw, Dash what is your configuration? If you want more help you can visit Xbitlab's forum, where the geeks feel home...

t21jj

06-16-2011, 01:37 PM

Originally posted by RollingCamel:

IMO, the power supply, cpu and mobo are an overkill and overpriced. If you check Anandtech's review the performance gap between the i7 2600K and i5 2500K isn't worth the extra $180, where is the Quadro 2000 with the i5 and lower spec mobo would be a better price/performance ratio and in fact the better GPU will probably give you better performance in GPU heavy applications and CUDA.

I believe that the i5 system would be a better value overall.

Btw, Dash what is your configuration? If you want more help you can visit Xbitlab's forum, where the geeks feel home...

It's all personal preference, and I'd say that the 2000 is overpriced and overkill for SAE use also IMO. Hell my Quadro FX 3800 here at work is way overkill for what I do. What I have on my list is a combination of personal preference and customer reviews. If I was building a computer I'd go with my AMD combo and I could knock 100+ off that no problem.

RollingCamel

06-16-2011, 01:46 PM

It may be personal preference but with things going GPGPU and for the same price and future proofing a better GPU is better and especially when going multi-monitor.

The same way Brazos gives a better experience than Atom thanks to the much better GPU. If you want better performance for $180 put it on the GPU rather than the CPU or a SSD.

t21jj

06-16-2011, 01:54 PM

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
It may be personal preference but with things going GPGPU and for the same price and future proofing a better GPU is better and especially when going multi-monitor.

The same way Brazos gives a better experience than Atom thanks to the much better GPU. If you want better performance for $180 put it on the GPU rather than the CPU or a SSD.

Like I said I could knock 200+ off that combo no problem. But I still would not buy the Quadro 2000 it's over priced and overkill for the intended use.

P.S. This is not a contest it's just what I'd do.

Edit: with cheaper components down to $789

RollingCamel

06-16-2011, 02:03 PM

Just studying the options. We can have better cpu, more ram, better GPU or an SSD or something else that could be more helpful like a 3D mouse.

RollingCamel

06-17-2011, 01:48 PM

Anandtech just posted A Sandy Bridge buyer's guide. Same thoughts but for a change the gaming gpu with a professional one.

Dash

06-17-2011, 02:53 PM

Intel Core i5-2500k $220
Gigabyte z68 motherboard $170
G.Skill 8GB ram $76
Corsair 750W powersupply $115
Antec 300 computer case $70
Western digital hard drive $60
DVD drive $20
Quadro 600 $170

So after a few small rebates, it comes out right at $885 before shipping. I've got a television with a DVI port that I'm going to use as a monitor before I get a real one. I'll probably buy a different cooler for the CPU once I learn a few things about overclocking.

Again, thanks for all the replies guys, definitely helped me figure out a few things.

RollingCamel

06-17-2011, 05:14 PM

The PSU is waaaaaaaaay an overkill. In fact you are probably off it's optimum efficiency, even if you overclock. For such system 500W is more than enough. Putting too much money on the mobo and psu without any need can be spent better else where.

As for the Quadro 600, my main thing with it maybe not as fast as past generation midrange cards. The number of stream processors and pipelines are just ridiculous. That may be enough for you now but put in mind future proofing depending on you needs and software performance. After graduation I now have factory assemblies and really need a good workstation. Plus I'm sure the gaming performance would be much better, but for this point I'd get a decent gaming GPU along side the professional card, which is something I used to do with my softmodded Qaudro FX 4600 and ATI 4770. Chaning the video source would activate the card, thankfully windows 7 played nice running both cards.

'Mo Powaaar' is always right...your argument is invalid. (j/k)

You can save nearly $100 by changing the mobo and PSU without impacting the experience at all.

t21jj

06-17-2011, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
The PSU is waaaaaaaaay an overkill.

You can save nearly $100 by changing the mobo and PSU without impacting the experience at all.

This I agree with 100%.

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
...but for this point I'd get a decent gaming GPU along side the professional card, which is something I used to do with my softmodded Qaudro FX 4600 and ATI 4770. Changing the video source would activate the card, thankfully windows 7 played nice running both cards.

I was actually thinking about this also, never did ask if he was into computer gaming at all. However I would keep the power supply if I were to do this. The quadro 600 is only a 40 watt card. However most current gaming cards push 200-300 watts and require additional power connections that cheaper power supplies don't have.

Dash

06-17-2011, 06:08 PM

I'm not real big into gaming right now, seeing as I have basically no free time. But I used to play games online ( WoW ) before I came into college. I'm graduating in a year so we shall see where things go after that...

I'll have another look at other options for the motherboard that allow overclocking.

Also, guess I would just throw this in there. I am running an ATI Mobility Radeo HD 4650 with 512 DDR3 in my laptop right now and it doesn't have many problems with the models I do ( opening a mostly completed chassis model takes a few minutes, but manipulating it isn't a big deal ). I'm sure the quadro 600 would be more than enough to blow this card away.

@ RollingCamel So you ran 2 video cards not in sli mode? How did switching between them for each process work?

Adambomb

06-17-2011, 11:13 PM

Bringing my "two years outdated" http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif experience to the table, as others have mentioned, Solidworks graphics demands have not grown in proportion to hardware capabilities. In fact, with the size of models we use, if you don't get absolutely crazy, I still get perfectly acceptable performance on our whole car model with a 5 year old gaming card I paid under $200 for new with a soft mod. Hell, the low-end gaming Radeon 3200 in my laptop handles our 2010 whole car model relatively decently. If I were building a $1000 system, with 6 years of acceptable SAE performance in mind, I would also budget about $150-$200 for a low-end workstation card.

The current trend since about 2003 with Solidworks has been to become more CPU demanding than GPU demanding. The models themselves have not really gotten much more complex to render. Model rebuild times are the times you want to reduce, as every time you change something it has to rebuild. And those are dependent on CPU speed, still mostly on a single processor, and memory speed/system bandwidth. The trend is moving towards more multi-threading, but processor requirements are increasing much faster than graphics requirements.

For motherboards that seems like a pretty simple deal, but I know the lower-end ones, at least for the AM2 and AM3 ones I was shopping for 2-3 years ago, lacked support for the latest Hypertransport and memory standards, or didn't support the power requirements of the latest processors. No reason to hamstring your system by trying to save $50 on a motherboard. Also the motherboard is something I wouldn't want to go cheap on, as a cheapo one could crap out on you in 2 years. And that was another plus for AMD over Intel, in addition to the processors being cheaper the motherboards were $50-$100 less for a comparable one. Speaking of processors, comparing apples to apples, the Core i5 was built to compete with the Phenom II after they started waxing Core2 Quads. To my knowledge the Core i5 will be a step up from a Phenom II, beyond that AMD just really doesn't compete. But if you're shopping for Core i5s the AMD could be a cheaper alternative, will have probably about the same memory and system bandwidth, but be down a bit on grunt processing power.

As for building an SAE computer for a dual role with gaming, I say hell no! We have already had problems with people deciding Call of Duty was more important than FSAE, but at least they weren't tying up SAE resources while they were also not getting their job done. Robot Unicorn Attack and other totally badass flash-games are great to get the "glaze off your eyes" after 26 consecutive hours of cost-report madness, but my general rule is if it has a plot or has any type of graphics hardware requirements, it's not good to have in the SAE lab.

RollingCamel

06-17-2011, 11:14 PM

I was actually thinking about this also, never did ask if he was into computer gaming at all. However I would keep the power supply if I were to do this. The quadro 600 is only a 40 watt card. However most current gaming cards push 200-300 watts and require additional power connections that cheaper power supplies don't have.

Even so. Here is a good read about supply needs.
wWw dot anandtech dot com / show /2624

Also, guess I would just throw this in there. I am running an ATI Mobility Radeo HD 4650 with 512 DDR3 in my laptop right now and it doesn't have many problems with the models I do ( opening a mostly completed chassis model takes a few minutes, but manipulating it isn't a big deal ). I'm sure the quadro 600 would be more than enough to blow this card away.
The GT430 on which the Quadro 600 is based on is an HTPC card and the slowest thing you can get on market. The 4650 is still a decent card...mobile wise.

With a quality 400W PSU you can run a the Corei5 and a high midrange or even high-end single GPU card with ease. Want SLI or crossfire, you will need more power.

There is the power supply online calculator it is quite helpful.

extreme dot outervision dot com /PSUEngine

Excuse me for being so picky, but $100 is nearly 50% of my income so it is a big deal for me to ensure that I get the best out of each dollar.

RollingCamel So you ran 2 video cards not in sli mode? How did switching between them for each process work?

Just changing the monitor's video source....win7 makes a sound and voila! However, setting it up with a softmodded card needs to set the pci-e slot on which the modded card as the 1st or main slot because Rivatuner wouldn't work unless you do that. I had the Ati 4770 on the 16x slot and the 6800GS-Q4600 on the 8x slot. My PSU is simi decent one an HEC 450W and system stability was good, though I'm not utilizing both in the same time.
My system is an unlocked AMD Phenom II X3 to X4.

So the 6800GS was from the era of high emitting and consuming cards unlike the current generation GPUs, the CPU is less efficient than the i5 and with 4 HDDs. The PSU worked just fine.

RollingCamel

06-17-2011, 11:21 PM

You can just get a 400W PSU Antec HCG and a $110 mobo. And save the money for the monitor, you seem to need one or two.

PS. My cousin bought a 3d mouse and it was sweet.

t21jj

06-18-2011, 07:59 AM

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
Even so. Here is a good read about supply needs.
wWw dot anandtech dot com / show /2624

And you missed the point. Something like a GTX580 requires a 600W power supply min along with 1 6 and 1 8 pin power connectors just for the card. Or the GTX590 requires a 700W power supply and 2 8 pin power connectors. The 580 pull 244W and the 590 365W. The point being that if he ever wanted to install a current or future generation gaming card that 500W power supply would not cut it. Just using those two cards as a worst case scenario. The other thing to think about is that most modern gaming cards are 10.5in-11in long, would they fit in that case? My 280 GTX just about don't fit in my Antec 1200 case.

RollingCamel

06-18-2011, 10:21 AM

Originally posted by t21jj:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RollingCamel:
Even so. Here is a good read about supply needs.
wWw dot anandtech dot com / show /2624

And you missed the point. Something like a GTX580 requires a 600W power supply min along with 1 6 and 1 8 pin power connectors just for the card. Or the GTX590 requires a 700W power supply and 2 8 pin power connectors. The 580 pull 244W and the 590 365W. The point being that if he ever wanted to install a current or future generation gaming card that 500W power supply would not cut it. Just using those two cards as a worst case scenario. The other thing to think about is that most modern gaming cards are 10.5in-11in long, would they fit in that case? My 280 GTX just about don't fit in my Antec 1200 case. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are right but it depends on Dash. If he is not a hardcore gamer and will not opt for high end cards then he is certainly in the safe side, by a large margin. GPUs are getting more and more like CPUs in term of targeted TDP so even high-midrange cards like the 6950 and GTX 560 will never ever come close to cause any problem. And as for the future, the replacing generations must be consuming less not more, this policy will not change and a 500W PSU would more than enough.

Check the total system power consumption in real world scenarios:
wWw dot anandtech dot com /show/4344/ nvidias-geforce-gtx-560-top-to-bottom-overclock/15

As for the connectors thing I need to do some research, but it is a good point, depending on his needs and goal.

t21jj

06-18-2011, 02:20 PM

Originally posted by Adambomb:
Bringing my "two years outdated" http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif experience to the table, as others have mentioned, Solidworks graphics demands have not grown in proportion to hardware capabilities. In fact, with the size of models we use, if you don't get absolutely crazy, I still get perfectly acceptable performance on our whole car model with a 5 year old gaming card I paid under $200 for new with a soft mod. Hell, the low-end gaming Radeon 3200 in my laptop handles our 2010 whole car model relatively decently. If I were building a $1000 system, with 6 years of acceptable SAE performance in mind, I would also budget about $150-$200 for a low-end workstation card.

The current trend since about 2003 with Solidworks has been to become more CPU demanding than GPU demanding. The models themselves have not really gotten much more complex to render. Model rebuild times are the times you want to reduce, as every time you change something it has to rebuild. And those are dependent on CPU speed, still mostly on a single processor, and memory speed/system bandwidth. The trend is moving towards more multi-threading, but processor requirements are increasing much faster than graphics requirements.

For motherboards that seems like a pretty simple deal, but I know the lower-end ones, at least for the AM2 and AM3 ones I was shopping for 2-3 years ago, lacked support for the latest Hypertransport and memory standards, or didn't support the power requirements of the latest processors. No reason to hamstring your system by trying to save $50 on a motherboard. Also the motherboard is something I wouldn't want to go cheap on, as a cheapo one could crap out on you in 2 years. And that was another plus for AMD over Intel, in addition to the processors being cheaper the motherboards were $50-$100 less for a comparable one. Speaking of processors, comparing apples to apples, the Core i5 was built to compete with the Phenom II after they started waxing Core2 Quads. To my knowledge the Core i5 will be a step up from a Phenom II, beyond that AMD just really doesn't compete. But if you're shopping for Core i5s the AMD could be a cheaper alternative, will have probably about the same memory and system bandwidth, but be down a bit on grunt processing power.

As for building an SAE computer for a dual role with gaming, I say hell no! We have already had problems with people deciding Call of Duty was more important than FSAE, but at least they weren't tying up SAE resources while they were also not getting their job done. Robot Unicorn Attack and other totally badass flash-games are great to get the "glaze off your eyes" after 26 consecutive hours of cost-report madness, but my general rule is if it has a plot or has any type of graphics hardware requirements, it's not good to have in the SAE lab.
+1
Quoted for truth

@RollingCamel I'm just going to agree to disagree and move on. Everybody has their own needs and goals now and in the future. I'm not going to get into a "magazine race" with you.

@Dash Good luck with the computer build. What you have listed should work great and would allow plenty of room to upgrade if your requirements change.

RollingCamel

06-18-2011, 02:46 PM

@RollingCamel I'm just going to agree to disagree and move on. Everybody has their own needs and goals now and in the future. I'm not going to get into a "magazine race" with you.

I enjoyed your discussion and good luck for Dash.

P.S. I wouldn't call it magazine racing just backing up a point with figures and facts is an objective way to discuss things.

t21jj

06-18-2011, 03:43 PM

P.S. It is if we end up going round and round for god knows how long citing our own "facts and figures". Know body here has the right answer for what Dash needs but Dash.

I'm really done this time.

RollingCamel

06-18-2011, 04:00 PM

True.

Dash

06-24-2011, 01:13 PM

Just an update here. Ordered parts a few days ago and came out right under $1000 after shipping and rebates. Hoping to get it together over the weekend before 4th of July. I'll update afterward to let you know how well/bad it does.

RollingCamel

07-05-2011, 10:19 PM

So how its going? No way any build would badly perform these days.

Dash

07-06-2011, 07:21 PM

The build went much better than expected. I think the hardest part out of everything was trying to fit the wires as neat as possible inside the case. I then decided to put the computer through its paces with various programs. The computer is definitely doing a fantastic job. The Quadro 600 handles our full car model ( no body panels or anything yet ) while running at about 50% power. I ran some FEA just to see what the CPU could do, and it ran full power on all 4 cores during the mesh and the solver. Definitely thinking of buying an aftermarked CPU heatsink/fan so that I can do some higher overclocking ( running the i5 at 3.6Ghz already without any real temp issue, but I've seen that 4.5+ is possible with better cooling ).

Overall, I'm quite pleased and glad that I didn't sink that extra $200 into the GPU for no real reason ( well, no regrets yet :P ).

t21jj

07-06-2011, 08:22 PM

That's good to hear. Absolutely change that stock intel cooler out they suck for over clocking or even running stock. Just keep in mind that most decent air coolers are very large and may not fit in some smaller cases.

Dash

07-06-2011, 08:50 PM

Yeah, I noticed a few of them had fans that were close to 100mm in diameter. Pretty sure my case would fit it though, lots of room inside. If not, I'm not afraid to put an extra " window " in the side of it. hehe

RollingCamel

07-06-2011, 11:58 PM

Dash, good to here that. I wish someday my boss gets us some decent pcs at work rather than the cheapest crappy laptop they bought.

Originally posted by t21jj:
That's good to hear. Absolutely change that stock intel cooler out they suck for over clocking or even running stock. Just keep in mind that most decent air coolers are very large and may not fit in some smaller cases.

+1

Have anything on your mind regarding the heatsink Dash?

Dash

07-08-2011, 07:56 AM

I was thinking something along the lines of http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16835118223 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118223) . Really just needs to be LGA 1155 compatible. Read a lot of reviews, and most of the heatsinks Newegg offers seem to satisfy the consumers. All of them give a massive increase in surface area to cool, and thats really all that matters.

RollingCamel

07-08-2011, 02:18 PM

If the price isn't bothering and you really want to push on air overclocking you must check the Thermalright Archon, you will find it on Amazon for $80.

If a bit too much then there is the Scythe Mugen 2 rev B. for $52 which is awesome in every way possible.

The good old Zalman was a good design years ago, but now there are better newer designs.

Dash

07-28-2011, 01:45 PM

So just throwing another update down if anyone actually cares. Been using the computer for a few weeks now, and its doing a great job in solidworks! I don't have any errors so far, and its wicked fast in comparison to my laptop.

One thing that kind of did surprise me though was the lack of RAM usage. I barely get over 3 gigs used at any one point in time. I'm assuming this is because of the relatively small size of the solidworks files. I have a friend in architecture who just built a similar computer after I built mine, and he uses upwards of 6 gigs when manipulating his larger CAD files.

On a sidenote: Have any of you ever thought about using remote access software? I started using teamviewer a few days ago. It lets you remotely control a computer from any other computer that is connected to the internet. I have found this quite handy because I can take my laptop with me, and then use it to remotely access my desktop to do work on.

Adambomb

07-28-2011, 02:55 PM

Originally posted by Dash:
One thing that kind of did surprise me though was the lack of RAM usage. I barely get over 3 gigs used at any one point in time. I'm assuming this is because of the relatively small size of the solidworks files. I have a friend in architecture who just built a similar computer after I built mine, and he uses upwards of 6 gigs when manipulating his larger CAD files.

Yeah, I've seen the same thing, the fact of the matter is our whole car models just aren't that big. The only time I've needed any more than a modest amount of RAM was doing FEA or CFD, and usually just on the biggest simulations.

Most of the time for my use Firefox takes more RAM than Solidworks...

Raydar

10-03-2011, 09:28 AM

TeamViewer is great, I use it a lot between my home computers and lappy. It is really handy having the file transfer function too if I forgot to transfer something beforehand (and it gets around the pesky uni firewall)

My personal desktop has been donated to the team for some Ansys and Solidworks work lately. It was a damn sight better than our existing workstations, but still wasn't capable of anything groundbreaking:
-Intel Core i7 920 (Quad core, 2.66ghz)
-Radeon HD 6950 2GB (not compatible with Ansys High Performance Computing, dammit NVidia CUDA!)
-2x 500GB HDDs in RAID 0, and another 500gb for miscellaneous rubbish
-12GB RAM (upgraded to 24GB by the team, and still not enough for some complex Ansys models)

Moral of the story:
-RAM is important!!
-Fast storage access is pretty crucial too (SSDs are still a bit pricey, but RAID 0 with HDDs is risky. There are other RAID implementations that will boost multiple HDDs to 'fast enough' speed without risking data loss if/when one HDD dies).
-And the right video card makes even more difference, anywhere from making things look prettier, to speeding up computations.

After a quick look around I found parts for a simulation wet-dream computer: 4x 12-core AMD Opterons, 196GB RAM (Win 7 64 bit limit), Quadro 6000 =P