Biggest Build Ever coming up

[Dave Rice]

Installed a Synology server last year for a small Civil Engineering consultant last year (he does big things like motorway junctions). Anyway he’s pleased with what I did and the VPN has changed his working life, so he’s asked me to look at a new CAD machine for him.

I know the guy that does some work for him and he curses that his laptop can only take 32GB but we do know an SSD makes a massive difference (temp files get hit a lot). So started with an MSI Z370-A PRO Motherboard with i7-8700K Processor Bundle, 64GB DDR4 and a 512GB WD Black M2 SSD 3,400 MB/s Read & 2,500 MB/s Write and some liquid cooling. Other quality bits and pieces £1750

He wants more ram! So stab number two is  i7-7800X LGA 2066 on an Asus X299 MARK 2 with 128GB of DDR4, beefed up liquid cooler but everything else the same. £2600

Please can I have a look at Xeons for more ram ? Problem is those that do are big on cores and slow on speed which is the wrong way around for his needs. £4k+

I reckon he’ll end up with #2, but just the CPU on that is more than I usually get to spend on a system.

There will be no disk drives in evidence. Once jobs are finished they get archived to the Synology. It sure keeps the case tidy.

[PlaneMan]

Good luck Dave,should be a nice earner!!!

[Bob Williams]

Great piece of business Dave, good luck!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Look carefully at the graphics card and do a little research on compatibility with the software used by the company. Autodesk used to be awfully ‘picky’ about graphics hardware. Try this link for examples.

[The Duke]

It’s been along time since I’ve built a good PC. I love the shopping part, really geek out. Then when all the tiny boxes arrive it’s like exams.

I suppose it’s how women feel when they enter a cloths shop. In the old days of mm, I liked nothing more than picking out my dream pc parts, then the ones I could afford ?.

It was a sad day when they dropped them adds.

Shame it’s not your rig dave, but there should be a nice bit of profit in it, and it’s always just fun to play with the big boy toys, instead of the usual business pc. Build to a tight budget.

[tadka]

Last night I watch a video about a new ASUS ROG gaming mobile phone, It’s specs blow my PC, that I still game on, out of the pond…

[The Duke]

I seen that last night too, as good as it looks and will be, it won’t go anywhere. Far to niche a product. It will be expensive, and probably no carriers will carry it.

If a carrier picks it up, it may be a different t story, but even then, it’s so niche, and so highend, I just don’t see it working out.

And all the add ons, they will be very expensive. on top of that, the games that would take advantage of this is minimal. Fortnite, and pub g maybe. I don’t like the new Switch, but if your a gamer that,(or a ds I’d take the ds) and a phone would be a better option.

Although I’d take one tomorrow. Hopefully in normal use it inderclocks itself, as even with a 4kMah battery it’s not lasing a day At over 3ghz and all the ram.

My P20p has 4kMah battery, and it’s amazing how long it lasts. I recon for light user, you could get 3 days out of it, with trying. I can get over a day. Which is good, as I just keep it between 20 and 80, usually just plug it in for 40 mins when it hits 30 percent, which will take it past 80 easily. Fast charge FTW. The pixel was good, the current fast charge is great.

[Bob Williams]

Ed P wrote:

Look carefully at the graphics card and do a little research on compatibility with the software used by the company. Autodesk used to be awfully ‘picky’ about graphics hardware. Try this link for examples.

I took a good look at that, having once used another programme for graphic design. Very good advice Ed, if Dave is not aware of it. So much has moved on, so much help available today that I could have used!

EDIT: regarding new builds, my hands shake now and general health is not good enough to put parts together with accuracy. Strangely, my IT engineer gson still likes me to be there when he builds a new monster system. Says nobody can show him how to tidy and hide cables as well. Makes me feel useful!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

It’s going to be #2 with 64GB for now. Had to go with CCL Online to get all the bits and delivery date I needed.

Main change is it’s now a Gigabyte X299 UD4 Pro, Corsair Carbide 270R and Thermaltake Paris 650W 80 + Gold.

They do use Autocad but the main app is some line of business Civil Engineering CAD I forget the name of.

I’ll take some photos.

[The Duke]

Linus tech tips done a good video of the diminishing returns of ram. I think they concluded the drop off after 32gb is big, after 64gb the return is almost nothing

Only go above 64gb if the files you are using are above 64gh (probably 40gb knowing Windows overheads etc..).

Basically if you know you need more, you’ll know you do. If you don’t know, you don’t need more.

On LLT they do alot of 4 and 8k recording, and that eats ram, and I think he even questioned if they needed so much. And then have a hand full of editors all accessing the main server pc all day. They have some mental setups. Severs Google would want list after (probably).

[Dave Rice]

They have digitisations of entire counties topography. All I hear from them is more ram, more ram! The graphics cards they use are nothing special at all.

Ironically I’ve just started refurbishing a top of the range CAD machine from 8 or 9 years ago. H55 chipset, i7-870 and 8GB of DDR3 1333 ram, 2 dead 1TB spinners in RAID 1 and some monster NVidia gaming card that dims the lights when you turn it on. Probably cost a fortune.

It’s fine now I’ve put an SSD in it, but a modern Pentium Dual Core feels quicker. I think one of the new Pentium 2+2 would bury it.

[Ed P]

Without knowledge of their needs, I’d shoot from the hip and suggest that maybe a Workstation Graphics card should be considered e.g. a Radeon FirePro WX series card might be useful if they are manipulating any of their geo/topo maps (sounds like they are doing a lot of Photoshop or similar layering) .

[The Duke]

I couldnt get your link to work ed, but is that gpu one of those stupidly expensive ones? If so, I’m going to mention LLT again. They got one and tested it against either against a titan pro or the to gtx1080 (think the former) and there was nothing in it. Or nothing worth twice their cost or more.

The issue now is trying to get a decent gpu for a decent price. The folders are killing the high end market. Gpu and ram is silly money  atm.

[Ed P]

The AMD 7100 is a VR ready workstation card – expensive but under £500 depending on dram size. link

I’m guessing that VR might be a useful productivity tool in that sort of mapping/layering business.

(I’m not sure what LLT is, I must have missed that post)

[Dave Rice]

They seem quite happy with a GTX 1050 Ti. It’s way more powerful than anything any of them have and is literally the last thing anyone mentions.

A lot of these guys use 17″  high end i7 laptops with GeForce graphics and stuff it with as much ram as they can. They like 2 x HDD, an SSD for the working set and a spinner for archiving.

[Bob Williams]

My No.2 G’son has a girl Mate (not GF granddad!) who is about to go into Uni for a Mechanical Engineering degree, with the emphasis upon Civil Engineering. He says she uses some sort of complex CAD programme which baffles him: he is in the last year of study in Electrical installations, they have been mates since Primary school  and she has always said that she values and respects him as a mate and wants no BF’s, she is totally career-fixated. From the beginning of school, and Nursery, they helped each other. He is severely dyslexic but very practical and ‘hands-on’: she is the exact opposite. In one person, they would probably be the biggest Polymath! She continues to help him and says that she will do so after going to Uni: he says that she has taught him as much as College, she says he taught her more practical stuff than college. I still think they may wind up together in a few years, they have their own private language and way of working.

Anyway, that’s my usual tortuous path around asking him to supply the name of this programme. I’ll pass it on if it’s useful.

I have complicated, all very different grandchildren. They continually astonish me, often they puzzle me, always they delight me.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Probably the now antique CATIA program (Dassault Systèmes). When I was a young engineer this was pretty much the standard in contractor’s shops and it is still going strongish after 50 years as 3DSATIA but I’d say that Autodesk now probably has more adherents.

[Dave Rice]

I know of all of those from my time on BAE Systems. It’s none of those.

Doug is 60ish, been in the business for a long time. I trust him to know what he needs.

[Ed P]

Sorry Dave – I should have said my comment was addressed to Bob’s comment about his GSon’s friend.

[keith with the teef]

Mental.

Davey ravey gravey you got to do the right thing.

Post up a picture of the rig/ rigs, inc internal shot.

[Author]

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