qclabrat
Well-Known Member
my daughter takes a lot of engineering and design classes in HS and our computers at home aren't cutting it. Between a 3 year old Dell workstation with i5 and a one year old Lenovo laptop with i7, neither are doing the job. She runs a fair amount of 3D modeling on AutoCAD Revit and the rendering time is probably the biggest issue. I started researching for a new computer this past week and figured with my computer background, it wouldn't take long to pick something out. Wrong...
Though the parts are generally the same, specs/details are completely different from the Xeon servers I used to build for work/home use 20 years ago. I'd prefer to just buy a complete system but not opposed to building if that's the most sensible route. First considered a gaming computer as I imagined it would have similar technical specs, but apparently not so. I personally have not clue what makes a good gaming computer, but just noticed it's not so much about the CPU. Here's some user requirements and info I've picked up the last few days on the web. Mucho gracias for those chiming in.
- Workstation or Desktop form factor (I'll pony up for a good laptop when she goes to college)
- i7 or Xeon? new i9?? don't think I'll need a dual CPU. I've read a bunch on Xeon vs i7 comparison but nothing was conclusive. Hear Gen 7 i7s can overclock to more than a Xeon, but Xeon more cores. Clock speed I hear is important to rendering and since Revit is multi-thread will need multi-core CPU.
- how much memory and what type? Some of those files she works with is pretty damn big, 32 or 64GB?
The next two is where it gets the most fuzzy; storage and graphics card. Still reading on these as I'm not sure whether to go full SSD NVMe vs hybrid with HDDs. For GPUs most recommend either a AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro. No real experience on these so could use some help.
Though the parts are generally the same, specs/details are completely different from the Xeon servers I used to build for work/home use 20 years ago. I'd prefer to just buy a complete system but not opposed to building if that's the most sensible route. First considered a gaming computer as I imagined it would have similar technical specs, but apparently not so. I personally have not clue what makes a good gaming computer, but just noticed it's not so much about the CPU. Here's some user requirements and info I've picked up the last few days on the web. Mucho gracias for those chiming in.
- Workstation or Desktop form factor (I'll pony up for a good laptop when she goes to college)
- i7 or Xeon? new i9?? don't think I'll need a dual CPU. I've read a bunch on Xeon vs i7 comparison but nothing was conclusive. Hear Gen 7 i7s can overclock to more than a Xeon, but Xeon more cores. Clock speed I hear is important to rendering and since Revit is multi-thread will need multi-core CPU.
- how much memory and what type? Some of those files she works with is pretty damn big, 32 or 64GB?
The next two is where it gets the most fuzzy; storage and graphics card. Still reading on these as I'm not sure whether to go full SSD NVMe vs hybrid with HDDs. For GPUs most recommend either a AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro. No real experience on these so could use some help.