CAD Workstation with a budget of £600-700

[cptwhite_uk]

Well isn't this thread a throwback, requesting actual hardware advise

I'm considering building a system at home specifically for CAD work. It doesn't need to be super high end, but I will likely be using it for some GPU rendering and light product development and basic finite element analysis work.

If I have a fixed budget of say £600-700, I'm wondering where I'm going to be get best bang-per-buck.

This budget might open up options I haven't considered like lower tier threadripper, older workstation base units and the like. I expect I'd still want a semi-decent GPU and a minimum 32Gb RAM, but I'm not quite sure what the best approach might be for this kind of system.

If nothing else it's an interesting question for maximising a system for this workload.

So what should I be considering / where do I start?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You will need to look at what dGPUs are best supported with the packages you want to use? So what software are you looking at?

AFAIK,some of these applications can also be quite single thread dependent and they might be more optimised for Intel CPUs. But a Core i5 7500F bundle might offer more flexibility:
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-5...pu-bundle.html

I would probably look at an RTX3060 12GB on the dGPU side as it has 12GB of VRAM. The Core i5 12600K was on offer recently at £160 on Scan which might have been ideal but its gone up in price.

64GB of DDR4 isn't too expensive either.

Edit!!

Just looking at the budget. The dGPU alone will be £200~£250. Case,PSU and an SSD would around £150ish.

Gives you around £300ish for a CPU,motherboard and RAM. You could probably get a Ryzen 7 5700X,B550 motherboard and 32GB of DDR4 into the budget.

[cptwhite_uk]

Software would be Solidworks, which supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs for GPU rendering, after briefly searching. But I'm not sure if one has greater support than the other.

Core i5 7500F ....I think something might be wrong there

I have an offer for the B650 motherboard for £90 locally (mATX). I also have a suitable case (ATX for reference).

So that can be factored in.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Software would be Solidworks, which supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs for GPU rendering, after briefly searching. But I'm not sure if one has greater support than the other.

Core i5 7500F ....I think something might be wrong there

I have an offer for the B650 motherboard for £90 locally (mATX). I also have a suitable case (ATX for reference).

So that can be factored in.

Meant to say Ryzen 5! Here is a benchmark database for the software:
https://www.solidworks.com/support/share-your-score/
https://www.solidworks.com/support/hardware-benchmarks

Puget Systems also has some benchmarks too:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutio...commendations/

Edit!!

From a quick check,it does seem to prefer Nvidia cards and Intel CPUs. Also a Quadro might have some advantages too.

[ik9000]

Software would be Solidworks, which supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs for GPU rendering, after briefly searching. But I'm not sure if one has greater support than the other.

Core i5 7500F ....I think something might be wrong there

Play around with a British machine

I have an offer for the B650 motherboard for £90 locally (mATX). I also have a suitable case (ATX for reference).

So that can be factored in.

Play around with a virtual machine and limit its performance spec to see what you do and don't need. The general rule for workstations is multi core and don't skimp on the ram or vram. It will depend on the model complexity how much or little you need

[cptwhite_uk]

I'm going to throw it on my old HP Z620 which has 64Gb RAM / 8 core 16 thread Sandy Bridge Extreme / RTX 3060 12Gb and see how it performs. Might be enough for me, but I'll have to report back.

[ik9000]

I imagine it will be just fine, but do let us know!