Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

[Spork Schivago]

Hello!

Anyone want to help save me some time by recommending some good parts for a semi-budget build high performance PC made for SolidWorks Pro?

Program does most of it's work as single thread.

My idea is to purchase the Intel® Core™ i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-core 8th gen processor and safely overclock it to 4.8GHz using a closed-loop liquid cooling unit.

My goal is to have at least 32GB of DDR4 RAM (4 sticks) running at 2666MHz.

My idea is to have at least one PCIe m.2 x4 512GB or larger SSD drive. I'm thinking the Samsung 960 PRO NVMe, such as model number MZ-V6P512BW.

I need the nVidia Quadro P2000 at the minimum, but if money allows it, I'd love to upgrade to the P4000 or even P6000.


So, I need to figure out what RAM to purchase, what motherboard to purchase, what power supply to purchase, what case to purchase, how many fans I should have for the case, and what liquid cooling unit to purchase.

I'd like the PSU to be fully modular, I like those. I'd like the case to look fancy. OS has to be Pro or better, and unfortunately, I might be stuck with 10, which would be absolutely horrible.

For the motherboard, I was looking at the ASROCK z370 Taichi. I'm just not sold on the socket 1151. I like the 2011v3. Any recommendations on any of this so far?

Thanks!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

I'm checking out some benchmarks here for the broadwell-e vs the coffee lake:

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare...50X/3937vs3604

I'm looking at the 8700k vs the 6950x. For workstation, the 6950x scores 117%, whereas the 8700k scores 97%. But is that because of the 4 more cores that I wouldn't be using very much?

If I need raw core-clock speed, fastest RAM I can get, fastest hard drives I can get, what's the optimal choices do you guys feel?


**EDIT: If there's anyone who knows of any E5 Xeon's that would outperform either of those CPUs, or any Xeon's in general, I'd love to hear about it. Having a hard time finding benchmarks for single threaded Xeon's. Found them for general CPUs, but not high performance ones.

I'm looking at https://www.cpubenchmark.net and it's too bad I cannot find a way to filter results. I'd love to see the fastest overclocked single threaded CPU. I got a question now. The E5-2699v4 has 22 cores / 44 threads and 55MB of smart cache. It has a bus speed of 9.6 GT/s QPI. Supports a max of 4 memory channels. A max memory bandwidth of 76.8 GB/s. 40 PCI-e lanes, etc.

Whereas the i7-8700k has 6 cores / 12 threads, 12MB of cache, a bus speed of 8 GT/s DMI3, supports a max of 2 memory channels, A max memory bandwidth of 42.7GB/s. 16 PCI-E lanes, but an unlocked multiplier.

So, out of the two, for a single threaded applications, even though the i7-8700k scores higher on cpubenchmark.net then the E5-2699v4, would the E5-2699v4 be faster? Instead of m.2 drives, I'd have 12Gbps SAS drives, maybe in a RAID10 config...I'd have the quad-ranked 2400 MHz DDR4 sticks...what do you guys think? Ignoring price, which one would be better for a program like SolidWorks? I have a board that supports two E5-2699v4's. It also supports load-reduced RAM. Was thinking despite what SolidWorks says, the E5-2699v4 might be a better way to go....

Here's a cpuworld link comparing the two, listing the various amounts of cache at each level, benefits to each, etc.

[diif]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

We were running solidworks on £400 laptops 3 years ago.

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

For Workstation I'd rather take an 8 Core Ryzen (2700) and ECC Memory with an ASUS, maybe Gigabyte Board.
Because of the ECC Memory. No Core i5, i7, i9 supports ECC RAM, you need a Xeon for that shit for whatever nonsensical reason.

And if you earn money with it and want stability over performance, its not a bad idea to have ECC Memory.

And overclocking on a workhorse?? No, just no.

[jiroy]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

Hi Spork; I'm building right now one case on I7-8700K basis (index 16 600 ), for a customer . I've already bought everything except the cooler .. I'm still confused between Air or water cooling .

I7-8700K cost me 389 $ , and my choice of boards was set after seeing the Intel compatibility boards with this CPU , So I went on for an MSI Z370A PRO . Notice that Intel affirmed that only the chipset 370 work with I7-8700K .
I got the board for 168$ , while APACER was the choice for a 16 GB rams with a cost of 200 $ .

The MSI Z370A has 6 sata entries and lot of excellent functions , but beware , this board support only AMD Crossfire and not SLI Nvidia .

I'm ready for any other questions you have .


P.S.: My country's VAT Prices are not included .

[jiroy]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

About Amd Ryzen , I'm strongly against it . One friend whom was always an AMD fan , is complaining from lot of instability in Amd Ryzen . He updated the Bios three consecutive times and still unstable ..He regret it now .

[Topcat]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

I've got a dual 6-core westmere xeon system @ 3.46 (fastest lga1366 hexcore xeon available) with 96gb ram that should run that beautiful! GPU is a 4gb quadro fx5800... I'd be willing to part with it, or if you want to build your own, I'll give you the parts list.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

For Workstation I'd rather take an 8 Core Ryzen (2700) and ECC Memory with an ASUS, maybe Gigabyte Board.
Because of the ECC Memory. No Core i5, i7, i9 supports ECC RAM, you need a Xeon for that shit for whatever nonsensical reason.

And if you earn money with it and want stability over performance, its not a bad idea to have ECC Memory.

And overclocking on a workhorse?? No, just no.

If we do the Xeon's, I get the ECC memory. ECC memory equals a little slower, but I agree, stability is extremely important here. But still is speed.

Boxx overclocks their systems, safely, and warrants them for 3 years I think? They're specifically made for stuff like SolidWorks. So you can do it, if you do it right and don't go insane. They deal with Intel to get safe voltages, and I think they just increase the vCore on the 8700k.

I think with the server I got, it'd be much faster if I pick the right Xeon, versus building a workstation for 3,000$. I might not be able to afford to upgrade the full server right now, but I could atleast get a CPU and RAM I bet. Those E5-2696v4 don't seem too bad, pricewise, and my understanding, they're just 5 TDP over the 2699v4, everything else is the same.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

I've got a dual 6-core westmere xeon system @ 3.46 (fastest lga1366 hexcore xeon available) with 96gb ram that should run that beautiful! GPU is a 4gb quadro fx5800... I'd be willing to part with it, or if you want to build your own, I'll give you the parts list.

Kinda set on building my own, but send me a PM with the price, if you will, might take you up on it.

We want the P series for the Quadro, but I bet that FX5800 would be a nice upgrade to the workstation you sold me previously.

What OS is that running?

I was hoping of going for a xeon with a LOT of cores, even though it would only come in handy with the rendering.

That's why I asked those questions about speed there. Would something like the E5-2699v4 in my server, with 12Gbps SAS drives, connected to an HPE Smart Array P440ar SAS Controller

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/pub...4496202#N1004A

with quad ranked, load reduced RAM running at 2400MHz, actually out perform an i7-8700k with 16 PCIE lanes, over clocked to 4.8GHz, with an m.2 PCIE NVMe card for single threaded operations?

The 8700k only has 16 PCI-E lanes, the Xeon has all 40. The S series Quadro will be taking 16 of those lanes. With the 8700k, we already have a bottle neck, in my opinion, right there....then we have the M.2 using 4 more lanes? Then the way the CPU "talks" to the RAM....

I like how the Xeon has the QPI, whereas the 8700k has DMI3. The SAS drives would be 12Gbps SSD drives with a true hardware RAID controller. I think that would mean faster speeds than the M.2, especially with that i7-8700k only having 16 PCI-E lanes.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

We were running solidworks on £400 laptops 3 years ago.

What version? I have an xw8600 with an FX4800, 32GB of RAM, and two TR-250 SSD drives running on an HBA (LSI 3000 series, 8-port with a 8061) in a RAID 0 configuration (I know, I should really do a RAID 10), but I'll keep good backups, and right now, it's just too slow for our needs.

Granted, it will run the software, don't get me wrong, but I'm hoping for something quite a bit faster.

In all honesty, I know this is a probably a horrible idea, but if I could upgrade the server with the E5-2696v4's, with the 12Gbp/s SSD SAS drives, and have it faster than the i7-8700k setup with the M.2, I was hoping I could run Windows and SolidWorks in a virtual machine, like that ESXi / vSphere stuff.

I gotta admit, I don't got any experience with ESXi / vSphere, but I did play around with the IBM web Sphere a long time ago (that costed a lot of money). Totally different purposes and NOT a VM. It was a central hub for very large and many, many, many bank transactions. Very big banks would connect and transfer money 24x7 between each other. It was very complicated to setup, and I did it all. I figure if I could learn the IBM web Sphere, I could easily learn the ESXi / vSphere virtual machine software.

[Topcat]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

What OS is that running?

It's 'gender neutral' right now (no OS installed)....but its ran everything from XP64 through Server 2012 R2....You know the guy that contributed S2K12.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

What would you want for it? I found a site selling some new and refurbished authentic HPE stuff. The refurbished stuff all seems to have a lifetime warranty. No P4000's though used and that's what I really want, but I guess it can't be just any P4000. It has to be one made for this server. Firmwares are different or some shit and they're pricey. The hard drives aren't bad, price wise, but don't have a lifetime, for obvious reasons. Lots of different ssd SAS drives to chose from. If I upgrade the server, I want the 12Gbps ssd SAS, but not sure what one. They have ones made for intensive reads, one made for intensive writes, ones made for in the middle, they have value ones, high performance ones. The list goes on and on.

Crazy how much those 2699v4's are going for, seeing how the intro price was around 4k. You can buy a used one off eBay for 6,000$ and then find out its a 2696 or worse, something like an i5.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

What do you guys know about server RAM and ranks?

I was thinking quad rank would be faster than dual rank, but from what I just read on Google (from serverfault.com), single-rank RAM would be fastest.

Is this true? If so, I will populate my server with dual-rank RAM and skip on the very expensive quad-rank or octorank RAM. I want to stick with dual-rank instead of single-rank, because HPE doesn't make a single-rank load-reduced stick for my server. My understanding is the load-reduced RAM is much faster than just the registered DIMMs.

They have this "Smart Memory" thing. How important do you guys think it is that I stick with the HPE RAM? There's some third party stuff that's a hell of a lot cheaper......but is it equally as fast? The specs match, but being 3rd party, I don't think we can rely on specs. What do you guys think?

[diif]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

What version?

It was the education version 3 years ago, maybe 2015 ? It was on the laptops in the design department and on a few desktops which were i5.

[Snayperskaya]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

Choosing workstation parts depend on what your application benefits most:

* Higher clocks or more cores?
* High qty of RAM or higher speeds?
* How many expansion slots (PCIe) are you going to use?

Some quick tips:

* E5-269x parts are NOT budget-friendly. Being the cream of the crop (mostly), they come with a high price tag, even on used parts.

* RAM rank: Lower ranks (Single, Dual) have less density per module. Some motherboards can't achieve high clocks on higher ranks (Quad, Octa)/are limited to a number of max rank per channel (it affects mostly 1366 servers). For an example, check pages 29-32 here: https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...ce48c94a21.pdf

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

It was the education version 3 years ago, maybe 2015 ? It was on the laptops in the design department and on a few desktops which were i5.

I know when I had Ultimate installed, fully updated, in trial mode, it ran slower than dog crap on the workstation. I now have 7 Pro installed, fully updated, and I just finished installation last night. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'd still like to update the server or design a workstation that can handle running SolidWorks much faster.

It's hard finding answers online to one of my biggest questions.

Which would be faster:

An M.2 PCIe NVMe x4 SSD card running on a CPU with 16 PCI-E lanes, and a Quadro P4000 series, using 16 of those lanes,

OR!!!
12Gbps SAS SSD drives in a RAID10 (or 0) configuration, running on a CPU with 40 PCI-E lanes, using an HPE P440ar HBA:




I'm thinking the 12Gbps SAS SSD drives. If I'm understanding that PDF there, each drive has a dedicated link to the controller, so in RAID0, each drive would operate at 12Gbps sustained. Being SSD drives, there should be no delays because of spinups or anything like that. So I would think I'd get a throughput of 24Gbps, sustained, which would be faster than the burst speed of the M.2.

Finally, with the limited number of lanes on the i7-8700k, I feel there'd be a bottle neck and the video card would be fighting with the M.2 drive to operate at full speeds, whereas on the server, everyone has their own lanes.

I think the server would be a better investment and updating it, overall, would be faster than building a new workstation with an i7-8700k.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

Choosing workstation parts depend on what your application benefits most:

* Higher clocks or more cores?
* High qty of RAM or higher speeds?
* How many expansion slots (PCIe) are you going to use?

Some quick tips:

* E5-269x parts are NOT budget-friendly. Being the cream of the crop (mostly), they come with a high price tag, even on used parts.

* RAM rank: Lower ranks (Single, Dual) have less density per module. Some motherboards can't achieve high clocks on higher ranks (Quad, Octa)/are limited to a number of max rank per channel (it affects mostly 1366 servers). For an example, check pages 29-32 here: https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...ce48c94a21.pdf

I thought I had answered these earlier, but maybe I didn't. The program mainly benefits from higher core clock speed, although multi-threading will come in handy during rendering.

32GB of RAM is what the company recommends for optimal performance. More would be okay, but isn't needed for this program alone. Fastest RAM is most desirable.

We will be using 1 expansion slot, for the GPU. Unless, of course, eventually, we purchase another CPU, more RAM, another secondary riser, and another P4000. Then each riser card would be using 1 slot each.

Yes, E5-269* is expensive. I was hoping though, that with something like the E5-2696v4, used, we could run the program in a virtual machine. Although the 22-cores would only help during rendering for the program and the base core clock speed is what the program would mostly be using, the virtual machine itself would benefit from the multiple cores.


I understand that lower ranks have less density per module. With our board, the RAM is guaranteed to run at the speeds specified, regardless of the ranking. But it seems there's more to registered RAM than clock rates, voltages, and speed. Their load-reduced RAM is supposed to be much faster than their non-load reduced RAM. Both are registered. Load reduced is more expensive.

If you check the chart here:

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/pub...r_na-c05240460

And scroll down to the v4 processors, and look at the load reduced, you'll noticed that the dual and quad ranked 32GB and 64GB modules match in clock rate, speed, and voltage. With a certain Dell server, I was reading for optimal performance, purchase dual rank, not single.

But with HPE, I have the choice of Dual Rank Load Reduced, Quad Rank, and Octo Rank, even though the Octo Rank is not listed on that page. So would the best option be purchasing one 32GB dual rank load reduced stick? Or, would I have faster speeds by purchasing four 8GB Single Rank sticks? All of my choices that I'm considering are the 2400MHz ones for the v4 processors. With this server, I don't think there's any options for overclocking, and I do not want to overclock the server. What happens if I purchase four 32GB dual rank Load Reduced sticks? Would they outperform the single rank four 8GB non-Load Reduced sticks?

The RAM has it's only cooling system, the CPUs have their own cooling systems, etc.

Thanks.

[diif]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

Which would be faster:

An M.2 PCIe NVMe x4 SSD card running on a CPU with 16 PCI-E lanes, and a Quadro P4000 series, using 16 of those lanes,

OR!!!
12Gbps SAS SSD drives in a RAID10 (or 0) configuration, running on a CPU with 40 PCI-E lanes, using an HPE P440ar HBA:

I very much doubt you'd tell the difference either way.
You're running CAD software to design something quite basic, fast I/O isn't massively important.
And looking at some benchmarks for graphics cards with Solidworks, there's a little difference in the fps but not much.

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

About Amd Ryzen , I'm strongly against it . One friend whom was always an AMD fan , is complaining from lot of instability in Amd Ryzen . He updated the Bios three consecutive times and still unstable ..He regret it now .

Why the hell didn't he RMA the defective components?!

What you are posting really sounds like something is broken.
I hate it when you don't do have problems with the hardware and don't try to fix it...
What would you have done when it was an Intel?


I have a Ryzen myself (1700x on BIostar X370GT7) and no problems whatsoever, though only DDR4-2400 Memory...

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Anyone wanna help me with a 3,055.00$ semi-budget build?

I very much doubt you'd tell the difference either way.
You're running CAD software to design something quite basic, fast I/O isn't massively important.
And looking at some benchmarks for graphics cards with Solidworks, there's a little difference in the fps but not much.

Yes, for SolidWorks alone, we might not notice much difference, but I'd still like to know, benchmark wise, which would be faster?

Eventually, the designs won't be basic at all, but very complex. Now, it doesn't matter so much, but it will determine which way our soon to be company goes in many ways.

The PC we either build or the server we upgrade will essentially be the heart of our company. There's other software programs that will be running on it, some that will require multiple cores, some that have the potential to be very write / read intensive (in regards to the hard drives), hence the question.