Building a workstation for architecture work for 550$

[vawiro]

Hi I am an architecture student . I want to build a workstation for modelling, rendering and animation purposes. I mainly use 3ds max. Sketchup, lumion and vray. My budget is 550$ . I am kind of a noob in this matter so a detailed answer will be appreciated and more helpful.

 

[2sidedpolygon]

Alright, here's something I came up with. Your budget makes it a tight squeeze, but I managed to get some pretty good specs in there.

CPU: Ryzen 3 1200; A budget-oriented processor that will do well in the programs you're using due to its multithreaded performance.

Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-A320M-S2H Micro ATX AM4; The cheapest board compatible with the Ryzen 3 1200. It's nothing fancy, but it should get the job done.

Memory G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400; Some cheap, aesthetically pleasing RAM with a speed that's at least acceptable. It's not great, but again, it gets the job done.

Hard Drive: WD Blue 1TB; The go-to hard drive for builds in this price range, you can't really go wrong here. It might be a good idea to switch this out for a lower-capacity SSD if storage size isn't a big concern for you.

Graphics Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti; A solid card with a good aesthetic and a great price.

Case: Cougar - MX330 ATX Mid Tower; A case that's a great deal right now due to a mail-in rebate. Good in both looks and functionality.

Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX; A fantastically priced PSU that's available super cheap right now due to a mail-in reabate, similarly to the case. It's also semi-modular, which means you can remove some cables from it, minimizing clutter in your build.


There you go, $500 budget build. Enjoy.

 

[william p]

In that budget if you're willing to go old school the Dell T5500 has the power and flexibility to do what you need.
They start at about $125 for a bare bones, add 100$ more if you wnat 2 CPUs. They support 3 channel DDR3 1333 ECC RDIMMs which are $30 8GB modules new.
45nm Xeon 4C/8T can be had for $20 or less.32nm 6C/12T can be found in the $40 range unless you get into the unlocked versions whaich are single CPU only and won't run in that.
The RDIMMs allow huge memory capacity. Quadro GPUs have ECC RAM also I believe and will be certified to work with technical apps.
You could try configuring something here and see what you get.
http://www.ebaystores.com/PC-Servers-and-Parts-Inc_W0QQ_sasiZ1
The better CPUs are the X5680,X5690, X5675, and the fastest is the 4C/8T X5687 3.6GHz. There are dozens of slower low powered options also.
You can look at the performance of these systems here.
https://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-Precision-WorkStation-T5500/78
You can then compare it to newer systems in your budget.
If you're going to actually DO architecture I would suggest getting ECC type equipment and not gaming parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucflj-MsJBI