Need help building a workstation

[MichaelBlackhat]

So i am having a hard time trying to find the best parts for a workstation.

It has to run Adobe illustrator alot. And sometimes it will need to render an image of 3d drawings with solidworks.
the pc is not intended for gaming.

the budget is 600$.

please let me know what is important to look for. (or recommend a full list of parts)

 

[t53186]

Did you say the budget is $600.00 USD? Illustrator will run well on just amount and modern (new) PC. Solidworks, rendering, definitely look here for the expert advice http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/benchmarks.htm

 

[mcconkeymike]

I've built 6 workstations for Solidworks at my job and I went with an i7-4790k, Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, 16gb RAM, 240gb SSD, and ATI FirePro W5000 and my engineers say that they work very nicely with the renderings and whatnot. I know for certain that this is above your budget but I know it will do what you want. You can probably step down to an i5 and a lower video card for Adobe, but that will hinder you in Solidworks.

 

[MichaelBlackhat]

Did you say the budget is $600.00 USD? Illustrator will run well on just amount and modern (new) PC. Solidworks, rendering, definitely look here for the expert advice http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/benchmarks.htm

We have euros, but i used $ since its more common. so around 550 euros will be the budget.

 

[t53186]

Agree that would work well. Wondering about that budget # though..

I've built 6 workstations for Solidworks at my job and I went with an i7-4790k, Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, 16gb RAM, 240gb SSD, and ATI FirePro W5000 and my engineers say that they work very nicely with the renderings and whatnot. I know for certain that this is above your budget but I know it will do what you want. You can probably step down to an i5 and a lower video card for Adobe, but that will hinder you in Solidworks.

 

[Eximo]

Yeah, not really sure on this one. Even picking up a used workstation from a few generations back is really out of budget.

Old Dell Precision T series workstations are around that price, these would have low-end Quadros and firepros. Not 100% sure about recent versions of software though, there could be difficulties.

 

[MichaelBlackhat]

I've built 6 workstations for Solidworks at my job and I went with an i7-4790k, Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, 16gb RAM, 240gb SSD, and ATI FirePro W5000 and my engineers say that they work very nicely with the renderings and whatnot. I know for certain that this is above your budget but I know it will do what you want. You can probably step down to an i5 and a lower video card for Adobe, but that will hinder you in Solidworks.

Solidworks won't be used that much. Overal its used for adobe illustrator. Did you build them with 2 storage devices? i heard having 2 ssds or 1ssd+1hdd is better.

so far ive come up with this:

cpu: g4560
gpu: quadro k620 or gtx 1050 2gb
ram: 8gb ddr4 (will upgrade to 16)
mobo: b250 gigabyte?
psu: 430w seasonic 80+ bronze
ssd 120gb + 1tb hdd
and a simple case.

would this work out?

for used parts i found a Asus Sabertooth X58 + Xeon x5660 (both used) for 190$. should i buy these?

*the xeon x5660 is overclocked to 4.0ghz.

 

[MichaelBlackhat]

Yeah, not really sure on this one. Even picking up a used workstation from a few generations back is really out of budget.

Old Dell Precision T series workstations are around that price, these would have low-end Quadros and firepros. Not 100% sure about recent versions of software though, there could be difficulties.

it doesnt need to be a "workstation", it just needs to handle illustrator smooth, solidworks isnt a high priority

 

[Eximo]

Your build would work for Illustrator, can't say much on the performance though.

I've not run illustrator or solidworks on a dual core before. At work our guys use very high end Dell Precisions with Ivy-Bridge E 8 Core high clock speed CPUs and Quadro K4000 (Though I think the latest ones in are Haswell-E with Quadro Ms, haven't seen one, a weird side effect of getting our hardware first since we run the deployment), or use mobile i7-4810HQ with high end mobile Quadros.

I'm sure people use Solidworks on our more mundane laptops, but hopefully only for viewing and not a lot of editing. They just have i5 U class chips and no discrete GPU.

 

[MichaelBlackhat]

Your build would work for Illustrator, can't say much on the performance though.

I've not run illustrator or solidworks on a dual core before. At work our guys use very high end Dell Precisions with Ivy-Bridge E 8 Core high clock speed CPUs and Quadro K4000 (Though I think the latest ones in are Haswell-E with Quadro Ms, haven't seen one, a weird side effect of getting our hardware first since we run the deployment), or use mobile i7-4810HQ with high end mobile Quadros.

I'm sure people use Solidworks on our more mundane laptops, but hopefully only for viewing and not a lot of editing. They just have i5 U class chips and no discrete GPU.

i could buy a better cpu and stick with the integraded graphics for a while.
or buy the xeon x5660 (4ghz OC) + Asus Sabertooth X58 (both used) for 190$

the budget is temporary, i could upgrade in a few months.