Cad PC Build Help/Advice

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Grayham

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Hi,

Sorry for the rather long first post.

After 7 years of faultless service its time to trade my old pc in. I am going to attempt to build my own this time. The PC will be mostly used for 3D CAD and possibly some rendering. I have a budget of around £700. I have listed the possible spec below, but the area that is puzzling me is the processor. As AutoCAD is ram intensive would a faster dual core be better suited than a slower quad core?

Many thanks for reading, any comments or help will be most appreciated.


Power Supply
800W 14cm Blue LED Fan PSU - 20+4pin 4x SATA 4x PCI-E
Cost - £58.99

Case
Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Mid Tower Case
Cost - £29.96

Hard Drive
Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive SATA300 7200rpm 32MB Cache Caviar Black - OEM
Cost - £59.62

Mother Board
Asus P5Q PRO P45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Cost - £104.99

Processor
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair)
Cost - £162.84

Or

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.5GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed
Cost - £161.50

Or

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz Socket 775 1066MHz 8MB (2x4MB(4MB per core pair)) L2 Cache OEM Processor
Cost – £155.94

Or

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) Socket 775 Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail
Cost - £167.87

CPU Fan
Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
Cost - £16.42

Graphics Card
BFG 9800GTX+ OC 512MB
Cost - £154.90

Memory
2 x OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual
Cost - £130

Or

2 or 3 x OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold Memory
Cost -£87.20 / £130

OS
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English
Cost - £88.03
 
What brand power supply is that? Plus 800w is overkill for your system, all you need is like 500-600w.

If you're a hardcore gamer, then get the E8500, it will out perform a quad in gaming. But if you're more of an multi-tasker/light gamer, then get the Q6600. Just warning though, they don't overclock as well as they used to. If you could stretch your budget, maybe look into a Q9300/Q9400.

For the video card, maybe look into a 4850/4870. Then you'll be able to crossfire in the future with that motherboard.

For the ram, go with whatever set has the lowest timings. Both are good brands.

Edit: Whoops, forgot this is a CAD build and not for gaming. Get a quad core for sure.
 
If you're doing CAD, a quad is a must. All of those CAD applications take advantage of multi-core cpus. It will especially help you when you do any rendering. Try to get a q9400/9300.
 
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