New workstation specs

[Liamthanks]

Hi all,

I am looking at building a PC to use from home for some private work or to be able to work from home when sick. I have been doing a bit of research and have put together what I believe to be a sufficient system for the projects I intend to work on. Can you advise if there is anything below that is overkill or potentially needs to be upgraded to get the perfect system? I was thinking that potentially a Ryzen 5 CPU could be a cheaper alternative.

CPU: AMD AM4 Ryzen 7 1700X - 3.4Ghz 8 Core, 16 Threads - ($319)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-M2 - ($105)
Graphics Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB - ($395)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 16gb (2x 8gb) - ($225)
SSD: WD Blue 3D 500GB SSD - ($119)
HDD: Seagate 3.5" Barracude 2TB - ($85)
Case & Power Supply: Thermaltake Versa N-25 w/ 600W Power Supply- ($115)
DVD Writer: Asus SATA DVD Writer - ($18)
Total:$1,381

[Anonymous]

Standard sata SSD is fine really... M.2 drives are significantly faster but in real world use you probably won't need the difference in speed especially if you're trying to keep it to more of a budget.

The CPU and GPU will do you well, going cheaper on CPU probably isn't the best advised thing when using ArchiCAD especially if you intend do be doing any renders (Cinerender loves lots of cpu cores and higher clock speeds)

I have Ryzen too (Threadripper however) which I haven't had any issues with, they are very good value workstation CPU's for CAD work.

Also I have pretty much the same GPU but haven't really found any need to get any better GPU unless if I decided to swap to using something that utilises GPU better.
(I sometimes play games too and find the 6GB 1060 will do 1080p and some 1440p gaming just fine)

Maybe a bit more RAM would be useful to have, its also something that if you go not too much now you can always upgrade it with more later too depending on use.

The only other thing that I would strongly suggest changing is your power supply to something better. The one you selected is okay but cheaping out on PSU is never a good idea. Get 80Plus Gold rating minimum. If your PSU fails it can damage other hardware in the PC. You should be able to get a higher rated PSU for not much more than what you're looking at currently. I wouldn't ever really use a case standard PSU, get case and PSU seperate from each other. It might be a little more but I can't stress enough how bad can be if you cheap out on a PSU.

Seems like overall a pretty decent value workstation build though. Let me know if there's anything else you need to know.

[lagodue]

LaszloNagy wrote:
My desktop is very similar to the configuration you are trying to put together, and I am very happy with it. A few thoughts:

SSD: I agree with the guys who recommended the Samsung EVO SSD. The EVO is much cheaper than the PRO and the PRO is not that much faster to justify spending so much more money on it for me. On the other hand, these NMVe SSDs with the M2 connector are multiple times faster than SATA SSDs.

HDD: I agree with the RAID suggestion. AMD Ryzen chipsets support RAID for no additional cost. So I actually bought 2x3 TB HHD and put them in a RAID array for data redundancy (I think that is RAID 1). I have no worries about data loss no at all.

RAM: I would recommend 32 GB of RAM, you would not want to save money on RAM. In my experience, the most important system components in order of priority for me are:

- RAM (amount of RAM, not clockrate)
- CPU
- Storage (NMVe SSD)
- GPU

If you run out of RAM, your work is slowed down considerably, regardless of how good your other system components. You can have 16 threads of CPU cores running at 4 GHz, but if you run out of RAM, your system slows down considerably. You will be using this machine for at least 4-5 years because CPUs are not getting that much faster these days so a new computer lasts a lot longer than, e.g. a decade ago. By enough RAM, that is my point.

Laszlo - will your configuration fit in a micro/mini chassis? I like the smaller form factor.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I am not sure it will, but it may, you should ask some guys at a hardware store.
My machine is in a midi tower. It has enough space in it still, but I chose this size intentionally, because it is large enough so it can have 120 mm fans, which are powerful but calm, full-size motherboard, water-cooled processor, full-length graphics card, 2 HDDs, DVD drive, NVMe slot for the SSD drive on the motherboard, 4 memory slots, etc.
This much stuff may or may not fit into a mini case. And again, even if they do, the midi case is good because of the great airflow; the mini case is smaller so it may not have that good airflow so the system gets hotter.
I plan on using this config for 4-5 years, so I tried to go for the best solution for my requirements.
It is you call, you should consult some hardware experts.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I disagree with some of the earlier comments on GPUs. For the most part, any dedicated GPU is good enough for ARCHICAD itself.

HOWEVER... if you want to use the free TwinMotion rendering app now ... or the licensed version that comes with ray tracing with ARCHICAD 23 ... you will want the most powerful GPU you can get, as it is entirely GPU based. Because the Unreal Engine is a gaming engine... look for benchmarks showing the higher frame rates FPS. TwinMotion barely uses the CPU. The GPU will max out and run hot. But, it is an amazing thing to behold if you have a powerful enough card.

[lagodue]

LaszloNagy wrote:
I am not sure it will, but it may, you should ask some guys at a hardware store.
My machine is in a midi tower. It has enough space in it still, but I chose this size intentionally, because it is large enough so it can have 120 mm fans, which are powerful but calm, full-size motherboard, water-cooled processor, full-length graphics card, 2 HDDs, DVD drive, NVMe slot for the SSD drive on the motherboard, 4 memory slots, etc.
This much stuff may or may not fit into a mini case. And again, even if they do, the midi case is good because of the great airflow; the mini case is smaller so it may not have that good airflow so the system gets hotter.
I plan on using this config for 4-5 years, so I tried to go for the best solution for my requirements.
It is you call, you should consult some hardware experts.

Thx for the info.
I will replace my entire system soon, and am doing many web crawls looking at the options.
Would a high-spec gaming PC work well for AC?
Are there any cpu/gpu issues to be aware of?

[Laszlo Nagy]

lagodue wrote:
Thx for the info.
I will replace my entire system soon, and am doing many web crawls looking at the options.
Would a high-spec gaming PC work well for AC?
Are there any cpu/gpu issues to be aware of?

Yes, I think it would work well. No specific issues I am aware of. AMD CPUs are a great bang for the buck, that is why I bought one. If you look at my rig's specs, it was pretty high spec 1.5 years ago when I bought it. Since then, there are faster CPUs and GPUs, but it is still very fast, will serve me well for several years.
Make sure you buy enough RAM (more important that CPU speed, in my opinion), and an NVMe SSD for your system drive (very fast file operations).
A high spec gaming GPU will be useful if you plan on using Twinmotion. When a new generation comes out I usually don't by the strongest ones, but the one with the best price/performance ratio. Right now, for me that is a close call between the NVidia GeForce RTX 2060 and the GTX 1660:

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

I know GRAPHISOFT recommends professional GPU cards (e.g. NVidia Quadro), but I never really had any serious issues with GeForce gaming cards either.

[Lingwisyer]

A big question between the RTX2060 and the GTX1660 is whether the RTX cores will be utilised by the programs we use any time in the near future. Is so, the value of the RTX2060 skyrockets. Same question with any other cards with dedicated ray-tracing cores and their non-ray-tracing counterparts.



Ling.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Yes, that is a very good question.
Also, the GRAPHISOFT KCC video shows a demo from the "pro", ray-tracing version of Twinmotion GRAPHISOFT and Epic are working on (if I understood correctly that ray-tracing is currently not in the free Twinmotion, but will be included in that version). I wonder if an RTX graphics card would be more suitable for it, or it will run just as well on GTX graphics card.
I will ask my contacts at GS, see if I can find out something about this.