Workstation for Solidworks

Hi All,

I'm building a few workstations to be used for Solidworks and hoping I could get some recommendations here.

Like other cad packages, solidworks is primarily single threaded, so clock speed is more important than number of cores.

First question. Should I base it on SandyBrige-E or IvyBridge?

For SandyBridge-E, I was looking at..

Supermicro X9SRA Motherboard
Kingston KVR16R11D4K4/32 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1620 3.6GHz (3.8Ghz Turbo)

For IvyBridge, I was looking at...

Supermicro X9SCL-F
KVR16E11/8 8gb ddr3 1600MHz DDR3 ECC x 4
Intel Quad Core Xeon CPU E3-1270v2 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo)


The sandy bridge-e has 4 channel memory, slightly higher non-turbo clock speed

The Ivy Bridge has 2 channel memory, slightly higher turbo clock speed.

Will there be much of a difference?


The rest of the components I'm thinking of are..

ATI FirePro V5900, PCIe, 2GB DDR5, Dual Display Port, Dual-link DVI x1
Intel 60Gb SSD 520 Series x 2 in raid 0
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.
Case Lian Li pc-a71f


I would buy a V4900, if I could find it anywhere.

Still not sure, what power supply or cpu cooler.

Any suggestions / comments?

 

Why the RAID 0 for the SSDs? If you're after more storage space, wouldn't a larger capacity drive for cheaper be a better option in the long run?

Lowers chance of failure by 50% and I'm not sure if the speed increase of running the raid array would be noticeable. Otherwise looking good, I'd just go for the cheaper of the two processor choices you have there.

Interesting thread, I'm looking into getting solid works and seeing if I can hammer out a few models I've got in my head. Although I may stick with 3DSMAX for now.

 

I'm not after extra space at all. Just speed, i will keep a few on hand as spare.

Everything worth keeping is stored on the network, I'll just re-image in case of failure.

 

Solidworks has similar requirements to Autodesk inventor as discussed in this thread

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1028210

Solidworks does require a professional video card, and won't work with gamers cards (well without some fiddling, anyway)

The assemblies being used aren't as crazy as discussed in that thread however, so I'm not planning on overclocking.

 

It works out ~$300 cheaper to go ivy-bridge which is negligible, so I'll pick the one that gives best performance.. if there is any difference.

 

$300 is negligible? Feel free to send it my way

Do you think the speed increase from 2 SSDs will really be that advantageous over the speed of one? Chances are it won't be noticeable.

 

With real RAID controllers it probably would for excessive I/O. But software RAID I wouldn't expect much from.

OCZ has a PCIe SSD card that does RAID0. I imagine it's not just for gimmicks. Although it uses 4 "drives" in RAID0, not 2.

 

As someone who threw a 480GB Revo3 X2 Maxiops at Inventor - don't bother.

A single Intel 520 (240-480GB) will give you all the io performance you're going to get out of Inventor/Solidworks/Solidedge (yes i support clients with all 3). Using dual 60GB SSD's is stupid. Don't be tight, you're coughing up ludicrous amounts of money at Solidworks.

Forget AMD at the moment, if you're going pro-graphics, go Quadro 4000 or 5000. (5000 if you are using things that are GPGPU heavy).

Xeon's are a waste of money, as is ECC ram.

Pick i7-3770 if your workload fits in 32GB, i7-3930K if you need to move to 64GB (my experience with crazy huge projects is that the extra 2 cores reduced the ram requirements of Inventor when producing drawings). The only reason you'd go Xeon's in a CAD/CAM workstation is if you need more than 64GB of ram addressable.

 

Ok...

So if I change to :

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Motherboard
Intel® Core™ i7-3770K*3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo)
Kingston KVR16N11K2/16 x 2 32Gb Ram

Looks like I'll save around $150, the main saving is changing from the ECC ram.
The i7-3770K is only ~$20 cheaper than the xeon E3-1720v2.
This is only budget ram, is it worth putting in better ram, or is that only for overclocking?

I'd prefer to stick with the v5900 card for now, I've had too many issues with the Quadros. From most of the benchmarks i've looked at the v5900 beats even the better Quadros for solidworks.

I'll change to a single Intel 520 SSD 420Gb (+$77)


What PSU would you guys recommend?

 

building workstations for a buisness? buy dell or hp, rock solid and same-day service is a must. we have a variety of dell T5500 and T7500's with quadro 4800 / 4000 cards. not one has died in the last year afaik

i built a e3-1280 / intel 1200BTL workstation for home, only got 16gb ecc in it right now and a single ssd that I need to upgrade to raid0, but i do 3dcg/games so my data requirements are more throughput bound than cad. I do freelance at home, hence the workstation-grade parts, downtime costs money

 

I just get ram with a lifetime warranty. Kingston is my preferred.

Depends what you're doing. I wouldn't be buying AMD cards unless they were GCN (which are only new and pricey). As far as benches are concerned - running a viewport can be done with a 98xx series nvidia gpu. Unless Solidworks uses CUDA/OpenCL/Maximus, numbers in terms of real world difference are a zilch. As long as the card needs external power (i.e its not just fuelled from the slot) - you're fine.

I'm interested to hear you're issues? the only issue I have with Quadro's in Inventor (most of my clients are Autodesk houses) are;

* They are slower than the consumer equivalent counterparts that are 1/3rd the cost
* Quadro's die just as often as the consumer parts - 3 week wait for a Quadro RA or I have a $1000-$1800 part on the shelf doing nothing most of the time.
* Inventor, 3DSMax, etc are all DirectX meaning that there is ZERO benefit from a Quadro over a GTX560 or whatever.

Autodesk and Nvidia are now pushing "Maximus" which is essentially team a quadro with a tesla card for GPGPU. Conveniently they omit benches of "obvious" configurations in their marketing material - and a C2075 is just a Quadro 6000 without display capabilities (the C2050 is a OE only part, but is very very similar to a 5000). It's a giant wank - Autodesk etc have moved to DirectX for whatever reason (probably because OpenGL seems to be all about the Mobile sector now) thus eliminating a lot of the need for the drivers and precision of a Quadro, so they are pushing these guys to do more GPGPU stuff (via Maximus - not CUDA, because they want to eliminate running multiple consumer parts).

The reason i'm anti-AMD in the professional space is because AMD drivers are lacklustre at the best of times - Pro work ALWAYS seems to find bugs that aren't really noticeable in games. That and AMD hasn't really had a leg in the race for some time now in the professional space. They are playing catch up, discounting their cards to try and reclaim some market share.

I was using Corsair CX stuff in the custom builds, but they fell over too often. Now using AX series stuff - haven't replaced one yet.

If you're after a bargain right now from a T1 vendor, fuck off Dell and HP. The Lenovo Thinkstation D30's are about 2/3rds the price - same gear.

The z400/z800's and the T7x00's are a serious wank for what they are. You can build Intel Validated shit (with onsite support - just not in Aus) for literally about half the price.

 

The convenience of buying a HP/Dell/etc workstation is obviously your warranty etc, but for the same price you can probably buy 1.5-3 diy machines with greater specs, leave one locked away in case of a failure and most of the time you will be fine. I have done this several times, instead of paying $1500 for an i5 4GB dedicated graphics machine, i built a quad core i7 16GB ram, decent graphics cards, etc for ~ $1000. I did have one issue with a motherboard which the customer was happy to purchase another one while the original was being rma'd.

 

On the Lenovo website, I can build an E31 Tower :

E3-1270 V2
32 Gb 1600Mhz Ram
Nvidia Quadro 2000
256Gb SSD
Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit

for ~$3,000, which seems decent value for money. I'm waiting for my Dell rep to get back to me, but last time I checked they don't even do the new Ivy Bridge xeons.

The Lenovo C and D are both for dual cpu, and only have the slower clock E5-2600 xeons.

 

The Quadros we've had just seem to die too often.

I replaced one of the quadros with a consumer ATI card (Can't recall which one) and it's been going strong for over 12 months.

Solidworks isn't all that smart about requiring a professional card, it just checks that the name contains FirePro or Quadro in it, then it enables realview, etc.
So you can install a consumer card, but rename it in it's drivers .ini file on install.

I'd prefer not to have to fiddle though and just buy a pro card.

 

not at all true, MOST apps from autodesk are opengl, MOST pro apps from other vendors are opengl as well. unless DirectX is magically being ported to Osx and Linux, it wont be industry standard. Solidworks for example, is Win, Osx and Linux...



and yes, you can build machines for less, I do for my home machines...but accounting for time, multi-vendor warrenties etc, its not much of a saving, especially if something is not working for one reason or another. got a display problem? ring dell, autodesk or nvidia and they will help, most likely you wont have a problem, because quadro's (i know they are rebadged geforces) have solid, certified drivers that have never given me a problem.

i have a 560ti in my machine at home, runs well in softimage, but the quadro4000 i have at work is certainly faster in shaded and wireframe views, Mari seems (though I havent really benched them against eachother) seems quicker as well. if thats just drivers, then its kinda worth it as well.

 

I don't know what the state is in Japan. But yeah, in Aus - you're looking at 60% of the cost of a workstation to build like for like. 30% if you building 3770/3570's.

That - as Bsbozzy says, you can have 2-3 spare machines for the same money - which is better than a NBD response.

Must depend on the package, because the first thing i do with a Quadro is find the "recommended" driver revision for the software package. I've seen plenty of quadro's throw driver errors.

Agree - but what if you put a 580 in there, rather than a 560. You can still do that for 1/2 the cost of a Quadro 4k.

They have their place - and that really depends on the software package(s) you use as to whether the premium is worth it.

But certainly in the Revit, AutoCAD, Inventor, 3dsmax space (not sure on Maya, most of my clients don't use it) - there is no reason to have a Quadro.

 

of course, hence certification.

i would be interested in testing a 680 4gb for home, as Mari chews vram for breakfast, i still wouldnt be trusting big-money jobs to it though.

as far as backup machines go...if its a fundamental problem, ie, graphics incompatibility or there comes a known problem, then all the machines you have spare will have the same problem as well.

on a side note, i bought a hdmi capture card recently drecap ha1 (records protected sources) but still cant get it to work properly, and because its not a large (nor pro) vender, I cant call them up or get certified hardware configs. im stuck trawling forums trying to fix it. its ok at home of course, but imagine doing that in a buisness enviroment

 

solidworks

If funds are tight then DIY is the way to go, but for a corporate environment go with the vendors. Less headache with warranty, drivers and if you need support from Solidworks you will know your hardware inc graphics card is certified.

We use Dell T3500 3.4Ghz, 12gb, 128 ssd and quadro cards and theyre around the $3k mark.