How to Choose a CAD

Workstation on a Budget
Youre not looking to splurge on all the bells and whistles; you just need a reliable
machine that will get the job done. But what type of configuration will meet
your needs? And which components and capabilities are must-haves? The sample
configurations and expert advice in this guide will help you decide.

How to Choose a CAD

Workstation on a Budget
Get the configuration advice you need to optimize your hardware
experience as much as possible, while keeping costs to a minimum.

s a CAD user, you know the software you rely on every day
is crucial you couldnt do your work without it. What
could be more important? Just one thing: the hardware
that runs it. Although options are multiplying, for most users, that
still comes in the form of a desktop computer.
Just because you cant live without that trusty workstation, however, doesnt mean that you want to pay an arm and a leg for it.
Everyone faces budget constraints of some kind, whether youre
heading up a three-person design shop or making purchasing decisions for a 300-person department.

Dont focus solely

on price. If it doesnt
meet your needs, a
great bargain is just
a waste of money.

Fortunately, its easier than ever to get a workstation that can meet
the needs of most CAD users without breaking the bank. At the
entry-level end of the spectrum, for example, prices have dropped
well below $1,000. But you dont want to pinch pennies at the
expense of functionality focusing only on getting the lowest
possible price will lead to regret, if your new machine isnt up to
the task.

A Common Foundation
To help you find the right balance of cost savings and capabilities,
weve gathered advice and configuration recommendations from
Alex Herrera, industry expert and author of Cadalysts Herrera on
Hardware column, and a variety of workstation vendors.

From the editors of

On the cover:
iStockphoto.com/Henrik5000

Herrera begins with the basics that everyone should keep in mind:
First off, every CAD user these days should start with a reasonably
fast (middle-of-the-road offering or better) quad-core CPU [central
processing unit] and an SSD [solid-state drive]. If you work with
bigger, more complex models, consider spending the extra money
to go for a PCIe/NVMe SSD (rather than the standard SATA). For
memory, 8 GB is the minimum that should be considered the
baseline for all.
HPs Sean Young, worldwide segment manager, Product Development and AEC, agrees that CPUs and SSDs are essential fundamentals. For Autodesk software applications, the clock speed of the
CPU (GHz) is a top priority, as it impacts all core operations and
3D graphics performance, he explained. Multiple CPU cores will
boost multithreaded processes, such as file open and save, Boolean
operations, and when using multithreaded processes such as ray

How to Choose a CAD Workstation on a Budget3

tracing and simulation. Four or six cores in a single CPU is a

good choice.
As for the benefits of the SSD, Complex datasets should load and
save quicker, Young notes. Random read/write access is also fast,
which is particularly important when multitasking and swapping
between applications.

Getting Into Specifics

Beyond these initial considerations, what else should you look for?
Ultimately, that depends on what you will do with the machine.
Before you move on to the categorical recommendations, determine which of these three user categories best describes you:

As you read
through the
relevant
recommendations,
keep in
mind that a
configuration
that makes sense
for you today
may become
inadequate
tomorrow.

1. A user of CAD software (such as AutoCAD) who does at least

a little work in 3D.
2. A CAD user who also does some light rendering.
3. A CAD user who also does some photorealistic rendering.
As you read through the relevant recommendations, keep in mind
that a configuration that makes sense for you today may become
inadequate tomorrow. How frequently do job roles and workloads
change in your workplace? Is it reasonable to assume that your
daily computing demands will remain relatively constant in the
near future, or would you be better off investing in a machine
capable of doing more than you currently need it to? These are
questions that can only be answered by examining your individual
situation and budget.
Spending a bit more per each segment will assure more longevity
of the productive life of the workstation, says Robert Bragaglia,
president and CEO of @Xi Computer.

Category 1: All CAD, All the Time

CAD software is predominantly a single-threaded application,
notes Gary Underwood, CEO of Computer Direct Outlet. That
means that high-frequency CPUs are much more favorable than
multicore processors for 2D and 3D design/modeling work. The
main bottleneck in CAD design work is the clock speed of the CPU,
with the amount of RAM coming in second.
Danny Payne, owner of Orbital Computers, expounds on this point:
In general, the majority of tasks in AutoCAD are considered
single-threaded, meaning that the program will only use one CPU
core at a time, even if your workstation has a dozen CPU cores. The
two main ways to speed up single-threaded performance are to
use a newer CPU with a more efficient architecture (e.g., a sixthgeneration Intel Core i7 will be faster than a fourth-generation Intel Core i7 CPU), or to use a CPU with a higher operating frequency
(e.g., an Intel Core i7 6700k at 4.5 GHz will be faster than an Intel
Core i7 6700 at 4.0 GHz).
It is critical to note that one can only compare CPU frequency
within the same CPU family in order to get an apples-to-apples

How to Choose a CAD Workstation on a Budget4

Category 1 Configuration
($1,795 with discount for
Cadalyst readers): The Orbital
Silenced C1500 features an
Intel Core i5 6600 processor
(four cores, four threads,
3.90 GHz, 6-MB cache); 8 GB
of 2,400-MHz DDR4 RAM;
an NVIDIA Quadro K620
GPU; and a 240-GB SSD. The
workstation comes with
free lifetime tech support.
Image courtesy of Orbital
Computers.

Spend your
money first on
the highest CPU
frequency you
can afford, and
make sure you
have enough
memory
at least 8 GB
to start.
Bill Martin-Otto
Lenovo Workstation
Technical Solutions Team

comparison, Payne
points out. That is,
one can say an Intel
Core i7 6700k at 4.5
GHz is faster than an
Intel Core i7 6700k
at 4.2 GHz, but one
cannot say that an
AMD FX-9590 at 5.0
GHz is faster than an
Intel Core i7 6700k
at 4.2 GHz, even
though on paper it
has a higher frequency.
Payne also suggests
an NVIDIA Quadro
K620 GPU [graphics
processing unit] with
2 GB of DDR3 video RAM, 8 GB to 16 GB of system RAM (depending on the size/complexity of the models you work with), and a fast
SSD to keep a snappy system response time.
Bill Martin-Otto, Lenovo Workstation Technical Solutions Team,
also recommends a mid-range Quadro card: For this type of work,
integrated Intel graphics or an NVIDIA Quadro K620 graphics card
would be ideal for the budget-minded. Spend your money first on
the highest CPU frequency you can afford, and make sure you have
enough memory at least 8 GB to start.
Herrera prefers a discrete GPU over integrated graphics. This user
should have an entry-level GPU, at minimum, said Herrera. At
the very least, an Intel P-series GPU, available on Xeon. Preferable
would be an entry-level to mid-range NVIDIA Quadro (K420, K620,
K1200, or M2000) or AMD FirePro (W2100, W4100, or W4300).

Category 2: A Little Light Rendering

This user segment most likely identifies a corporate designer with
mid-complexity projects, bigger files, and a more elaborate workflow, posits Bragaglia. [This type of user] needs a fast, prompt
response in the interactive part of the design process i.e., drawing lines, building and modifying models and is also involved
in some light batch processing like rendering, stress analysis, or
simulation, where multiple cores and hyper-threads capability of
the CPU are valuable, he says.
When selecting a processor for this user group, advises MartinOtto, look for a processor that allows for hyperthreading. The
performance of rendering scales with the number of processor
threads: the more threads, the better the performance. If your
budget can stretch, look into a 6- or 8-core processor as well. If
your rendering application is more reliant on graphics capabilities, the minimum graphics card suggested would be the NVIDIA
Quadro K620; but if your rendering is GPU-based, you can scale

How to Choose a CAD Workstation on a Budget5

Category 2 Configuration
($1,599): The HP Z240 Tower
offers a quad-core Intel
Xeon E3-1240 v5 processor
(3.5 GHz or up to 3.9 GHz
with Intel Turbo Boost
Technology, 8 MB cache); a
4-GB NVIDIA Quadro K2200
GPU; 16 GB of DDR4-2133
ECC registered SDRAM; and
a 1-TB, 7,200 rpm SATA drive.
This model provides tool-free
access to interior components.
Image courtesy of HP.

down the processor and boost your graphics to an NVIDIA Quadro

M2000 (or higher), offering more NVIDIA Cuda cores.
Herrera concurs with that recommendation: Consider upgrading
the GPU to a mid-range option, such as the NVIDIA Quadro M2000
or AMD FirePro W4300/W5100, and boost memory to 16 GB.
Payne suggests essentially the same system as he recommends
for the first category of user, but with an Intel Core i7 6700 CPU
instead of the i5 6600. The difference is the i7 CPU has eight CPU
threads, versus the four threads found on the i5, he explains. AutoCADs rendering function can utilize as many CPU cores/threads
as are available. Thus, having twice as many CPU threads will lead
to render times about 35% faster than the i5. Single-threaded performance will remain just about identical between the i5 and the
i7, though the i7 does run at a marginally faster 4.0 GHz.

Category 2 Configuration
($1,983): The Xi MTower PCIe
features a clock speed of
4.1 GHz on all cores using a
sixth-generation i7 processor,
16 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA
Quadro M2000 GPU, and a
500-GB SSD. The case boasts
soundproofing and a small
footprint. Image courtesy of
@Xi Computer.

How to Choose a CAD Workstation on a Budget6

Category 3: Stepping Up to Photorealism

Well, in this situation you need a high-frequency CPU to do the
CAD design and a multicore CPU to do the photorealistic rendering, says Underwood. So the question is, How much photorealistic rendering does the user actually do? If the answer is quite a
bit and minimizing daily project completion times is important to
the user, then I would go with the Core i7-5960X (eight-core, overclocked to 4.1 GHz). I would probably bump up to a Quadro K2200
graphics card as well, with 32 GB of RAM.
If the answer is some rendering but rather infrequent, then I
would go with a Core i-5820K (six-core, overclocked) with 16 GB of
RAM, and a Quadro K1200 graphics card, he continues.
At this stage, you should upgrade the GPU, CPU, and memory,
urges Herrera. Get the fastest quad-core CPU, and consider more
cores. Memory should be a minimum of 16 GB. A mid-range GPU is
the minimum, and if models are complex, consider an upgrade to
a higher-end GPU, such as the NVIDIA Quadro M4000 or AMD FirePro W7100. For the very upper echelon of 3D the most complex
models with frequent maximum-quality (photorealistic) rendering
consider dual CPUs and an ultra-high-end GPU (Quadro M5000
or FirePro W8100), as well as 32 GB of memory.
Young also sees the value
in dual processors. To
boost performance when
rendering with 3ds Max
Design and Showcase,
consider dual processors
with multiple CPU cores,
he says.

Category 3 Configuration
($2,460.60): The Lenovo
ThinkStation P500 features
an Intel Xeon E5 1620 v3
processor (3.5 GHz, 10MB cache); 16 GB of DDR4
2,133-MHz memory; an
NVIDIA Quadro K2200 with
4 GB of VRAM; and 256-GB
M.2 NVMe and 1-TB 7,200
RPM drives. Color-coded
touch points are designed to
simplify component access.
Image courtesy of Lenovo.

Martin-Otto makes the

following recommendation: For a heavier
workflow like this, your
processor should be
focused on higher core
counts, and potentially
a dual-socket system for
double the core potential. ... Similar to the second user group, if your
rendering is GPU-based,
put your dollars to work
on a higher graphics card,
with a base suggestion
of an NVIDIA Quadro
M2000.

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