Cheap PC Oprtions?

- A
- Andrew Wilson
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Apr 27, 2006 11:54 AM

I am looking to buy a relatively cheap PC to put beside the PC based CNC Machining Center to act as a server to it and to occasionally run Solidworks and CAM programming software. (I currently use a M60 laptop for both)

I want to spend under $NZ 600 and two options I am looking at currently are:

Option 1: $NZ 450 Second Hand (ex-lease) Dell Precision 340 Workstation Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Processor

1024MB RAMBUS 800MHz RAM 40GB Maxtor D7-40X-6L Hard Drive nVidia Quadro2 Pro (64MB) Graphics Card Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Card CD-ROM Drive Floppy Drive ZIP Drive LAN Port 4x USB Ports 2 back 2 front / 1 Serial / 1 Parallel Firewire card with 2 Firewire ports Modem Dynalink 1456VQH-T4 56K comes with cord and CD's

Option 2: $NZ 568 New PC

-CPU: AMD Sempron 64bits 2800+ 1.6GHz Socket 754 Processor

-Mem: 512MB DDR400 Memory

-HD: Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2 Hard Disk Drive

-Graphics: Integrated graphics controller Supports up to 64MB shared system memory with 1 AGP slot

-Optical drive: Black 16X Double layer Dvdrw Drive.

-Lan: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet Controller

-Audio: Integrated High Defination 5.1 Channel Audio

-USB: 8x USB2.0

-MB: Winfast 760GXK8MC-RS Motherboard

-Case: Foxconn Silver and Black deluxe Case with super quiet powersupply and Case rear cooling fan.

These seem to be the two highest spec'd options I can find within my "peanuts" budget and would highly appreciate some feedback on which (if either) might prove better value for my pupose and why.

Thanks.

- P
- pete
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Apr 27, 2006 1:29 PM

Hi Andrew, Just on the, NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro (64MB) Graphics Card and the 1024MB RAMBUS

800MHz RAM, I would go for the first one, this graphic card has been approved by Solidworks and Solidworks loves Ram.

Pete

- J
- Jerry Steiger
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Apr 27, 2006 7:53 PM

I agree on both of these points. An integrated graphics card may be able to run SW, but it might not. One of the EEs at work runs SW on an Intel machine with integrated graphics and doesn't have any problems, but he does pretty simple stuff and there is no guarantee that you won't. Depending on the type of parts you do, even 1 GB of RAM may not be enough and you have to be doing pretty simple stuff for 512 MB to work well. The Pentium 4 is going to be slow, but running in swap on the new machine would probably be slower.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

- A
- Andrew Wilson
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Apr 27, 2006 9:48 PM

Thanks for your feedback guys, I think I will go with the Dell. At least I know it has been well tested for this purpose and hardware configuration is compatible.