HPC Computer for Civil Engineering, Solidworks, Autocad, Revit

by Mountain Computers Inc., Publication Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2018

View Count: 3021, Keywords: HPC Computer for Civil Engineering, Solidworks, Autocad, Revit, Hashtags: #HPCComputerforCivilEngineering #Solidworks #Autocad #Revit

Back in late 2016, Mountain Computers had the request from a few civil engineering firms to get a system that would meet and exceed their engineering drafting and design needs. They had looked at off the shelf solutions and those custom designed by large OEMs. They wanted a competitive solution and feedback from a professional computer engineer. That's where Mountain Computers came in. They knew us for our support services and our Build to Order workstations for their offices, but what about an HPC system; a high performance computing solution. Well, it took us a little digging and brainstormed and looked at software specifications for Solidworks and Autocad and drafted a design, and started testing.

After 90 days of balancing quality and cost, durability, performance and overall performance and benchmark metric testing, we came up with the following. Our clients agreed to one order, then liked them so much for the price and performance, ordered many more, and referred the solution on to their peers and partners. It was a nice win-win-win for all.

Here is our publicly available High Performance Computer (HPC) System by design:

Build recommendation, and we built and delivered over 10 of them in a 1 year period.

If you want a quote, contact Mountain Computers Inc. 775-287-9552

Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K Desktop ...,(one of the fastest hottest CPU's on the market.. see water cooling solution)
ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero (Wi-Fi AC) LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel ...(go composite graphite durable...)
WD Black 512GB Performance SSD - M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive - WDS512G1X0C .. (3-4 times faster than standard SSD... can't wait for 1TB M.2 solution that is about $250)
Rosewill Hive Series 750W Modular Gaming Power Supply, 80 PLUS Bronze Certified, Single +12V Rail, Intel 4th ... ,
Intel BXTS13X Water/Liquid Cooling Thermal Solution for Socket LGA1150/ LGA2011 / LGA1366 / LGA1156 / LGA1155 (this BXTS13X water cooling unit is very cool!!)
NZXT Red | Blue or | White - ATX Computer Case - this case is very sleek, easy and open, and rugged
Windows 10 Professional (32/64 bit)
Crucial DDR4-2400 16GB CL17 Memory CT16G4DFD824A (up to 64GB or more)

This is where this high performance system stops for now. The benchmarks were beyond stellar using any of the onboard video connectors (DP, HDMI, DVI-D).

Continuing on, let's extend the system with an above board video card to optimize Solidworks and AutoCad systems...

We have delivered mostly M2000 cards with the systems, and one M4000 card.

PNY Quadro M2000 VCQM2000-PB 4GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Workstation Video Card

SolidWords Graphics Research

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/SystemRequirements.html

http://www.computeraideddesignguide.com/best-solidworks-graphics-card/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-solidworks-help-me-choose.html

PNY Quadro M2000 VCQM2000-PB 4GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Workstation Video Card

PNY Quadro M4000 VCQM4000-PB 8GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Full Height Workstation Video Card (top end)

AMD FirePro™ V4900 midrange low end yet highly recommended for what this card does for civil engineering drawing.

NZXT Cases: we have used the superior design of Black, Blue and Black/Blue, Black/Red.

Monitor Recommendations

In light of the fact anyone can sell a computer system, yet who can support it?

Overclocking? Answer: A big fat NO. we don't. could we, yes. liability risk? yes. Why not? The CPU at idle is 4.0Ghz and bursts to 4.5Ghz naturally, and 5GHz is the desired industry stable future, but for now this 4.0 to 4.5 is fine... and the temperatures..... measured for 24-48 hours with a stock heat sink we recorded 70'c at idle, and with load ~90'c, and with water cooling, temperature drops to 30-40'c at idle and 60-70'c with load. Intel engineering replied to us on comment about higher temps with these cores and they admitted to running 30-40'c higher and hotter but specifications were designed to do so.. anything over 110'c they said could be a problem.

more to come.

HPC Computer for Civil Engineering, Solidworks, Autocad, Revit

by Mountain Computers Inc., Publication Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2018

View Count: 3021, Keywords: HPC Computer for Civil Engineering, Solidworks, Autocad, Revit, Hashtags: #HPCComputerforCivilEngineering #Solidworks #Autocad #Revit

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