Worksation vs desktop pc

[Jim Helberg]

Hi,

We are looking at getting new computers, and after checking prices, just wondering what people are using or recomending. Is the price worth buying a workstaion? What is the difference between the two?

We do a lot of surfacing and shading.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

[Hymen]

Build yur own if you know anything about building them.

At the very least you'll need a good processor and video card.

Do a search theres a plethora of info on these topics.

I personally will not buy a workstation. Over priced and propritary parts are used on most. Meaning upgrading these in the future can be a big hassel. Although I think it's changing slightly.

[JDowe]

Dell has recommended configurations listed

on their web site for Mastercam

[Colin Gilchrist]

I Go Dell all the way. Great hardware, great service, good price. Get the extended warranty, its priceless. I had a hard drive die after two years and after about 30 min. on the phone with a tech guy they shipped me a new hard drive UPS Red. I got it the next day. I called Dell tech support back and the guy walked me through the entire backup process. I went from sweating bullets to sitting pretty....

 

Just my 2 cents

 

-Colin

[chowquoe^]

I'd build it, then you know what you got.... You may find yourself having to purchase a new system to upgrade with a (dell, compaq, gateway....) But upgrades are rather painless when you built it yourself.

 

IMHO

[gcode]

Workstation or desktop...?

It depends on the work you're doing.

A decent desktop with an NVIDIA GeForce gaming

card will be fine if you're doing small 2 1/2 axis

mill parts and lathe work.

I building landing gear parts at my current job

on a midrange AMD destop with a Quadro FX-1400

video card. Its working out very well, much to my surprise.

Mold guys will want all the proccessing power they can afford. That usually means a workstation, though some folks are getting good results with high end AMD gaming machines.

The bigger your solid models the more video card you'll need. I don't mean big in filesize, I mean the phyisical size of your parts.

Last year I did a part that was 15ft by 6ft by 1 ft thick with 120+ 5axis pockets. That part really gave my Dell workstation a beating. It got so bad I had to break the file into 3 sections. (Ruffing, semifinish and finish)

If you work on large parts, a midrange Quadro card

(FX3000 and up) is well worth the money.

If you've got a decent gaming machine at home, take some of your toughest files home and try them out.

Time is money. The boss may gag at spending $3K+

on a computer, but if your parts warrant it, its money well spent.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Chowquoe,

 

What would you want to upgrade? Anything worth upgrading (RAM, Video Card) is easy to put in on a Dell. Anything else (motherboard, CPU) and you are much better off buying a new computer. You shouldn't have to spend more than a $1000.00 for a kick butt computer these days. Then in a two years you can buy a new computer that is twice as fast and costs half as much. I recommend that businesses stay with technology that is current in the market place. I'm sure you may disagree, but Dell's are virtually painless and that was my original point.

 

-Colin

 

-Colin