Custom Mastercam PC Build

[Jayson Kramer]

I have all my hard drives and I just purchased the Quadro 2000D. All I have left to buy is the motherboard, CPU, Blu-Ray burner and CPU cooler.

 

I will update when I get the rest of the components. I'll take pics of the build to show everyone. Then we'll run some benchmarks.

So what did you get so far?

[Rotary Ninja]

I have all of my hard drives for the RAID 10 setup consisting of two Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD's, two 300GB Western Digital Velociraptors, 16 GB of Corsair memory (will upgrade to 32 soon), the Quadro 2000D and I already have the case and a very nice 25" LCD with a secondary Dell 21" LCD.

 

I am still debating on the Motherboard because I was kind of thinking of going with an EVGA Classified with the LGA 1366 socket. The Classified runs Dual Xeon's. But if I did that things really start to get pricey. So I think I am going to go with the ASUS P9X79 WS. That way if I do decide to go with the Classified in the near future I would have a really nice gaming setup because the P9X79 WS sports Quad SLI

[Mjölnir]

We've been getting away from building custom PC's for CAD/CAM and have been purchasing HP and Dell workstations to replace the ailing PC's. All our non-CAD/CAM machines are Dell products. The reliability of workstations built from server class hardware wins hands down over the bit of performance gained by building gaming PC's with professional graphics. YMMV.

[Jayson Kramer]

Go with the Asus board and get a I7-3930k and have fun and over clock it. I am thinking of getting the Extreme edition of the six core now,

You will want to get another 25" monitor to match the other. you will find it annoying when they do not match. I have another desk at one of my customers were I had a 24" and a 22" monitors and the resolution is different and size that it drove me crazy so I went and bought about two weeks ago 2 Dell 24" led monitors. I have this setup there so I can just drop my laptop in and go to work. here is a picture of my setup for onsite for this customer with the new laptop listed below.

[Rotary Ninja]

We've been getting away from building custom PC's for CAD/CAM and have been purchasing HP and Dell workstations to replace the ailing PC's. All our non-CAD/CAM machines are Dell products. The reliability of workstations built from server class hardware wins hands down over the bit of performance gained by building gaming PC's with professional graphics. YMMV.

 

I wouldn't pi$$ on an HP support person if they were on fire. I despise HP. Bad experiences three times. Just typing HP makes me mad. Long story.

 

I use a brand new Dell at work. By comparison, I have a PC at home with a gaming card that will chew the Dell up and the Dell cost $400 more than my home PC build if I built it today. This PC has ran flawlessly for 4 years without so much as a hiccup. My home PC has been through a few upgrades which are easier on a home built PC. The key is I never buy the latest and greatest hardware. This leaves me room to upgrade when the prices drop during Black Friday sales for example. And waiting til the hardware has been out for a bit makes it easy to spot problem components if you know how to find the reviews by the true PC enthusiasts. Dollar for dollar, I can build a PC that will blow away a Dell or any other builder and it will last me through to my next PC.

 

But yes, in the business world, it seems to make sense to spend more money on a Dell to get the support. And Dell does make reliable PC's. But this PC I am building is for home use. And I would never personally buy a PC built buy someone else.

 

Go with the Asus board and get a I7-3930k and have fun and over clock it. I am thinking of getting the Extreme edition of the six core now,

You will want to get another 25" monitor to match the other. you will find it annoying when they do not match. I have another desk at one of my customers were I had a 24" and a 22" monitors and the resolution is different and size that it drove me crazy so I went and bought about two weeks ago 2 Dell 24" led monitors. I have this setup there so I can just drop my laptop in and go to work. here is a picture of my setup for onsite for this customer with the new laptop listed below.

 

My Dell 21" rotates 90 degrees. It makes it really nice to view PDF's when reading through tutorials and such having the screen taller than it is wide. I don't use it for much else. See pic...

[Rotary Ninja]

Oh, and the Dell at work hits a 5.9 on Windows Experience. My home PC hits 7.0, which would go up to 7.5 if I installed my new RAID array in it. Not bad for a 4 year old PC.

[Joe788]

This thread gave me the itch to pimp out my workstation a little bit. I just got my Quadro 4000 and another 16GB of ram on Friday. According to the Crucial website, I have two 4gb sticks, and two 2gb sticks. I'm gonna yank the 2gb sticks and install a pair of 8gb, to get me to 24 instead of 12.

 

The rest of the computer is an i-2600 @ 3.4ghz, with a 128gb Samsung SSD. Current card is a Quadro FX580. Mastercam benchmark is about 41 seconds, and my Windows Experience Index is 6.4 (whatever that means, LOL).

 

I've installed graphics cards before, but never ram. Is it just a simple plug and play?

[Rotary Ninja]

Yes Joe. Memory is simple plug-n-play. There is a lever at the end of each stick of memory. Push them toward the motherboard. The memory will lift out. To reinstall the memory you just firmly press it back in trying to do so evenly on each end until the levers snap back up. The memory only goes in one way. Look at the notch on the side that goes into the memory slot. There is a tab inside the slot that matches up with the notch.

 

However, depending on the motherboard it may be best to just buy a matched set of memory. It used to be that you could just throw memory into a PC and it would be fine. But with the PC's today they are setup to run in dual channel, or quad channel. Some even have triple channel memory. With dual channel you should run a matched pair, meaning you buy a pair of memory modules together. In a triple channel setup you buy three modules together, and the quad you of course buy four. Tell me what motherboard, or PC you have if you bought a pre-built.

 

Edit: I misread and after re-reading your post Joe I see you already bought memory. I didn't want to mislead you into thinking you cannot install it. You obviously bought a matched pair. So I am assuming your PC is dual channel with 4 individual memory slots. You will be fine.

[Rotary Ninja]

Joe, can you take a screenshot of your Windows Experience screen? You can use the windows snipping tool Start>>Programs>>Accessories>>Snipping Tool. Or just list all your results here. You should be hitting higher than a 6.4.

 

The Experience Index is going to show you where your PC's weaknesses are. Think of it as a bottleneck locator. Where you have a low number, you will see a greater improvement by upgrading that component. That is how I got my PC running so good. I fixed the low numbers and got them all to 7 or above.

[GIZMO 21]

Damn kevin,mastercam was right.even a 4 year old can programm it,but it looks like your around 2 though.

[Rotary Ninja]

LOL. Actually Breydon is a big boy at 9 months. I sat him down at my PC one day to take some pics and when I noticed I had eMastercam up I took a few with the monitor in the background to share on here. He's such a ham.

[Joe788]

I've

Joe, can you take a screenshot of your Windows Experience screen? You can use the windows snipping tool Start>>Programs>>Accessories>>Snipping Tool. Or just list all your results here. You should be hitting higher than a 6.4.

 

The Experience Index is going to show you where your PC's weaknesses are. Think of it as a bottleneck locator. Where you have a low number, you will see a greater improvement by upgrading that component. That is how I got my PC running so good. I fixed the low numbers and got them all to 7 or above.

 

Processor and RAM are 7.6, hard disk is 7.3, and graphics is 6.4. It says the overall score is determined by the lowest sub score, and with the new Quadro 4000 it should bump that up quite a bit, which would make my hard disk the lowest sub score with 7.3.

[Rotary Ninja]

That's good then. You are fixing your bottleneck and you should see a really big improvement in Mastercam. Your Index should be at 7.3 after the video card install depending on how Windows looks at the graphics card. It will be interesting to see so please update after the install.

[Jayson Kramer]

I know adding the Quadro 4000 brought mine up for 6.8 to this:

[Jayson Kramer]

Kevin, if you get a Space pilot control you will not need to rotate the screen to read a PDF as the Pilot pro works with PDF to pan and Zoom easily. love it now on my second screen.

PS love the have face on your boy. great picture. I think I have posted my desks before right.

[Rotary Ninja]

LOL. In all my spending on this PC I totally forgot to grab me a Space mouse. Looking now!

 

I saw your twin laptop setup but not your desk. Lets see it.

[Jayson Kramer]

Just a few shots of the home office for Precision Programming. lol

[Rotary Ninja]

Awesome setup. I may buy another monitor in the future. But I hardly ever have anything on my second monitor unless I am following a tutorial. I do drag my operation manager over there once in awhile when I am doing some programming for my lessons.

 

I bought a SpacePilot off eBay

[Jayson Kramer]

you will like the Space pilot for sure. I bet you got it for a steal. We used to sell those for $499.00 years back when I was selling Mastercam and those.

[Rotary Ninja]

Not too bad

http://cgi.ebay.com/...em=200902944784

[Jayson Kramer]

I think it is a good price. you like it for sure. trying to get my Space pilot pro to work with Portal 2 I heard it is suppose to work with it.

[gcode]

I think it is a good price. you like it for sure. trying to get my Space pilot pro to work with Portal 2 I heard it is suppose to work with it.

You'll probably need to load the universal beta drivers

[Rotary Ninja]

I loved Portal 2. I'll have to put it on here again and try it out on the new setup. Have you ever played it in cooperative mode with a friend? It's a totally different game.

[Jayson Kramer]

I have played my older son before. both my boys play or I should say played as they are now big time into Team Fortress 2 and dragging me with them.

[gcode]

Not too bad

http://cgi.ebay.com/...em=200902944784

 

Personally, I'd pony up the bucks for a new Space Pilot Pro.

I own both a SP Pro and the newer Space Mouse Pro and the SP Pro is much better.

You will be using this device 8 to 10 hours a day for years so you may as well buy the best.

It will be money well spent. Look on Amazon.com.. They will be about $100 cheaper than the 3D Connexion store.

If you know someone with a student ID you can buy one even cheaper from an online store that caters to students.

I guarantee you, that once you've used it for a couple of days you will take it to work and buy another one for home use.

The one you're looking at on ebay is at best 3 or 4 years old, probably 5 or 6 years old and you will have to run old

legacy drivers that may or may not work in future releases.

This is one of those times when going first class is a good idea.