Need Help Choosing Parts for CAD Workstation

Jsoap14

Hello, I am new to the PC building community and could really use some help. I am looking to build a PC for running SolidWorks 2020 for smaller assemblies (less than 500 parts) and eventually some 3D printing. I am not familiar enough with PC components to be comfortable choosing parts with no guidance, I've put together a list of some components I have seen in other builds, but I am not sure whether or not they would meet my needs. I would like to stay under $1000 but could go above if beneficial in the long run. If anyone could help selecting components I would greatly appreciate it! Please also let me know if I should totally scrap this list and start over, I am open to anything!

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=12230594-f19e-4cf5-8ad9-991c49480e2b

PowerSpec_MikeW

Greetings @Jsoap14

Your system looks fine overall, but keep in mind SolidWorks is a beast and generally benefits heavily from workstation cards. It'll run  on a gaming card, but not great. So I would stretch your budget to accomodate this. If a workstation card (Quadro, Radeon WX Pro) isn't possible, I'd gamble on an EVGA RTX 2060 KO Ultra. Check it with GPU-Z and look at the core. If you win you'll get one with a TU104 core and you should see higher performance in workstation applications like this than a 2060 should really be providing.

Jsoap14

@TSMikeW Thank you for your response! I think I am going to end up starting over totally because quite honestly I’m not sure what I’m getting myself in to. I’m thinking of going with the intel i5-10600k due to the clock speed, which from what I understand, It will be useful to have the higher clock speed rather than a high number of cores since Solidworks runs single core for all reubuilds and whatnot (please correct me if I’m wrong on that). But from there on I am not sure where to start as far as finding out what motherboard to use as well as which graphics card.. I would definitely like to go with a workstation card if it will help me out, but I’m not sure which one. Like I said before, I won’t be doing any crazy assemblies or anything, they will likely be under 100 parts in all, I want to build a PC that will run everything smoothly but I also don’t want to over do it to the point where there is a ton of unused power.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@Jsoap14

Allow me to link you to some SolidWorks specific benchmarks Puget Systems has done, that should help you.

CPU: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2020-SP1-CPU-Performance-1681/

GPU: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2020-SP1-GPU-Performance-1682/

2018: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2018-GPU-Comparison-What-Is-the-Meaning-of-This-1112/

I linked the last one because they compare it to a 1080 Ti. It'll show you the fall off between a consumer card and a workstation card. We can't guarantee the accuracy here since it's from a third party. From my experience with SolidWorks, mainly building systems to run it, this appears very accurate to me.

Jsoap14

@TSMikeW Great, thank you so much!