looking for advice on an LGA 1700 workstation build

[Mike Gera]

I am in the process of spec'ing out an LGA 1700 based workstation.

The processor will be an i9-12900KF.

I'm mainly looking for motherboard and video card advice.

Does anybody have any good advice on this?

I do realize that 1700 hasn't been out very long.

I like to build my systems as future-proof as possible without going crazy.

Thanks for any replies.

[ResidentAtLarge]

Solidworks doesn't require an extreme hardware build unless you are constantly having 200 parts or more in a single assembly. otherwise its an overkill of a build. You could spend $1000-$1200 on a decent computer that would last you ~10 years.
There are specific graphics cards that solidworks certifies that you can look into. If you don't yet know, gaming cards perform differently(worse) than the certified cards on their website. And to be clear, gaming cards do work with solidworks, they are just not made for this specific process. There is plenty of information available online if you do a quick google search on certified solidworks graphic cards.
here is a website from solidworks that gives a list of supported cards: https://files.solidworks.com/videocardd ... _Patch.txt

With windows 11 coming out, they are requiring specific chip sets. So. of you are looking to future proof your computer 100%, you might want to look into that. Some current computers that are sold today will be incompatible with windows 11. I believe it is called System on a chip (SOC)? I'm fuzzy on the details of this. Windows 10 is almost 7 years old and will have 3 more years of updates and support.

[Mike Gera]

Thanks for the reply.

I am currently working on a project that entails several thousand parts. I need as much number crunching as I can get without breaking the bank.

[bnemec]

we don't build custom boxes, just order from Dell when the time comes. But, when we do that we try to find the hardware that's on the knee of the price/performance curve. That process can be tricky. We've found info at Puget Systems articles to be helpful. I'm not speaking one way or the other for their products. Maybe there's some helpful info there.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articl ... solidworks

[HDS]

Mike

Right now the most important things is which parts you can find more than the perfect performance. Purchasing a bundle makes it easier than trying to buy each parts by itself.

The weird thing right now is that the Quadro cards are easier to find than the Geforce (check Micro Center). However, NVDIA has going to call everything a Geforce from now on.

With that many parts try to get leave a few DIM slots free in case you need to upgrade RAM.

[AL123]

Yeh right now workstation cards price and availability makes going for an unsupported GeForce gaming/consumer card where you may see more issues less attractive

However NVIDIA won't be calling the professional cards "GeForce" they just don't have a brand name for their professional or data centre cards, confusing but a decision made at a high level!

So anything with GeForce in the name still isn't supported/ certified...GeForce RTX 3000 series, 3069, 3070,3080 are not supported but Nvidia RTX A2000, A3000, A4000 etc are supported professional workstation card

Supply is still an issue with supply of cards, 3 month wait is what we have been told for a machine with an RTX A4000 card currently in UK. My advice.. buy early!

NVIDIA are releasing more pro cards to help. The most interesting for CAD users I think will be the A2000 12GB for mid-range (6gb version never seemed to be available) and A4500 20GB at thr high end particularly for Visualize/Keyshot users.

Cpu wise Based on all the benchmarks for other programs so far 12th gen intel retains the lead for single/lightly threaded operations which means most Solidworks tasks. Although it is hard to source Ddr5 ram currently to get the most from the Cpu.

Last benchmarks we did On Intels 11th gen CPUs showd it still had the lead over amd for day to day soldiworks, expect 12th gen will extend this lead until amd release their new CPUs.
Even for most simulation tasks we found 11th gen intel out performed the AMD ryzen 5000 series CPUs.