(May 20, 2008) Total build was a hair over $2000 to the door from Newegg (not including the keyboard or, of course, Solidworks)
(1) Asus P5N72-T Premium
(1) Intel C2Duo E8400 (BX80570E8400)
(1) Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Coumpound
(1) Asus CPU Cooler (V-60)
(1) Antec Case (Nine Hundred)
(1) Thermaltake PSU (W0116RU)
(2) OCZ Reaper 2Gb PC2 6400 (OCZ2RPR800C44GK)
(1) PNY Quadro FX3700 (VCQFX3700-PCIE-PB)
(1) DVD+R/RW/DL SATA (DRW-2014S1T)
(1) Seagate 250Gb SATA (ST3250410AS)
(1) OS-MS XP 64bit SP2C OEM (ZAT-00124)
(1) 3Dconnection SpaceNav (3DX-700029)
(1) Logitech G5 Mouse (G5)
(1) Saitek Gamer's Keyboard with Programmable Command Pad (already owned)
This list is also in the order of installation (see **System Building Note 1 on the motherboards VPU fan below)
Been running for about a week straight with not the first hiccup, and the system runs consistenty cool under 100f deg in an 80f deg room during load. Extreemly fast assembly rendering with a multiple helix and textured parts. A real joy to use and saves a lot of time. Will pay for itself in a month or less.
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Each component was scrutinized, in the exreeme, for compatibilty, performance, and longevity.
VidCard: PNY is a Solidworks Cert. Premium Partner, if you ever have a problem, you can gaurantee they will have help.
512Mb DDR3 memory, OpenGL 2.1, SLI Capible, 400RAMDAC, DirectX 10 Shaders (although chosen OS doesn't) 1/3 the price of current top dog that I don't see the reason in it's specs it is that price.
Case: best ventilation avail for the $ and fans can be manually adjusted H-M-L with a switch on each although very quiet on med speed.
MB: most stable intel 775 nvidia SLI board on the market
Memory: It's OCZ, what did you expect? The Motherboard mfg doesn't even list a vendor that has modules to max what this board advertises it can handle, but these two 2gb (4Gb total) are working at the memorys listed speed without a hitch.
PSU: Modular cables so you dont have to account for a thousand loose wiring bundles tied off blockin air cirulation.
CPU: best bang for the buck.
CPU Cooler: don't stick with the base fan unless you never plan on building an assembly with more than 2 parts, and don't stick with the paste that it comes with, it could be 3 years old and dried out.
Arctic Silver Thermal Coumpund: this is a top item by all those overclockers out there, and they recomend you only use enough to make full coverage contact, if it's too thick it will act as an insullator causing CPU overheating.
OS: Why would you spend the resources to run that flipin' vista CPU hog? XP64 is based on the 2003 server arcetecture, very stable, predictible and old software WORKS on it, but install the 64bit Solidworks to get the benifits of the dual processor.
G5 Mouse: make life easier when the mouse works on any surface and can be adjusted with buttons on the mouse itself (also note the wheel is also a sideways slider as it will tile to the left and right.
3dConnection: this little thing is a wonder!!! Wow it saves time, and sanity.
Saitek Keyboard: The command pad is 27 button programmable pad to do anything from a one button keypress to a complex macro. And it sits nicely next to the 3dconnstion mouse that only has 2 limited programmable buttons.
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The only place I would make any other recomendations is when SSD SATA drives become sanely priced, I would buy 6 of the smallest (8g or 16g)ones and place them in raid 0 with an external HD or NAS for backup. Now your talking a 10 second bootup and files load ultra fast, windows swap files move at near fsb speeds, almost no heat, and nearly no power draw to operate, not to mention resiliant to shock.
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**System building notes:
1. If you plan on installing the boards optional VPU fan, you will need to snip off this fans 2 plastic latch clips and make a second hole in the fan shell for it's cables to keep them from contacting any of the nearby metal heat sinks and install the optioanl CPU coolr venting straight up.
2. DO NOT install the Microsoft windows update software for the Saitek Gamer's keyboard or it will break it's command pad's progamming function.
4. BIOS defaults worked out of the gate with only an adjustment on the boot device priority needed to install OS from a IDE CD drive i had before SATS DVD arrived. Also, disable the floppy drive in BIOS, are we really still using floppy drives? sheesh...
5. After OS installation, make the hard drive 1st in boot priority because durring the ASUS autoinstallation, the pc will reboot 3 times and the ASUS cd is a bootable utility cd witch may scare you that something is wrong when thers not.
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Final thoughts, the motherboard will allow for 3 PCIe cards in SLI, but the graphics card listed only allows for 2. This is fine with me, by the time I need more power, I can add a second card to this for 1/3 the original card's cost + the second set of the identical memory modules to get another 2 years out of it.
This build will save hours or days trying to figure out how to save 40-150% off retail from the major pc vendors and still get a lightning fast engineering workstation, but it requires you to roll up your sleves and turn a few screws, but I think 99% of solidworks users can handle it.
