Out of Time?
Or Green?
Both, apparently.
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Me too
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2TB is way overkill. A 500GB SSD will be more than plenty.
An i7 only wins over an i5 if the application is properly multi threaded. personally I wouldnāt bother - certainly not an older i7 vs a newer i5. Spend the money on memory instead.
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I meant a small ssd and a big (cheap) hdd just in case.
Sure, but for what? He can always get a separate larger disk later if he finds he needs it. As I said, Iād just get a 500GB SSD for now, which is relatively cheap.
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Youāll be recommending a machine in budget and matched to his needs at this rateā¦ what he really needs is a ryzen threadripper, over clocked 3090 and 64gb ram 
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Lol, the AA spirit. 
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indeed HDD unnecessary atm
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I agree a more modern i5 over and older i7
stuff it full of memory and an SSD
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For CAD work you also want to ensure that it has separate video memory. Systems that use main memory as VRAM will have poor performance. Dedicated video RAM is normally specced to be significantly faster.
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Iāve seen stuff with 2gb and up video cards, but do i need this to begin with? Iām happy to upgrade as I progress, and now appreciate that a desktop is probably a better place for me to be starting from, being physically easier for a Luddite to swap stuff over.
When I was using Autocad Inventor - nearly 5 years ago now - I had a Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ Dell Workstation laptop. I used a docking station with two large screens when using it at work.
Even then it was something north of Ā£4.5k for the package. That didnāt include the software, obvs.
Not sure that Rob is quite up for that expenditure 
Autodesk say 1GB min. of VRAM with 4GB recommended for complex models. 2GB will be ok but dedicated video memory is far, far preferable to shared (it pinches main system memory, which is slower than VRAM and also you lose system memory in the shared model as itās reserved for the GPU)
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No, compromises will need to be made, but you need to pick the right ones for your application. E.g. no point spending loads on a 3D GPU, processors designed for multi-threaded workloads or loads of hard disk capacity. Put the money where it matters - decent single threaded and 2D video performance and plenty of system memory.
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Less than 10% of that. I only want to draw/print spaceship kits and stuff! And itāll take me ages to get to the level of designing something like Sputnik 1!
I can probably do the box for around Ā£300, for a starter level thing, tbh, and as I said, I am happy to upgrade as I get more ambitious.
Thank fuck I didnāt ask on PFM, someone waaaaaaay up the spectrum would be speccing Deep Thought for me to draw a Space 1999 Eagleā¦
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Will this work?
Iāve specced 16gb, 240gb ssd, i7 3rd gen
Maybe more like this.
Lenovo ThinkStation P500 E5-1630 v3 3.7GHz RAM 16GB SSD 256GB Quadro 4000 Win 10 | eBay
Sorry!! Just seen the stupid posting charges.
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I just spent a few minutes on Scan:
You can build a new i3, 16GB, M2 SSD with a new 24" screen and good keyboard etc for just over Ā£400. Add a used 2gb GPU off ebay for Ā£40.
Thatās your price for stuff that will work well and be sure to stand upgrades for some years.
Your ebay link looks to be Ā£310 for just the PC, so is basically the same price. Iād buy new myself (indeed I did, for exactly this reason)
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