Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

What kind of computers does your team use? Did the school buy them or did someone make them? Laptop, desktop? Pics of your lab would be great! I am just really curious to see what all of you have to work with.

Who thinks they have the BEST setup?
Who thinks they have the WORST? (Bonus points for anything earlier than Win2K)

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I built my team's current CAD computer using parts from our mentor's company (they were moving over to new PCs).
Specs:
OS: Win 10 64bit
RAM: 16GB 1333MZ (DDR3)
CPU: AMD FX-6300 (with a CoolerMaster 212 :p)
GPU: AMD 6970
HDD: 1 1TB drive and 1 500 Gig Drive
SSD: Boot Drive and one 64gig CAD drive.
PSU: 800 watts
Case: MASSCOOL CS-ICS8200 (It has a built in AC. That's right, an AC!)

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We have 10ish desktops provided by the school. However only 2 of them have the RAM upgrades needed to run Solidworks. Were looking into investing in additional upgrades so we can get them all running. Because we have so few computers that have Solidworks, its been difficult to get everyone involved in learning it. Hoping to change that next year.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Our programming/driver's station laptop in 2012 had a screen held on with tape, and a battery life of 5 minutes. This was still an improvement over the Classmate E9 that we got our rookie year.

We have since moved into the school's CAD lab where we have about 50 old HP workstation desktops, half of which have dual monitors. They originally ran Vista, now 7. They each have 2, 4 core Xeons (no hyperthreading) with 8GB of RAM and some unknown Quadro GPU. These should be replaced soon with money from a 2015 district infrastructure bond.

We also got some decent Dell business laptops donated for programming and driver's station.

We did at one point have a CNC plasma cutter with a computer that ran Windows Millennium Edition. ;) (However, the last time it was used was probably the early 2000s).

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

How do I get those old machines when they're surplused?.

On programming, our machines have typically been my old laptops. Which I'm currently supplying four with to the team all bought in the past six years (don't ask). We recently got some Dell latitude 630s and some surplus desktops in and we'll see what happens with those. For the most part, we've relied on personal laptops of students/mentors.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I love threads like this! They distract me from pulling my hair out over some of the other less fun off-season threads. Anyways, here are the computers we have:

(5) Panasonic ToughBook CF19 MK2

Purpose: Programming/Utility

Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.06GHz, digitizer touchscreen, 2GB RAM, Windows 7, Cellular modems

Story: The ToughBook series is a fully ruggedized laptop for use in harsh environments. We had 5 of these donated by the local ambulance company. In their former lives they were used by ambulance crews and fire department paramedics to write patient care reports after their calls. We are currently refurbishing them (installing hard drives and operating systems). Once that is complete they will be used for the build team (reading manuals while assembling parts, etc.) and potentially programming.

Images: http://imgur.com/a/gXakG

(1) Acer Aspire E11

Purpose: Driver station/Programming

Specs: Intel Celeron 1.83GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Windows 7

Story: This is the standard netbook/laptop provided in the Rookie Kit of Parts. For us, we used it as our driver station/occasional programming laptop. We aren't huge fans of it because of it's poor compute performance and low battery life, so we're looking at replacing it with a Thinkpad.

(1) Lenovo G50 15.6-inch Laptop

Purpose: Utility

Specs: Intel Pentium N3530 2.16 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Windows 8

Story: This laptop was donated by the school when they received a new order of Thinkpads. It was absolutely terrible until we removed all the spyware and junk it came with. At first we used it as our driver station, but we replaced it with the Aspire E11 because of it's size. Currently it powers our parts status display in our shop, but it is also used for email, web browsing, reading manuals, etc.

(1) ASUS K501UX 15.6-inch Laptop

Purpose: Scouting data visualization/CAD

Specs: Intel Core i7-6500U 2.5GHz, NVIDIA GTX 950M GPU; 8GB RAM; 256GB SSD, Windows 10

Story: We wanted to obtain a reasonably powerful laptop for CAD and scouting purposes. This Asus fit the bill. We're pretty happy with it, as it has good battery life and performs really well.

(1) Custom CAD workstation

Purpose: CAD/Compute-intensive tasks

Specs: AMD FX8350 4GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro 600, Windows 7, Corsair RM750 PSU, NZXT Source 210, 500GB HDD, Hyper 212 EVO :], Dell P2414H and E2414H monitors

Story: We quickly realized that we needed a CAD workstation for rendering and such. I was tasked with designing a system to do so. I largely based it off my system at home, with a few modifications. We went with the AMD FX8350 for it's great performance at a low price point and it's high clock speed and 16GB of RAM for CADing and rendering. We have a Hyper 212 EVO from Cooler Master to keep the AMD beast cool. The Quadro 600 was an interesting story. We wanted a workstation card mainly due to driver support in Solidworks, although we knew a new card would be out of reach. One of our students took the Quadro 600 out of his mom's old computer and gave it to us. While it is quite slow (it's a Fermi generation card) it does the job. The monitors were donated by our school because when we moved into our current building the previous owner (the school district) left them behind. We LOVE having dual monitors, as it means whoever's working can be looking at email, Google Drive, a product page, etc. while CADing. The hard drive came out of another one of our student's old MacBook Pro. The case we chose because it was the cheapest aesthetically pleasing case with a large-enough window. The PSU was chosen because we wanted fully modular (for a clean look) and capability to expand the system in the future. All-in-all, the system is a bit of a hodge-podge of parts but it works great for us and we did all our rendering on it this year. The computer, monitors, and peripherals now reside on a converted Harbor Freight workbench so the whole system can move wherever we need it to (see the image gallery for more detail).

Images with captions/more info: http://imgur.com/a/j4CCX

Specs/Parts list (Google Doc with prices/links): https://goo.gl/m0cfMC

Well, there is a list of the main computers we have. We have a few Raspberry Pis here and there that power things like our CheesyParts server but they aren't really worth including. While it may seem like we don't have many computers most of our students bring in personal computers and our school has 1:1 Chromebooks, many of which our students run Ubuntu on. Also, here is an imgur gallery with photos of our shop: http://imgur.com/a/QTDsm.

As far as best or worst, I would say we're middle of the road. We could definitely use more power and computers (who can't!).

Please let me know by PM or posting if you have questions or comments!

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We have the privilege of having a crap ton of computers provided to the school. The downside is only three of them are technically ours.

We have basically the entire school's CAD lab's worth of computers for using Inventor. These work fine, but, since, they're large desktop, we can't use them at events or when working with other teams. These were literally specced to use Inventor, so these work great.

We also just got five older laptops from the school without wi-fi cards. We've used them in so many cases just to have a spare screen laying around. Slideshow? Check-in? Scouting? It works really well.

We also have three WinXP-era laptops that we use as daily drivers for programming. We upgraded one to Win10, but we didn't upgrade any of the others due to issues with mDNS. These work great, but we really are looking at new ones for this upcoming year.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Depending on what my team decides to do this year. I was looking at getting a Razor Blade Stealth for the CAD/Video Editing groups.

We currently have a 15.6" ASUS Flip 2in1 with a Core i5 for our Dev team.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I did up 3 computer for 1768 for the 2016 season. Until the 2016 season the team had used the school's computers, the specs were depressing. We were continuously waiting for models to catch up after trying to rotate the model a bit. Frequently we would wait 20 seconds or so every time we rotated a model... not only was this annoying, but the time was adding up quickly. We frequently waited 2-3 minutes to log in, another 3-4 minutes to open our CAD software... you get the idea.

The goal for making some CAD machines was to not only eliminate the lag in model viewing, but to completely decimate it. We wanted quick log ins, quick program loading. Basically we wanted to eliminate all of the waiting and maximize our CAD time. And after a few years of ever increasing aggravation, se set the budget accordingly.

Alright, to the fun part...

The three machines were virtually identical with only one smlight difference between them.

I have included links to the parts we used, as well as the pricing (at the time of purchase which was Fall 2015)

CASE: ($45)
NZXT Source 210 S210-001 Black

This was a cheap case, that offered enough space and wouldn't suck up too much of the budget, leaving more money to be spent where it counts, more power

CPU: ($370)
Intel Core i7-6700K

4.0 GHz out of the box. The fast clock speed was attractive given the linear process nature of CAD. Having a quad-core meant we had the cores to throw around for things like renders, FEA and the like.

CPU Cooling: ($105)
CORSAIR Hydro Series H105 Extreme Performance 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler

We had toyed around with the idea of overclocking the CPU, which we never ended up doing (no need). This CPU cooler has proven performance, and is a favorite by many tech testing sites. With a modest price point, simple install, superior performance it seemed like a no brainer.

RAM: ($195)
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32Gb

Not much to say here. I had used Corsair RAM in the past and have always had good experiences with it. Throw one in the bucket for brand loyalty I suppose.

Motherboard: ($150)
MSI Z170A GAMING M3 LGA 1151

Looked at what was available with the features we wanted. This fit the bill.

Storage: ($140)
SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 256GB SATA III

This drive had excellent reviews. Superior read and write speed. This would certainly play into having quick boot speeds, quick program loading, stable saving. Also it has pro in the name, so it must be good ;)

PSU: ($130)
EVGA 220-G2-0850-XR 80 PLUS GOLD 850 W

Provides plenty of power for the machine, fully modular for ease of neat wiring.

Here is where the differences begin. We built 3 computers. The idea was to have two machines that were well suited (overkill) for designing parts and working on subassemblies. We also wanted one machine that was well suited (overkill) for working within the main robot assembly. This matched our workflow as well which involved having one student in charge of the main robot assembly, and working alongside two other students, each working on portions of the robot.

For our "Subassembly" machines we decided to add use the following graphics card.
Graphics Card: ($430)
PNY Quadro K2200 VCQK2200-PB

The specs for this card made it seem like the perfect solution for our "subassembly" machines. Nvidia Quadro cards are known frontrunner in the professional graphics sector, and the K2200 sits in a beautiful position on the cost vs performance curve. DisplayPort connections were another attractive feature.

For our "Main Assembly" rig we decided to up the game a little bit.
Graphics Card: ($890)
PNY Quadro M4000

All of the same benefits of other Quadro cards with the added benefit of POWER.

Monitors: ($180)
SAMSUNG S24C200BL Matte Black 23.6" (The link I had to these is dead, but I am sure you could find them somewhere if you really wanted them).

Dead simple, minimal bells and whistles. These offered 24" of screen real estate. The only downside we saw to them was their awful stands, which didn't matter to us, as the plan was to mount them to dual monitor arms.

Each machine got two of these monitors which was possible due to their low price point.

We ran Windows 10 on all of the machines. Additionally these machines were used just for CAD and CAM nothing else was run except for an internet browser. (Ironically in downloading Chrome, we ended up downloading a Chrome Clone which was a virus... luckily this was easily fixed, however it really emphasized the reason why we chose to keep the machines so locked down just to CAD)

Each machine was put on custom wooden desks which featured a whiteboard top surface for easy sketching during the design process. They also had shelves for the computers below the work surface to keep the top of the desk clean and open. The desks had large casters which allowed them to be easily stowed in a closet when not in use. Our lead CAD student Greg Woelki demanded black for his desk, so I spray painted his black in below freezing temperatures. :rolleyes:

After some networking cables, mice and keyboards, we got out of the build for about $6,300 plus the cost of the desks.

Having these machines was absolutely vital to the 2016 season for 1768. The 2016 season saw the most important CAD model the team had ever undertaken. 4 water jetted plates made up more or less the entire frame and superstructure for the robot, so there was no room for error. Hundreds of hours of CAD went into the robot (One member kept track of work hours for students during the season, Greg and I came in at just over 400 hours each during the 6 week build season. I can say pretty confidently that over 50% of that time was spent with Greg on the main CAD machine).

Additionally, owning our own computer presented an unforeseen benefit to the team. During a New England storm power was lost at the school and the team was asked to evacuate. This would have previously meant downtime for the team. However, owning our own computers meant we were able to pack them up and bring them to an alternative location and continue working.

I attached a few photos of the CAD machines although I never made a huge point of photographing them so I apologize for the lack of quality. The last photo shows a bit of the plate construction I mentioned earlier.

~Zac

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I have no idea, I'm just an alumni. To be honest, you probably don't want them. They have hardware failures all the time. You would spend a ton of time and money replacing stuff when it breaks.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We only really have three computers, two Classmate E12's, and an old Lenovo gSeries running Windows XP with a gig of RAM. Let's just say that we're trying to get a new one for this season. :ahh:

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

While awesome, this is such absurd overkill pricewise for FRC.

Making sweeping generalizations, most users will be plenty happy with a $100 workstation card for FRC.

I'm a SW snob and have a pretty overkill setup at work and home, but have been CADing for the team primarily with a Lenovo w540 that has a quadro k1100m. While great for a laptop in that price range, it's performance is comparable with a budget desktop. I've been plenty happy with it for FRC however.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Does it count if I install an ancient version of Windows on a somewhat modern piece of hardware? If so, I can tell you about a Classmate running Windows NT 4.0 SP6, an OS so old that Internet Explorer 6 is an available update.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Having used the machines, for the most part I'd disagree with "absurd" - sure, we got nowhere near using 32GB of RAM, for instance, but the computers can still be made to stutter if one asks enough of them.

However, by design, they are indeed overkill. After spending years treading water with specs as both the requirements of our CAD software and the complexity of our models increased, our lead mentor decided that he wanted a "set it and forget it" CAD solution so that we wouldn't have to worry about computer hardware at all for the foreseeable future. I believe we succeeded in that regard.

The specs of our workstations are by no means a recommendation to all rookie teams as to what one needs in order to do CAD for FRC - given where we were resources wise, it was a good place to spend some money.

One could even say we got out of it cheap - the last major CAD computer Zac built for someone (not FRC related) cost $4000!

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Though the rest of the school has chromeboxes shudders the engineering/ag building lucked out with some 30ish laptops (HP Elitebooks, cant remember model # off the top of my head) 3 Brand new HP Elitebooks, and a computer lab with about 30 desktops that are overpriced and not too good (used for programming/school items) Until this year we have been using the older elitebook for our driving, but used one of the newer ones for this year.

Sorry i cant be more specific, Im unable to really go there and get the models for a while still.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I know very little about computers - what would you recommend as a good CAD desktop from your personal CoolerMaster point of view?

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I don't know the specs off the top of my head, but we have gotten our CAD workstations off of the Dell auction site.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

As you have probably read here, you have many options varying from complete overkill to barely getting by.

I know AutoDesk has a list of approved graphics cards that will work. I would start there and build around that. The GPU is going to matter more than the processor. Depending on your school's budget I think your best bet is going to be looking for parts that have just been replaced by something newer. i.e. get the Widget 2500 when the 2600 comes out.

Speaking strictly of our products, I would go with the following:

MasterCase 5 Series- Best
MasterCase Pro 3- Better
MasterBox- Good

MasterAir Maker 8- Best
V8- Better
212 Evo- Good

V1000- Best
V750- Better
GM Series- Good

MasterKeys Keyboard Series
Sentinel III or MasterMouse

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

The school has never provided us a computer that was a viable platform for web development, much less CAD or software development. I believe all of our desktops (4?) were privately donated. Our current CAD computer (and best SW development computer) was donated by someone who has no connection with the team other than he and I work in the same place; he updated his game computer, and was more interested in inspiring high school students than getting a fraction of his money back. When Bob and Riley installed CAD software this weekend, I think they found one other desktop that could run the CAD software they had selected. We have three classmates and two fairly decent laptops, one bought by the booster club, another donated. Most of our history we have depended on laptops owned by the programmers to get the programming done, and about half of the time we have used personally owned laptops as the driver station.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Currently in our robotics lab we only have 3 computers. Although this is deceiving as 3/4 grades in our school have chrome books.

The first pc is one of my extra workstations with a Quadro k4000 we got out of first choice.

Processor: amd 6300
Ram: 8gbs corsair vengeance ddr3
Ssd: 60gb Patriot Pyro ($200 when I bought it many years ago)
Case: antec p70

The other pc is our lead mentors spare and it has
Intel i5 2500k
8gbs of offbrand memory
1tb hdd
And a 8880 gts that I had laying around (bonus points for such a revolutionary video card?)

What is nice is both of those workstations have 3 monitors. A God send for cad work.

The last pc is our driver station/programming pc.
Its a Lenovo t430 we got for $250 refurbished
We then added an 128gb 850 evo

We are working with a large corporation currently. We asked for 7 of their flagship pc/tablet thingys along with more programming pcs and a few cad stations. We especially lack in programming computers at the moment.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

This is not correct. CPU is far more important. Any Solidworks certified GPU will get the job done. Best CPU you can afford is by far the number one key to performance in Solidworks.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I agree, to an extent. I find this document to be really useful in determining how to optimize my SW performance:
http://files.solidworks.com/partners...ance_ ENG.pdf
That being said, it's not perfect. Upgrading to an SSD did not net me massive performance increases, although more RAM and graphics cards seem to help a ton (for my friend's computers).
RAM is a big one too. I run on 8gb RAM, an i7, and no graphics card. In order of priority, I want at least 8gb more RAM, then a graphics card (preferably something good), then a better processor, then another 16gb RAM. I already have an i7, so upgrading my cpu would be far more expensive than changing something else first.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

To piggy back off of this, it is my understanding that "best" in the case of CAD refers to single core performance, as CAD is in most cases a linear process. This means that the software can't take full advantage of having several cores. This is important to keep in mind as the market becomes filled with highly rated CPUs that offer up lots of cores, with low clock speeds. These CPUs are more desirable for things like rendering where the workload can be distributed across the cores.

~Zac

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Wait - did you actually do this? If so, that's super awesome. Please post story and photos!

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Our School has rigs with some gen quad core i7s, and some crappy old AMD GPUs. While they are okay for basic level CAD, most of our CADers use their own rigs/laptops.

Personal RIG: That I do most of my CADing on:

CPU: Intel Core i7 5930K
MotherBoard: ROG STRIX X99 GAMING
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GTX AIO Water Cooler
RAM: 32 GB of Corsair Dominator Platinums
GPUs: 2x ASUS STRIX GTX 1080
1x Nvidia Titan X
PowerSupply: EVGA SuperNova 1200
Storage: 2x 500gb 850 EVO SSDs
10 gigabit connection to 12tb network NAS
CASE: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Tempered Glass
Monitors: 3x Dell P2415Q

Accessories:
Mouse: Logitech MX Master
Keyboard: Logitech G710+
Headphones: Sennheiser HD 6 MIX
3DMouse: 3Dconnexion Space Mouse Pro

Yes, I know this is way overkill, especially having 2 1080s and another titan x on top of it, but I got really lucky with sales and gifts soo ya :D

Total retail cost (according to pcpartpicker): about $5827.34
What I spent on it: about $2500

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

YES! This is a big one in improving productivity with a CAD workstation. I have typically recommended the SpaceNavigator for people looking to see what a 3D mouse is all about. However, the SpacePilot Pro brings the 3D mouse to a whole new level with the programmable buttons. It really is incredible how much quicker modeling can become when your most commonly used tools are right there at your fingertips.

SpaceNavigator

SpacePilot Pro

And it looks like 3D Connexion is out with something new called the SpaceMouse Enterprise which makes it even easier to access your most commonly used tools.

SpaceMouse Enterprise

If you get past the learning curve for these 3D mice, the benefits of having one become clear so quickly. Being able to easily move the model on the screen seems like such an obvious necessity in CAD however it really isn't clear how difficult it is to do with a mouse and scroll wheel until you experience how easy it is to do with a device specifically designed for the task.

~Zac

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

:eek: Lucky! I'm just pluggin along with my Strix Radeon R9 380X.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Our lab contains 22 workstations outfitted with the following:

HP Z230 SFF Workstations
Xeon E3-1241v3 3.5GHz Quad Core Hyperthreading
16GB DDR3
256GB HP Z-Turbo Drive PCIe SSD
nVidia Quadro K600 Graphics
HP Z27i 2560x1440 displays
Sennheiser HD201 headphones

They run Autodesk Inventor, HSM, and pretty much everything else quite well, even at the higher resolution. Only the most advanced CAM simulations in HSM could use a tad more graphics "oomph." They're really a joy to use, but I wish we had a few more of them. I'm just out of square footage to put them in.

HP Z-series products are really the "right" thing (enterprise-class product) for this application, and we've been very happy with them so far. The only thing we're lacking is a glass screen on the monitors, which is concerning in the educational environment, but we're extra careful, and the students know that they won't be coming back tomorrow if anyone or anything touches one of those monitors.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

I think a really helpful article for everyone would be this one by Nvidia that explains most of this in detail.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/best-cad-components.html

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Nvidia is a company that specializes in graphics cards, so I would take that article with a grain of salt. :p

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We have

• a Lenovo Thinkpad for programming
• a Classmate for driver station
• another Classmate as pristine 2014 cRIO dev environment (we've got our 2013 and 2014 robots still)
• a donated HP? laptop running XP for showing videos on, say in the pits
• a couple desktops on loan for CAD
• access to the school CAD computers (but AutoCAD on them doesn't seem as effective at 3D as SolidWorks, so we mostly use the one in a classroom for videos and meeting start notes)
• a 2009 Classmate and an old Dell laptop that aren't worth much mention (haven't used them in a while, both severely lacking in hardware and with maybe damaged OS installs)

PS: everything is running Windows 7 but 1 on XP (the HP) and 1 on some linux flavor (the Dell laptop). Also, one of our Classmates entirely lost its right-click key after being dropped too many times.

The Thinkpad was bought for the team by the lead mentor. The Classmates came from the KOP, FIRST Choice, and a local team that folded. The HP came from an office upgrade by a Wisconsin company where a former mentor was working. The desktops came from a local engineering company. I think the origin of the Dell laptop predates me.

In terms of computers, the biggest aids right now would be consistent (any?) WiFi access, and CAD desktops of our own that we could seal away from sawdust (storage right now is in the wood shop, and our non-wood shop storage same days requires a trip outside in a snowy winter [interior gate we don't have keys to]).

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Most of the Cadding and video editing I do for FRC is done on my personal rig:

I5 3570k @4.66ghz
2x 7970s @1125mhz
16gb corsair ram at 1600mhz
256gb SSD boot drive
1tb WD caviar black for cad stuff
3tb of video edditing storage
1100W PSU
Coolermaster Storm Trooper case

Works ok for running Autodesk Inventor and Sony Vegas but idd recommend a better CPU to anyone building a computer for cad and a single GPU for anyone doing heavy video editing. Also my overclocks are a tad aggressive unless you enjoy your room feeling like a bakery and a computer that sounds like a jet engine.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Nothing in that article refutes my statement that high clock speed CPU is more important than choice of GPU, so long as your GPU is Solidworks certified.

You'll get a vastly bigger performance boost by upgrading to a ssd (if you're somehow still using a mechanical drive) than you would by upgrading from a base model quadro to a mid tier one.

The one big thing to take note of is that testing has shown the cheapest $200 quadro card will outperform the Titan in Solidworks performance.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

It wasn't meant to refute your statement, only further the topic by introducing more information.

I would love to know more about CAD computing. If you get time, send me a PM. We are currently working on CAD machines for some of our teams and would love the extra input.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Guys Guys... Come on.... We all know that rgb led lighting inside the case is the most important for CAD... Come on now 😀😀😀😀

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

[quote=CMBrandon;1600147]What kind of computers does your team use? Did the school buy them or did someone make them? Laptop, desktop? Pics of your lab would be great! I am just really curious to see what all of you have to work with.

We custom build all of our workstations to try and stretch our dollars as far as we can. We try to add at least 2-3 CAD computers each year and repurpose older computers to other areas of the team (business, programming, outreach, etc). All of our computers are owned by the team and not supplied by the school. In order to get the eduction license of SW provided through FIRST you aren't supposed to install it on school owned computers.

Our newest builds that we just completed include:

Case - CoolerMaster Elite 431 ($50)
CPU - Intel Skylake i5-6600k ($250)
Mobo - ASUS Z170-P LGA 1151 ($100)
Ram - 16gb DDR4 2400 ($50 but we got this for free with a processor/mobo combo)
PSU - Thermaltake TR2 500 Watts ($30 on amazon prime day!!!)
Graphics - AMD Firepro W4300 ($250)
HD - 120gb SSD ($60)
Windows 10 pro (we bought OEM windows 7 pro and upgraded to 10 for free)

We like our CoolerMaster cases as they come with a blue LED fan which is one of our team colors.

We are fortunate to be near an electronics swap meet and were able to get 24" monitors, keyboards, mice and speakers second hand for cheap. Here are some photos of our current CAD setup. The pictures are a little dated as we have added more computers and removed the old box monitors and use only 1080p monitors.

We also have a network server that we run that shares files between all of the computers. However, with GrabCAD being free now it has reduced our dependency on our server and it really only shares our media now a days.

We have also built budget computers that can also run SW great. Now that we have more than 10 CAD computers we invest in more moderate builds that are used more for higher level assembly manipulation.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Bryan,

We need to talk about those cases... I think we can help you ;). Give me a call tomorrow at the office.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Will do!!!

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We have quite the assortment of laptops that the team owns and a lab of about 20 desktops at the school which are used during school hours for mechanical and architectural classes, thus they have all the Autodesk products on them and we use them for all our CADing, these computers also have access to a network drive which our lead educator, whose classroom we are working in, can also access, so if we want something 3d printed we can just put it in there and ask him to start the printer. The laptops include one ancient thing running Win XP that had been our programming laptop, we stopped using that after the 2013 season when we were donated 3 newer Dells. Those Dells also pushed our struggling Classmate out of service, needless to say no one was sad to see it go, but it still sits in the cabinet. The Dells were donated by one of our sponsors as they were upgrading many of their office computers. We use them for drive stations primarily, but also we keep one fully up to date with Labview for programming and the most powerful of the 3 has the Autodesk suite loaded on it so we have a portable CAD computer. They are all running Windows 7. We don't usually use personal computers at meetings, mostly because we have the lab. We do also have 1 Windows 8 Toshiba, but that has had its share of problems, the primary one being that we blew up the ethernet port on it because one of our long cords shocked it with static electricity while we were doing some testing on a carpet floor, fortunately the WiFi still works fine so we can use it as a demonstration driver station, that's about all it is. As far as computers are concerned I would say we are in the middle of the pack and we are happy right there.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

This. So much this. No one seems to understand this in the educational world. So many systems purchased without SSDs these days.

It pains me to agree to this but it is completely true and has everything to do with driver optimizations: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...orks-2016-751/

Honestly the Titan cards work best for training neural networks and CUDA intensive tasks given the number of cores available and the memory size. We definitely use ours for this.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

For our school district, SSD's, 8GB RAM, and Skylake i5 is the minimum standard for all new desktop purchases going forward, as of June, 2016. But I agree, most of education has no clue what they're buying beyond "computers" and quite frequently those dollars go to Apple computers because "Macs are better."

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We use the ones provided by the school but because we share our build site with two other teams and it's a working classroom we have to be very mindful of what we do on the computer and how well we keep the area neat and orderly.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Ours are all donated. Caterpillar is generous enough to give us ~6 pretty new, mid-grade workstation laptops, which are powerful enough to manage CAD assemblies. We then have a pile of ~10 laptops of various brands, ages and states of repair, which have all been donated by team members, parents, and mentors. Most of them can't handle CAD, so they are used for programming. A lot of students bring in their own laptops to use (our driver's station laptop the last two years was actually the programming team leader's MacBook). We have one desktop, an older system donated by our school district, which is used as a file server. We probably could not exist if we had to purchase our own computers; the cost of a usable CAD laptop is unbelievable.

By the way, having worked in IT off-and-on over the years, I'd strongly suggest to anyone who is seriously considering building their own CAD workstation, get an AMD FirePro. They will last you a lifetime, and the older ones provide outstanding performance for the money. My workstation uses a FirePro v4800, which is a (supposedly) mid-to-low end workstation card. That sucker still handles Inventor on my two 1920x1200 monitors much better than any desktop card I've ever owned. Even after a power supply failure permanently damaged the rest of my old system, I was able to drop my v4800 into my new machine, and it still runs beautifully.

EDIT: btw, since I see people posting their builds, I'll post mine. Pls don't flame, it's almost 5 years old now:
AMD FX-6100, over clocked lightly to 4GHz. Stock cooler.
ASUS Crosshair-V Formula motherboard
16gb Crucial RAM, 1333mhz iirc
ATI FirePro v4800. Yes, it says ATI on it.
Some really cheap Cooler Master 500W supply.
Kingston 120Gb SSD + 1TB WD Green HDD.
Corsair Carbide 500R white case.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Our team has used a 2013 Alienware 14 since the 2014 season to conduct all our team functions (CAD, programming, driver station), however, we need to find a new laptop as ours appears to have been stolen :(. We highly recommend the laptop, the only problem was the trackpad would act up from time to time, and Dell offers educational discounts.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

My team uses both my personal and team computers to get done.
Team computers:-Old personal: - New Personal:
CPU- Some Xeon - i5-2400 - i5-6600k
Mobo-? - ? - MSI z-a170 pro carbon
RAM- 4GB DDR2 - 16GB DDR3. - 16GB DDR4
GPU- GTX 480 - GTX 660. - MSI GTX 1060

Current looking to rebuild the old personal in a new case to be an improvement over my teams cad set up. Sadly the CM CPU cooler I have had its back plate lost when I was rebuilding and I am out of money to buy a case.

Ps sorry for the bad format doing this from phone while camping.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

8 old HP laptops donated by a sponsor. ~1-4 minute clean build time.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

For Programming/ Doubles as a Driver's Station:

1 x HP ProBook 6550b
Features: WIN7 Enterprise, i5-520M, no dGPU, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 1366x768 display, dead CMOS battery school will not replace, half- functional BIOS chip that makes the computer fail POST unless booted a certain way, non- functional laptop battery that will die in about 15 mins if unplugged from the wall, keys will occasionally not register, and the icing on the cake: sometimes it just won't charge, or accept any power from the wall outlet, so we have to bring another laptop computer along as a battery charger for the main one.


My Personal Rig, which I can use for programming at home (but mostly gaming and personal programming projects, let me be honest here):

Case: Fractal Design Define R4
Motherboard: MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition
CPU: Intel i7-4790
CPU Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC12DX
GPU: Watercooled GTX 760
RAM: 16GB Samsung DDR3-1600
Storage: Seagate 2TB Hybrid Drive
PSU: EVGA 500B


For CAD:

1 x HP EliteBook 840
Features: WIN7 Enterprise, i7-4600U, I think no dGPU (but am uncertain), 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 1920x1080 display

20 x HP Compaq 8200 Elite All-In-One (In our CAD/ Technology Lab)
Features: WIN7 Enterprise, i5 2400S, no dGPU, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 1920x1080 display

If you couldn't tell, as a programmer, I am not a huge fan of the programming laptop we are using currently. It has developed major stability issues over the years I have used it.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

My team has two laptops one really old hp and a not as old hp (i think) that we use for programming. Other than that we all have to use our personal laptops for cad and such. We sometimes have access to a mac lab that we can't install cad or anything on so its not really useful.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

We have an old Dell laptop that technically belongs to a mentor and a new Lenovo B50 that we use for the DS. The Dell is a good computer, nice keyboard, good construction. It's been with the team for a long time, but is still in surprisingly good shape. Therefore, we use it primarily as a programming computer.

The Lenovo is a very heavy beast of a computer, but it is the newer one, and it has a terrible, god-awful keyboard. So we use it just for the driver station.

If you guys want more info, I can provide it.

The only laptop our team itself owns is the classmate we got from rookie year, every one brings there own with all the programming being done on a Samsung laptop and a MacBook pro running Windows 7 used as the driver station. Hopefully our school lends us some computers so we can get more people doing stuff, not everyone owns a laptop. (I didn't until about a month ago when a little Acer 2 in 1 went on sale)

Sent from my LG-H900 using Tapatalk

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

Here on Wave were fortunate enough to get hand me downs from one of our sponsors, however this doesn't mean they're top of the line. Were currently sporting 5 HP Z600's with Xeon x5500's (2.66 Ghz), 6G of ram, 80G hard drives, and Nvidia Quadro FX 4800's. These are our main CAD stations, the last time I did a inventor bench test they scored a ~1.17. We're also sporting a hand full of Dell D600's that we use for FLL and vex coding. I also believe we have one lenovo Y600 or similar that we use for programming and CAD.

Re: Let's Talk About Your Team's Computers
 

My team has pretty low-end to moderate machines provided by the school, nothing fancy. The bulk of CAD is done outside of meetings on personal machines. I'm currently running:

CPU: i7 5820k
CPU Cooler: NZXT X61
Memory: HyperX Fury 32GB
Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI Plus
Storage: Samsung 840 evo 250GB
Seagate 2TB SSHD
GPU: Reference GTX 970
PSU: EVGA G2 600w
Case: NZXT H440