Powerful computer

[sanddrag]

I haven't done any heavy CAD modeling on my new build yet, but in general I've been very happy with my Core i5 2500K overclocked to 3.8 GHz. I have DDR3 1866 RAM. With this combo and a good hard drive you hardly have to wait for much of anything. It is still usable even under 100% load on Prime95. Add solid state caching or a dedicated solid state drive and you'd really be flying. Additionally, the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 is not that bad really for being integrated. I run dual monitors and so far even with HD video on one and Inventor on the other (no giant assemblies yet) it seems to work alright. Whether or not it still would for an entire FRC robot remains to be seen. I purposely went this route on my new system, with a Z68 motherboard to save cost and avoid purchasing a video card until I determine I need it. So far I have not. You would probably be fine with a CPU from AMD at about half the cost, but I wanted to have close to the best available CPU at the time for the budget I set. There are often a lot of great deals on AMD processors and/or motherboard combos.

One other thing to consider is having the OS and programs on one hard drive, and all files and storage on another. This will avoid the hard drive read/write speed bottleneck when moving large volumes of files.