What's your CAD setup?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by agartner01

I know our sponsors say they pay over a $1000 dollars for theirs, so I thought my price range of $500 to $800 would be borderline at best. Isn't CAD the main reason you spend so much? I know I tried installing both solidworks and creo on my teammates i3 computer, and it couldn't handle even simple solids... I will take a look at what nickE said. I just don't want to by something, then have it not work.

With a formatted drive and a fresh install of Windows, you should be able to run SW on low settings. Most likely, other programs and such were eating up your friends' resources. This is the other reason why building your own PC is fun - no useless junk software.

I personally would still build with an i5, 8gigs of RAM, and a good graphics card. These are computers you want to last you a while and your team will probably do other things on them as well. Your sponsors most likely just buy from a retailer instead of building their own. Nick's suggestion is correct that you want a good graphics card if you are going bare minimum on the other components. I would stick to purchasing more up to date parts though so I wouldn't need to upgrade or worry for a long while.