PC to run autocad

[wayne36]

I am a studying engineering and I am going to need to buy a pc to run Autocad, here is what I have in mind so far.
hard drive 1TB
ram 8 gb
what would be a good video card and would it run better on Linux or a windows 8?
price would like to stay under 800$

 

[jarlmaster]

Lenovo Laptop Z70 Intel Core i7 5500U (2.40GHz) 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 8GB SSHD NVIDIA GeForce 840M 17.3" Windows 8.1 - Newegg.com

You are going to want a 1920 by 1080p screen. Trust me. I roomed with 2 engineers my freshman year and the extra screen real estate makes a HUGE difference. The 16gb of ram is also really nice and useful. You also want an i7. Broadwell is the newest thing and its a great chip (for laptops at least). The one I linked is 59 dollars over your budget but please make that sacrifice. It's totally worth it. Also be sure to upgrade to Windows 10!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314806

This works too. I recommend an SSD in a laptop if you can swing one. Makes the computer much faster.

 

[wayne36]

So that laptop would work well for a cad program, I was reading in other forums and they was saying a laptop to run cad would be a min of 1200-1500 and above?

 

[jarlmaster]

both of those laptops would do the job just fine. Whoever said 1200-1500 doesn't know what they're talking about. Autocad is a heavily cpu dependent program, so a good cpu will get the job done. There is very little graphics acceleration.

 

[BK_123]

I'd stick to Windows 7 or 8.1 for now as the autocad software may not be compatible with Windows 10.

 

[jarlmaster]

Fairly certain Autocad is updating their program as we speak. From what I've read the latest Autocad 2015 (I guess) is not officially supported but does work on Windows 10. There is a fix coming so the people on one forum say. And considering over 18 million people have upgraded to Windows 10 and knowing that most businesses are most likely upgrading to 10 in the coming weeks (my mom's patent office is upgrading in the next week or two), there should DEFINITELY be official Windows 10 support very very soon.

 

[setishock]

They recommend W7 or W8/8.1. As of the listing for 2016 W10 is not on the recommended OS list. I would think they're going to wait a bit to see how W10 pans out before making a version that supports it.

According to what I've read you don't need a hotrod system to run AutoCAD. On their website they state that AutoCAD will run on a Pentium4. Having said that I would build for worst case scenario. I'd go with at least an i5 and 16gigs of ram.
Using an SSD will make it go faster somewhat but keep in mind an SSD's life span is much shorter than a mechanical drive. The read/write cycles are limited. High end SSD's will last longer but not by much.

But you do need a higher end video card. Some software and mainframe systems use the GPU to do all the heavy lifting as far as rendering for 3D simulations. Cray super computers use Nvidia and AMD graphics cards as the heart of the system.

IMO a desktop system will serve you a lot better than a laptop because of the amount of heat that is generated by components when they are working. Even though AutoCAD will run on a laptop a desk system will allow you to fine tune the cooling devices to suite the amount of heat it needs to get rid of.

It's up to you. Give this a look: System requirements for AutoCAD | AutoCAD | Autodesk Knowledge Network

 

[wayne36]

Thanks a lot for the info I was kinda leaning towards a desk top because I wasn't sure of If i could afford a laptop powerful enough to run it and two how well it would hold up.