Hello Everyone,

I have come to this wonderful forum as I have some questions about what is the better PC for solidworks and some other tasks.

Firstly I am looking at spending about 1600 Euros (max 1750) on a PC for Solidworks modeling, analysis, and some rendering (very rarely), FEA (both structural (Ansys) and fluids (Star CCM+), and maybe some gaming duty (very rarely and likely not the newest games). I am using this as a personal computer (ie not for business but for my own engineering projects) so I do not need the ultimate in stability. While I know I am spending a lot I would like to keep the PC for a while and would rather not need to upgrade in the next 2-3 years.

So my first option is a used Dell Precision T7500 workstation I am getting for 1580E

Processor: 2 x Intel Xeon X5680

RAM: 48GB DDR3 1066Mhz

GPU: NVidia Quadro FX4800

HDD: 2 x 600GB 15k RPM SAS Drives

PSU: 1100 Watt 80PLUS Silver

Downsides: No USB 3.0, No SATA 6.0 Gb/s for newest SSDs (an upgrade I will do later)

Then I was thinking of building my own PC with the following specs.

Processor: i7 4770K (with some light OC)

RAM 32GB DDR3 1600 Mhz

GPU: Nvidia Quadro K4000 (used)

SSD: 512GB SATA 6.0 Gb/s

HDD: 1TB 7.2K RPM

PSU: Something with enough headroom for SLI GPUs and as efficient as possible

Which one would you reccomend? Is my idea for the homebuilt PC totally off base and should I swap some components? Do you think the workstation will be OK for the next couple of years?

Thanks in advanced!