Hello, First time posting here. I Hope this is the right place.
I have used sketchup in the past but my laptop was far from capable and it was only used to model very simple things.
I’m having a new computer built for me and was hoping to get an opinion on the build? I have $700 to spend. My main uses for sketchup would be for modeling furniture designs and re-model ideas in my home.
Are there any changes you guys would make? Which windows OS should I get?
It doesn’t sound like you will be doing anything really CPU or graphics intensive, so as long as you have a graphics adapter (such as an nVidia) capable of OpenGL 3.0, you should be good to go.
Try searching the forum for ‘computer for sketchup’.
The spec looks pretty good for the price, and you have as recommended a reasonable and modern nVidia graphics card.
Others on this forum have had problems with Windows 10, mainly also associated with out of date laptop or built in Intel graphics processors and drivers, but desktop computers with only one graphics adapter, and that one from nVidia, don’t seem to have had those problems.
There have been some discussions about getting Windows 10 Home vs Pro, mainly about the impossibility in Home of prevent the reinstallation of updates that kill Sketchup’s (and other programs) performance. You shouldn’t have that problem, and are unlikely to need the other features of Windows Professional - login to a domain, secure encryption of your hard drive, or remote desktop access from elsewhere are the main ones that occur to me, though there are others including Group Policy Editor. If none of those terms mean anything to you, go for Home.
PS (Later Edit)
Depending on your budget, and the cost of the higher spec, you might consider either a faster single thread processor, and/or a higher spec nVidia card - the 1060 series, perhaps?
If you intend later to upgrade, add hard disk(s) or other internal components, you might also want a better case - the price is tempting, but seems (to UK eyes anyway) remarkably cheap.
that’s a pretty good balance of spec… it sounds like it will do the job.
A 2nd hand GTX 970 might be an option for you…it would be 50% faster than the 1050ti., but if doing that you’ll also want to upgrade your PSU to a 600W modular version.
Use of high quality trees and furniture components would be one reason to upgrade the video card.
And you can add another 8gb more RAM later when budget allows. In the meantime you’ll have to take care not having too many applications open at one time. Windows loves to run things in the background so managing those processes will be useful.
Building a PC is very easy these days…simple plugs, colour coded , etc. You just need a small screwdriver and the correct set of components (some dont fit weill with others, especially in a small case). You could save a little cost on the building side of it, but then put that extra money into a better case (as a rule, a small, cheap case is more difficult to build). …just a thought.
Unless there is some overwhelming reason for use of the mini tower my bias is to use ATX as noted by john above and the reason noted in the review comments of you selection. My experience is one of the worse design selection one can make is to volume limit oneself.
Thank you. The first thing I did was to search but I couldn’t find anything that was similar enough to mine. Some were either from many years ago or on the high end of a budget
I think the memory and the SSD seem to be twice what they should cost.
I had previously spec’d a PNY 240GB SSD at 60 and 16GB RAM at the same price you have for 8GB.
EDIT:Nevermind, looks like memory prices have gone up.
Re, the MoBo. The B250 is a business chipset I think. I had rejected the B series and was picking from the Z series because I may want to put a “K” CPU that can be overclocked in a some time. I don’t think the B series allows overclocking the CPU or the RAM. But if you never intend to overclock the CPU or memory, and the B series has all the peripheral ports that you need, then sure you can save some money.
I also rejected the mini and micro ATX form factors because of the lack of slots on the board.