Newby here, be nice.....

[Cottontop22]

We are getting into Revit here at the office and I am needing to buy a computer. We will be buying thru Dell and want see what everyone thinks about this set up. Will be running MEP 2015.

• Dell Precision Tower 5810 CTO Base
• 16G 2133MHz DDR4 (4x4GB) RDIMM ECC
• Nvidia Quadro K4200 4GB (2 DP, DL-DVI-I) (1 DP to SL-DVI adapter)
• 1TB 3.5inch Serial ATA (7,200 Rpm) Hard Drive
• Integrated Intel AHCI chipset SATA controller (6 x 6.0Gb/s) - SW RAID 0/1/5/10
• Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit English

I am the first to take the plunge into Revit and I don't want the hardware to be a problem for me from the get/go.

I know we could build ourselves and come out spending less but not going to happen here at the office.

My first steps away from Autocad after starting in 1987!! Wish me luck and will be using this site!!

Any feedback will be thankful.

[Alex Cunningham]

It looks like the configuration you have selected comes with a Xeon E5-1620. This is about the best workstation CPU u can buy, 2nd only to the E5-1630. Clock speed is more important that number of cores.

16GB of Ram will suit you fine for many years.

The K4200 is a solid card. You will not be unhappy with it.

Depending on how your network is setup. the 1TB drive is good. I would vote to upgrade to at least (2) 256GB SSD totaling 512GB of SSD drive in lieu of the 1TB disk drive. However this is almost a +$600 premium from Dell and that is a crap ton of money for SSD. The 1TB drive will work out fine. Maybe upgrading the hard drive is something for the future.

[Cottontop22]

Thanks for the quick reply. Now just need to get management on board!! From what I have read the ssd would be nice.

Thanks again.

[Twiceroadsfool]

Opinions will vary, but I think the machine is under done in some ways, and way overdone in others.

We run budget optiplexes from dell, and we build models a bit more overdone and intense than a lot of people care for. We have a mix of 1gb and 2gb cards. The 1gb ones are a bit weak, but they have ZERO noticeable performance degradation in revit. It's only noticeable in navisworks, and even then it's still not bad.

Id get 32gb of ram, myself. We chew up more than 16 any given day, even on medium sized projects.

I don't know the price for that rig, but ours are under 1600 bucks each. *shrug*

[Alex Cunningham]

I don't know the price for that rig, but ours are under 1600 bucks each. *shrug*

Yeah 1600 bucks is IMO cheap for a Revit pc, 2000 is going to build you a very robust workstation. I think the 5810 are a bit over priced but if that is what your IT and bosses are happy with it will suit your needs very well. You could do worse...

[Twiceroadsfool]

Ours perform damn fast, too. In very very very large models. Optiplex with i7 and a truckload of memory.

[snowyweston]

In very very very large models.

To add some perspective to what "very very very large" might mean - we're running i7 Dell rigs w/ 16GB + SSDs + K2000 gpus and have (only) recently started to see the "you're using too much memory" warning on one model that idles around 6-900MB - and only when working with all of the (7) links that make up the 1.3GB dataset.

I/we typically don't model nearly as much as Aaron (although on the above project that could be debatable) - but I just thought I'd add our findings in case it might help you gauge what you'll need (16 vs 32 etc) with respect to your project sizes.

[Cottontop22]

Wow, we have Dell Precisions for straight Autocad. Will at least look at the Optiplex setup. Thanks for the input.

Anyone else?

[Twiceroadsfool]

We all had Precisions for AutoCAD, and we were told we needed it. Til we discovered we didnt. The dell and HP reps still insist "theres no way those machines work good," because they want to sell us workstations. I tell them good luck with that.

[Cottontop22]

To add some perspective to what "very very very large" might mean - we're running i7 Dell rigs w/ 16GB + SSDs + K2000 gpus and have (only) recently started to see the "you're using too much memory" warning on one model that idles around 6-900MB - and only when working with all of the (7) links that make up the 1.3GB dataset.

I/we typically don't model nearly as much as Aaron (although on the above project that could be debatable) - but I just thought I'd add our findings in case it might help you gauge what you'll need (16 vs 32 etc) with respect to your project sizes.

At this point I know our files to start with will not be anything to big. Want a machine that could/will handle the larger projects in the future.