whats the best combo for our school pc?
whats the best combo for our school pc?
we’re looking for a suitable pc for 3d modeling at school. while sorting through a retired teacher’s classroom, we discovered several useful components. for the gpu, we have a GTX 680 with a DIY cooler. regarding the cpu, we have two choices: an i7-3770 with 4GB RAM or dual xeon x5570 processors with 6GB RAM. we plan to run cura and inventor on it. after checking benchmarks, the i7-3770 is nearly twice as fast as a single xeon in single-core tests, while in multi-core it’s about 15% faster than the xeon. these numbers are just estimates. what would deliver the best performance?
The i7 is clearly superior. The X5570 is quite outdated and lacks AVX support, making it unsuitable for demanding tasks today.
the motherboard we have for the i7 is an hp model, appears to be OEM but has 24 pins, a 4-pin CPU, and a standard mATX design. i’m hoping it supports a low-end chipset, and i’m wondering if overclocking is possible. i found a helpful list of chipsets on wikipedia, suggesting bclk oc might be achievable. do you think that’s accurate? i’m not very familiar with older chipset details.
Consider the i7 1366 only if you push it to its limits and avoid power inefficiency, especially after overclocking. It lacks AVX support. For better alternatives that outperform the i7 at comparable prices, explore x79/99 workstations. You might find affordable options with E5-1650 or similar models that can be boosted to 4GHz via throttle-stop, featuring quad-channel support and ample RAM upgrade potential. The Intel IMC is solid, though the Nehalem Xeon specs are unclear—I’m not sure about its performance. Are you looking for current hardware or deals on upgrades?
For 3D modeling purposes, it's better to skip overclocks since the performance improvements don't justify the chance of the computer crashing during use.
Can't install an i7 3770 other than black, which is also not possible on a HP board. Just grab the i7 3770 and use it instead.
We possess the equipment at school, including old memory, CPUs, GPUs, and more. We chose the top components to assemble our 3D modeling machine.
Dutch schools resemble a structured and focused learning environment.