I also build custom computers for industries that require certain hardware that is hard to find in pre-manufactured computers. When I use the word “pre-manufactured” I am talking about computers from people like Dell, HP, etc. I have built several computers for professionals working in the engineering field. I can also build gaming computers. These types of computers require a lot of power and the ability to upgrade down the road if needed. Many of the manufacturers just don’t necessarily have the options to meet these demands. A key question is this. Do you really know what you need as far as the hardware part of the computer? You can easily go to manufacturer websites and make up what you think that you need but you may not know all of the factors to consider. Most of the time you are making a sizeable investment of money on a piece of equipment that you need to get right. This can cost you dearly down the road in money and frustration if you don’t nail it down from the start. I give an example later on this page.
One thing to mention is that I would generally advise that you use desktops for this kind of work unless you absolutely have to have a laptop for traveling. I know some people might have to do sales visits or go to conferences so you might have to use a laptop. Why do I say to use a desktop if able? Desktop hardware is much faster. For instance, the laptop processor will have about 30% less power than the desktop processor. There are a couple of reasons for this. Laptops are bunched up in a little case so heat is a big factor. Desktops have all the room in the world and can take advantage of big coolers. Laptops are also fighting the battery issue. If you put desktop performance processors in a laptop it would drain the battery much faster and you would be charging it a lot. These are the two challenging issues with laptops. Because of this laptops have to be tuned down a bit.
Below is a custom built workstation that I put together for John Michael Cook with Valkyrie Precision. This computer is used for CAD work and simulation. He runs Solidworks, Eureka, Mastercam and Fusion 360 on it. I will give more specs further below. The cost was roughly $5,800, which is total cost and delivery to the owner. This build has a two year warranty on parts and labor. This is far more than most people need but sometimes this is what you might require to run your software properly. On another page on my site you will find some entry level build packages with specs.
Below is a Review of this custom build by the owner.
Mike, the owner of Mikes Computer Repair Services, did a custom CAD/CAM/Simulation build for me a couple of months ago. I run Solidworks, Mastercam, and Eureka. You can look up the Solidworks benchmark for the system (Search: Valkyrie @ Share Your Score (solidworks.com), select 2021 ) if you want to see how it ranks as a Solidworks machine. I am currently running Widows 11, everything runs flawlessly so far.
The computer is complete overkill for what I needed, but that was the point of the build. It runs Solidworks, Mastercam, and Eureka exceptionally well. Mike did a very clean CAD/CAM/Simulation build. I would highly recommend him. His prices are competitive with every builder I could find. He has a complete list of different levels of CAD/CAM/Simulation builds on his web site. It is a great resource for anyone needing an awesome machine for manufacturing, design, and simulation.
First of all, lets ask why you should have these types of custom computers built? There are several reasons that I will outline below. One of the biggest factors is that you know exactly what you are getting. You really have no idea what brand or quality hardware will come in a pre-manufactured computer. Generally they are not the best quality. With a custom built computer you can specify exactly what you want, down to the model or brand parts. I like to give a customer the choices but one thing I will say is that I won’t let a customer back their self into a corner with an inadequate computer. The software companies give a lot of system requirements for software that is inadequate at times. There is a lot of difference between “minimum and recommended requirement.” Always stay away from “minimum” requirements for hardware as you will not get very good performance. If you want to check my price against others I have no problem giving you a list of exactly what will be used. I always use top quality components on these builds. I don’t use off brand components on them. Also, on the pre-manufactured computers you get one year warranty on their parts unless you pay for more.
It’s also very important to understand that this type of computer is something that you make a living on and you want it to make you more productive. You will use this computer for years so think about the time in lost productivity and mental distraction if it does not work well. Some of these fields of work like engineering require a lot of complex thinking without interruptions to your train of thought. When you get yourself headed down the road on a project and are in a good working mode the last thing you want or need is a frustrating computer slowing you down. You need the required computing power so that you aren’t sitting there waiting on it. Your main focus on that project is progress.
Avoiding downtime and being able to repair it quickly is also of the utmost importance. You don’t make one dime if that computer is sitting there idle. It’s costing you money every day that you can’t use it. Typically if you buy a manufactured computer and have issues it has to be shipped back in unless you have paid for onsite service. That is a drain on productivity. First, you will have the aggravation of sitting there on a phone for hours trying to get help from someone overseas that you might not be able to understand. Second, you will probably have to ship it off somewhere and typically that will take you ten days to two weeks to get it back. In the meantime your projects are behind and you have lost a lot of money.
I’ll give you a simple example of what you can run into with delays in repair. For instance, you come into work one morning and hit the power button to turn on your computer and nothing happens. Nothing spins up on the computer at all. It just seems dead. There is a very high chance that it is simply a failed power supply. With a pre-manufactured computer that proprietary part will probably have to be ordered and you will have to hope that is the actual problem. That could take several days and if it isn’t the problem you probably have a failed system board. Now you have to wait several more days for that part to come in because it will be a custom board that only fits that brand computer.
When I build custom computers I use good quality name brand components. The chances of failure will be very low to begin with. In the above scenario you give me a call. Generally if I am not in the middle of a house call I can I head over with a standard power supply and quickly hook it up to check it out. If that is the problem you can be back up and running within an hour or two. If it does turn out to be a system board and I don’t have it I can probably find one locally. You will probably be back up and running the next day. You’ve lost very little time. This is the repair side of keeping you up and running that is often left out of the purchase equation.
The other issue I see with many pre-manufactured units is the problems you can run into with upgrading it. Sometimes when you buy a specialized computer you might decide that you need an upgrade down the road. By that I mean more memory, processor upgrade or another hard drive. I’ll share a scenario That I ran into on how that can become a nightmare with off the shelf computers.
A while back I was helping a customer upgrade his daughter’s gaming desktop. This was a Dell gaming computer purchased from Best Buy. They wanted to upgrade the memory and install a new video card that they had purchased. First of all, the system board only had two memory slots and they were full. That meant that we would have to basically start over with memory. We couldn’t just simply add in memory. Then the other issue there was that the board would not support the amount of memory that they wanted to put in it. Why Dell does something like that I don’t know and I really like Dell products for basic needs. Next, the video card was too long so it would not fit in the case. The other problem with the video card was that the power supply for the computer did not have enough power to run that card and it didn’t have the connectors need to power the card. It was basically a start over type project and that computer was not that old. These are the gotchas that you can run into down the road when you don’t know to ask those questions at the start of the purchase.
When I put together a custom build I always plan for expansion and the possibility of upgrades. Forward thinking can save you a lot of money in the long run. That will almost always happen because software changes and that means that it consumes more resources on the computer. Regarding the memory issue above I always use ATX system boards with four memory slots. For instance, you want a computer with 32GBs of RAM/Memory. I will use two 16GB memory modules to start with and put them in two slots. That way you will have two empty slots should you need to expand memory in the future. If you want to expand to 64GBs of memory you can just buy two more 16GB memory modules down the road and we stick them in. That takes five minutes. There is no swapping out. I also make sure that I buy system boards that will support at least 128GBs of memory. There is no starting over and wasting money on something that is so simple to begin with. We don’t look back, we look forward!
On these custom builds I always use a larger tower with plenty of space inside. You’re always welcome to look at computer cases and tell me what you want to use on the build. The ATX system boards will also have more expansion slots in case you need to add something like another video card or specialty type card. When the purchasing process starts we’ll also discuss what types of expansion that you might need later on.
The other issue is the power supply. The power supply takes 110 volts from your power source and then changes it to specific voltages that the components inside the computer will need. When you build a computer you have to compute the power supply size based on the power consumption of various components used in the build. When I build a computer I always add in extra wattage so that we don’t get hung down the road needing more power. There is no need to be buying and switching out parts down the road. Spending $50 more now can save you $150 down the road. The computer in the picture above is a very high power computer for CAD work and simulation. He needed roughly 750 watts or so. I put in a 1,000 watt power supply so that we can add components down the road with no further need for a power supply upgrade. It’s much cheaper to do that in the beginning. These power supplies are also industry standard power supplies meaning that they are interchangeable with computer towers and the system board manufacturers. These are off the shelf standard products.
Below are some more pictures of the Valkyrie Precision build and explanations. The first is with the top cover removed. This build has a 1000watt Corsair fully modular power supply. Fully modular means that the cables from the power supply to the components are removable. That means that you add cabling as needed and they always include the other cables with the unit. You will have all extra parts like this handed off to you when you take ownership of the computer. It also has a 4TB WD Black 7200 RPM hard drive for extra storage. The main drive is a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME SSD. That is a generation 4.0 NVME drive, which is very fast. You can also see the various ports on the top front of the computer.
Below is a picture showing the internals. The system board is an ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming with built in Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi in this one is quite good and works great if your computer is in an out of the way location away from your Wi-Fi router. The CPU Cooler is a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler. At idle the processor only runs around 25 degrees Celsius. That is very low for a processor with that much power. The processor is an Intel i9-12900K. It has 64GBs of DDR5 memory. The main Samsung 980 Pro internal solid state drive is mounted directly to the board for much better performance.
Below is the back of the computer. You can see that it is well equipped with various ports and connectors for future expansion. The issue I find with many pre-manufactured computers is that sometimes you have no idea what they are giving you as far as numbers of ports and connectors. I’ve found it to be so frustrating in ads that they never show you a picture of the back of the computer. Most of the time you won’t have enough ports and you wind up adding USB hubs and such that cause odd behavior. The video card is an Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000 with 24GBs of video memory. This card has four display port connectors. Display port gives you the best resolution video although you can get adapters to use monitors that only have HDMI ports on them. This card alone is around $2,400. The Quadro A series has other models with various amounts of video memory. The A4000 model has 16GBs of video memory and is roughly $1,200. When building a machine for CAD type work you want to use these types of workstation video cards and not use gaming cards. Workstation cards give you much better images when working with CAD.
Below are some shots of the case. The case is a Fractal Design Torrent Compact Black ATX case. This one has two 180mm fans in the front. The nice thing is that they include adapters if you wanted to go down to 120mm fans.
Below is the finished product side view. It has black tempered glass on the side that simply snaps into place. That is easily removable when you need to service it or clean it out. Just one note. Never use a vacuum cleaner to clean a computer out. Always use compressed air. Vacuum cleaner can build up static and discharge them into the computer. That can destroy components. Also, always keep your computer off the floor by a couple of inches. You will have far less dust accumulation.
Final Computer Specs Below:
- Fractal Design Torrent Compact Case
- Corsair RM1000 Fully Modular Power Supply
- ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming Wifi ATX System Board
- Intel i9-12900K CPU
- 64 GBs Crucial Memory
- Noctua NH-D15 Cooling fan
- 1TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME SSD
- 4TB WD Black 7200 RPM Hard Drive
- Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000 Video Card
I have added a page with some other builds with various specs.