Mastercam Speed Test

[JakeL]

Ok last question before I finalize a quote and give Xi a call.

Do you guys have battery backups? This is what I'm looking at getting:
APC UPS Battery Backup - Back-UPS Pro BX1500M 1500VA 900W 120V Uninterruptible Power Supply Compact Tower

This is another area I have very little knowledge in. I just know I've heard these are good to have in case of power outages.

[JParis]

Do you guys have battery backups?

We have at least a couple of hundred computers here, every single one of them is on a battery backup.

That should be sufficient...I don't know about anyone else but if we lose power, I am really only looking to be able to save my files before I shut down.

[crazy^millman]

We have at least a couple of hundred computers here, every single one of them is on a battery backup.

That should be sufficient...I don't know about anyone else but if we lose power, I am really only looking to be able to save my files before I shut down.

Why a Laptop is always the winner for me. 

[gcode]

Do you guys have battery backups?

all our work files are on a network
it's hooked up to battery backup capable of doing an orderly network shutdown if power is out for more than an hour
Good UPS's can do this for PC's as well, so they will safely shut down if you are not there when the power fails
Our PC's are not on battery backup. That would change if I had the authority to change it, but I don't so ....

[CNCAppsJames]

The lowest SSD I would consider is what I run in my rig; Samsung EVO Pro. There are a few that are better, but the performance to price ratio is excellent.

[CNCAppsJames]

I just upgraded my primary SSD (Samsung 980 Evo) to a Samsung 990 Evo Pro. There was a noticable difference in boot time. That said, boot time was very good before. I'll do some more test.

The 1TB 990 Pro was $169. Dirt cheap for the performance.

[JakeL]

Here's where I ended up:
13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900KF 24-Core 8P+16E, 32-Threads, 36MB Cache, 3.0GHzto 5.8GHz Max Turbo Freq
128GB (4x32GB) DDR5-5200 SDRAM @ 5200MHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 24GB GDDR6 ECC-8192 CUDA Cores-256 Tensor Cores-230W-4xDisplayPort 1.4a-Multi-monitor supp.
1TB Solid State Drive NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 only up to7000/5000MB/s Seq.R/W
ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI (DDR5) Intel Z790 Chipset
850W Gold Certified 80 Plus Phanteks AMP PH-P850G
APC UPS Battery Backup - Back-UPS Pro BX1500M 1500VA 900W 120V Uninterruptible Power Supply Compact Tower

This is what I got quoted after taking to Bill at Xi. He made a couple adjustments to increase performance which didn't increase price. (He changed the SSD for performance and the motherboard for requested bluetooth).

Management said they'd get back to me on Monday with a yay or nay. When all's said and done I'll be sure to report back with Benchmark file regen times.

Once again, thank you all for the help on this, I learned a lot working thru this process. Fingers crossed it isn't all for naught.

Since you're already contacting Ai, ask him how well that card drives two 4k monitors.  It may do it just fine.

I asked if there would be any slow downs running 4k displays. I'm not sure if it was "salesman talk" or not, but he said the card could handle 4x 5k monitors. He didn't define "handle" so there could be a decrease in performance, but I plan on sticking with my current monitors regardless.

[gcode]

but IT will think it's well overspecced

yup... IT vetoed my last RFQ for a PC for one of my guys

I spec out a very nice Xi OC'ed liquid cooled i9 that came in at a little over $4k
They bought a $2400 Dell Precision i7 instead...
It's doing the job, but nothing like the Xi would have.

[gcode]

Here's where I ended up:
13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900KF 24-Core 8P+16E, 32-Threads, 36MB Cache, 3.0GHzto 5.8GHz Max Turbo Freq
128GB (4x32GB) DDR5-5200 SDRAM @ 5200MHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 24GB GDDR6 ECC-8192 CUDA Cores-256 Tensor Cores-230W-4xDisplayPort 1.4a-Multi-monitor supp.
1TB Solid State Drive NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 only up to7000/5000MB/s Seq.R/W
ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI (DDR5) Intel Z790 Chipset
850W Gold Certified 80 Plus Phanteks AMP PH-P850G
APC UPS Battery Backup - Back-UPS Pro BX1500M 1500VA 900W 120V Uninterruptible Power Supply Compact Tower

This is what I got quoted after taking to Bill at Xi. He made a couple adjustments to increase performance which didn't increase price. (He changed the SSD for performance and the motherboard for requested bluetooth).

Management said they'd get back to me on Monday with a yay or nay. When all's said and done I'll be sure to report back with Benchmark file regen times.

Once again, thank you all for the help on this, I learned a lot working thru this process. Fingers crossed it isn't all for naught.

I asked if there would be any slow downs running 4k displays. I'm not sure if it was "salesman talk" or not, but he said the card could handle 4x 5k monitors. He didn't define "handle" so there could be a decrease in performance, but I plan on sticking with my current monitors regardless.

Did you get a    or a     from management.


Looks like a real nice machine... 
I'd have gone with liquid cooling myself
1. they run cooler so they live longer
2. they run MUCH quieter than fan cooled machines

[JakeL]

Did you get a    or a     from management.

After sending management the quote, I didn't hear anything back. But I just got an email this morning: "your new computer is in and being setup" so I guess they were happy with it. I'm hopeful that I'll get my hands on it sometime tomorrow.

[JParis]

After sending management the quote, I didn't hear anything back. But I just got an email this morning: "your new computer is in and being setup" so I guess they were happy with it. I'm hopeful that I'll get my hands on it sometime tomorrow.

In comes the Packard-Bell 486....

[JParis]

Yup. The IT dept's old one.
The big switcheroo!

Doing support, if you only knew how many times I saw that exact thing or the old one from the secretary....

[neurosis]

Doing support, if you only knew how many times I saw that exact thing or the old one from the secretary....

Back in the early days at my current shop, they had a mediocre IT guy who was in charge of buying all of the shop PC's, including the programming PC's. 

This guy always had some fancy new expensive PC with the latest and greatest monitors while he was buying Dell Vostro's, that most times didn't even meet the minimum requirements to run Mastercam, for the programming department.  I mean, Mastercam would run, but it was painful. Some times he would just purchase a new PC for himself and hand his off to the programming department.   

I'm glad that guy doesn't work here anymore. 

[gcode]

Speaking of the Big Switcheroo!


When I started working here the chair they gave me was a man killing relic from the 50's
I asked if I could bring my own chair in. They said no.
I asked if they would buy me a decent chair and they said sure and gave me a budget of $200.
I picked out a $200 chair from Office Depot and waited and waited.
6 weeks later, my new chair finally arrived.
They'd taken that $200 budget and purchased four $50 piece of crap chairs!!
I said F it and bought a Herman Miller Aeron from the outlet store and brought it to work without permission.
No one said a word and I'm still using it today.

[mike93]

You would think that we spend thousands of dollars in tooling per week, a nice chair would be the least o their concern.