CAD / CAM computer build recommendations

So in a year or so Windows 10 will be EOL. If I could say goodbye to Windows altogether I would .
That said I will be needing to build my next CAD/CAM computer because of certain programs that
don't like to play with Linux very well. and my main machine is getting slower to render projects.
That said my laptop at work is hilariously slower at the same tasks.Usually my solution would be
to build a gaming rig and just use that, but I like to keep my options open and see what others
have had good luck with. I am kicking around the idea of using a newer Dell Optiplex
possibly the 7090 MT and adding to it. That said,
What have you guys had good results with?
How much RAM becomes overkill?
Are gamer video cards still best bang for the buck?

well tommylight I am hoping to keep the cost down to $1500 that's part of the reason I
had for wanting a newer used machine. The brand new stuff is just mind blowing price wise.
I will definitely check out gamers nexus. I don't know I may end up just bumping up
my current machines ram and hold it together for a few more years. See if the manufacturers
can get their act together by then

Thanks, tommylight.
I haven't had any dealings with Microcenter yet. I have dealt with Newegg and Amazon. I will definitely keep in mind
the Graphics card part. Most of the main CPU's I have used  has been 8th gen intel and older.  I don't have direct
experience with the Ryzen series. I guess it's time I changed that. It's a shame a lot of the new hardware has become
like todays cars over-priced, over-hyped, and underwhelming.
 

Not too sure about the whole "using DaVinci Resolve the AMD RX6800 and RX6900 will beat the living sh#t out of 4x more expensive Nvidia RTX4090." thing. I don't use that but video editing software is almost always geared towards Nvidia, which I why I have some 4070s in 1 machine when I prefer AMD cards. Had to look into that and came across this....
www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-edi...are-recommendations/

My gaming machine has a 6900xt, I've got a video box with 2 4070s, and my main desktop has a 5700xt (5yo build). Anything with general video editing it's better to go with Nvidia since alot of software focuses on CUDA, plus NVENC is better than AMDs AMF encoder.

That said, AMD GPUs hardware wise are generally a better bang for the buck and CAD isn't really that stressful unless you're doing crazy stuff in Blender. I've never felt the need to upgrade the 5700xt in my main box, which I can easily do since I have better cards laying but it's not worth buying a new waterblock and re-piping it. For reference I this machine is a 3900x CPU and 5700xt GPU and it drives 4 1080p monitors. I try very hard to stick with Linux so I run FreeCAD for CAD/CAM. AFAIK that's just OpenGL which you can't go wrong with AMD. If you're mostly just designing parts in CAD, a 6700xt is more than fine.

Personally I stick with Corsair power supplies. They aren't that expensive and I have never had one die.

I can't find anything that backs this guys tests in DR up. He even makes it clear that the thing with DR is an outlier and it was something that just popped up. It's just funny that you specifically mentioned DR when it gets smoked in everything else, even in that video.

That said, a 4090 is a horribly overpriced card. Even a 6900xt is too expensive to be mentioned in this thread. The fact of the matter is that a 4090 is the highest performance consumer card available, any talk outside of that is cherry picking.

Another thing worth considering is an Intel Arc A770. These cards are far overspec'd for their price because of Intel trying to gain a foothold. I had 2 that I returned because they weren't working out on a machine that has a specific use but these cards are far underrated because the drivers and software support aren't near AMD or Nvidia. They've been steadily improving so they're definately worth considering for a budget build.
 

good thing I still have some time before I would start buying parts.

You really can't go wrong with anything new you buy for general CAD work. You can stuff a pretty competent PC into a $1500 budget so unless you have something specific in mind the only good advice is to say to get as much as you can with that $1500.

General CAD work is like nothing to a newer PC with a discrete GPU, a web browser with a bunch of tabs open will use more resources. Now if you want to render something with textures or some kind of animation or do some high resolution video rendering/streaming, then you have a bit more to worry about but without being specific about what you're doing there's no real advice to give. A decent desktop CPU with an integrated GPU will handle most general CAD work fine, though just having some discrete GPU is preferable so you're not using shared memory. I swapped my 64gb RAM kit out of my desktop because I couldn't even use half of it, 32gb is fine.