Cheap PC Oprtions?

I am looking to buy a relatively cheap PC to put beside the PC based
CNC Machining Center to act as a server to it and to occasionally run
Solidworks and CAM programming software.
(I currently use a M60 laptop for both)

I want to spend under $NZ 600 and two options I am looking at currently
are:

Option 1:
$NZ 450
Second Hand (ex-lease) Dell Precision 340 Workstation
Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Processor
1024MB RAMBUS 800MHz RAM
40GB Maxtor D7-40X-6L Hard Drive
nVidia Quadro2 Pro (64MB) Graphics Card
Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Card
CD-ROM Drive
Floppy Drive
ZIP Drive
LAN Port
4x USB Ports 2 back 2 front / 1 Serial / 1 Parallel
Firewire card with 2 Firewire ports
Modem Dynalink 1456VQH-T4 56K comes with cord and CD's

Option 2:
$NZ 568
New PC
-CPU: AMD Sempron 64bits 2800+ 1.6GHz Socket 754 Processor
-Mem: 512MB DDR400 Memory
-HD: Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2 Hard Disk Drive
-Graphics: Integrated graphics controller
Supports up to 64MB shared system memory with 1 AGP slot
-Optical drive: Black 16X Double layer Dvdrw Drive.
-Lan: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet Controller
-Audio: Integrated High Defination 5.1 Channel Audio
-USB: 8x USB2.0
-MB: Winfast 760GXK8MC-RS Motherboard
-Case: Foxconn Silver and Black deluxe Case with super quiet
powersupply and Case rear cooling fan.

These seem to be the two highest spec'd options I can find within my
"peanuts" budget and would highly appreciate some feedback on which (if
either) might prove better value for my pupose and why.

Thanks.

 

Hi Andrew,
Just on the, NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro (64MB) Graphics Card and the 1024MB RAMBUS
800MHz RAM, I would go for the first one, this graphic card has been
approved by Solidworks and Solidworks loves Ram.

Pete

 

I agree on both of these points. An integrated graphics card may be able to
run SW, but it might not. One of the EEs at work runs SW on an Intel machine
with integrated graphics and doesn't have any problems, but he does pretty
simple stuff and there is no guarantee that you won't. Depending on the type
of parts you do, even 1 GB of RAM may not be enough and you have to be doing
pretty simple stuff for 512 MB to work well. The Pentium 4 is going to be
slow, but running in swap on the new machine would probably be slower.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Thanks for your feedback guys, I think I will go with the Dell.
At least I know it has been well tested for this purpose and hardware
configuration is compatible.