Acer Aspire TC-885 i3. Need to upgrade for CAD. What can I do?

NicholasAlves

Hello everyone, firstly I want to say I love this PC. When I first purchased it I didn't need it to have a dedicated GPU or anything. Now because of work, it would be able if I could use CAD programs at home.

What GPU is compatible with this computer? Also what Ram and should I purchase a new power source? Thank You!

Specs 

Operating System

Windows 10 Home 64-bit

CPU

Intel Core i3 9100 @ 3.60GHz 32 °C

Coffee Lake 14nm Technology

RAM

8.00GB Single-Channel Unknown (17-17-17-39)

Motherboard

Acer Aspire TC-885(DCH) (U3E1) 38 °C

Graphics

NS-32L550A11 (1920x1080@59Hz)

Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Acer Incorporated [ALI])

Storage

476GB Western Digital WDC PC SN520 SDAPNUW-512G-1014 (RAID (SSD))

Optical Drives

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GUE1N  

ttttt

@NicholasAlves

I believe we have the same Acer PC (TC-885-UA91). Looks like you have not changed the original hardware.
This PC was designed to be a general purpose machine.

There are important things that you have not mentioned, the requirements of the CAD program to be used. Go find that out first.

Unlike TC-895 series PCs using 12 Volt only PSU, the TC-885 still use standard ATX form factor 300W PSU, but there are no other 6-pin or 8-pin connectors dedicated for graphics card. If you do not want to upgrade the PSU you are pretty much limited to use GTX-1050 series of GPUs as the power supply requirement is 300W for that series. 

You may want to find a low profile card that doesn't require additional PCIe power connectors ( just don't get a Zotac one, as I have seen multiple people having problems with Zotac low profile 1050-ti cards) with this PC. If you check the Acer Support Videos on the right pane here, you probably can find a video of people putting even a full sized GTX 1660 Super on a TC-885 different model by using two SATA power connectors.

Since the PC's motherboard is PCIe 3.0 type, if you want to upgrade the PSU, you will have many choices. Make sure the PSU output exceeded the GPU requirement. All powerful graphics cards nowadays require  at least two PCIe slots space. Once put in, the PCIe x1 slot next to it cannot be used.

To enhance performance , there are somethings you still can do.

Since you are still using the original WD SN520 PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 NVMe SSD ( max. seq. read speed ~1,700 MB/s). You can change to a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, doubling performance to ~ 3,400 MB/s.

Increase memory by adding memory to the other RAM slot to enable double channel performance.

If you already have the CAD program, how about install it with the PC and try it out first. See how bad it is. Maybe you can run the CAD program without change of hardware.

billsey

I agree with ttttt that you need to fist find out what the CAD program works best with. My guess is you'll want to put a GPU card in but will want one that the CAD program recommends (for instance, Auto CAD likes the NVIDIA Quadro cards better than the gaming cards). You will also want to bump that memory up, 8GB is great for normal tasks but CAD, especially 3D CAD, really likes you to max the memory out. Your system maxes out with two 16GB DDR4 sticks at 1600MHz for a total of 32GB of RAM.

Going any farther than a GPU, bigger/faster SSD and full memory really has you looking at a new system for the base. An 11th gen i7 would be quite the improvement over your 8th gen i3.