Hardware
Upgrading your PC for Better SOLIDWORKS Performance
Alongside staying up to date with SOLIDWORKS updates, ensuring your computer hardware is current is critical to extracting performance. Even a machine that is a few years old could be lacking a supported graphics card or failing the minimum requirements for the newest SOLIDWORKS release. Making the proper choice for an upgrade and on the right schedule can keep you on the cutting edge of SOLIDWORKS performance.
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So these are quite brief. I only got my systems last week for testing. So what we're looking at is a system for oldest possible that could run, Windows 11. So the precision 3630 from 2018, a nice rescue that our training unit retired a good number of years ago, and then a 2021 desktop again managed to still and keep it to one side for testing and the latest Dell Promax tower. So they're kind of a high end spec. But the reason I get these is to kind of work out what is the best value for money and come up with a series of recommended specifications. Now, if we look at a part rebuild. So this is how long it takes to, control Q rebuild this model. This is, so it takes around half the time on the latest system and it's still around the sort of, 30, 40% faster than the 2021 system. Obviously, the new model for this year. So getting two quick, long, serving silhouettes. You might recognize this, actually, someone from the forums who originally, but for this model and then got included in the silhouettes benchmark, this is a manually timed, result. One thing to note here is that the results you see on the performance evaluation, they were around 20, 25% quicker than the actual return of control of the mouse. So always I do it manually. I take an average of three, and I make sure it's kind of consistent before I'm confident. So show these results. It's pretty similar for how long it takes open assembly as so it's not the be on and all, but it's quite representative of, you know, an intensive task. It's going to use the CPU, a bit of this transfer and also a little bit of graphics rebuilding that. And again, we're getting less than half the time the Let system. This is using the new optimized resolve mode. I didn't really talk about it much when it was originally released, because until one of the service packs in 2024, it didn't support SolidWorks PDM. So given most of our largest customers use all of its PDM for best performance. Yeah. If you're working, sharing a model across multiple uses, you want to be using PDM caches locally, but it also gives you the ability to work collaboratively. So now it's supported. It actually made about 30% difference, some between 25 and 30%. The largest difference being on the newer system is quite reassuring. And seeing that improvement. So it was taking about a minute and a half in fully resolved mode. This new optimized resolve mode, which blends lightweight and resolved it, took less than 50s in the latest system. These are also optimized for simulation, and we do test other CPUs, at an easier way round. So apologies. Just the screen grabs the way round. But taking under three minutes on the latest system, this is a just a sort of a static simulation site. Again, it's going to vary based on the solver, the size, the problem, etc. but this one, it's been it's quite consistent. Shown performance improvements. The latest CPUs. And you know, what we're seeing here is, is kind of beyond what you might expect on paper. Because when you look at, you know, the CPU speed, it's only actually increased maybe ten, 15% the maximum speed. But we're seeing massive improvements. Each generation can do more work per gigahertz. So we're seeing a bigger improvement than you might expect in our flow simulation. This actually showed the biggest difference. And probably one of the, tasks were actually I saw a significant difference versus last year's model. So the old precision 3680, it's still what we're offering at the moment. So these are only just been released. Just been certified for SolidWorks. The new Dell Pro Max tower. And we're getting our range together. So in May we'll start offering these. But, it did show a huge difference for the, flow simulation. That's one of the most multi-threaded tasks in SolidWorks portfolio. So these got 24 cores versus six on the old precision 3630. So expecting that kind of difference. And it is one of the few places where we actually saw a benefit for the systems with more cores, particularly the AMD Threadripper based systems with 32 or 64 cores. The key thing is, I'd say always come to us for advice, because, bizarrely, when I went and tested a 96 core system, it was slower. So with some, you know, wrinkling, there is some thing that might catch you out. We didn't find such, performance improvement with the, Intel Xeon based systems, but we're always testing, you know, we're finding those were 30, 40% slower for CAD, so we weren't going to recommend them unless they were fast for something like simulation. We didn't really see that the AMD Threadripper based system. So the precision 7875, it may be two three times more expensive. And we were seeing it maybe a little bit faster for floating the nation. And then don't forget, we also now offer a wider range. So the DSO smoothly arranged things like abacus may be a familiar name for high end simulation. We saw those CPUs with a massive memory bandwidth and memory support would be beneficial for that, but not products within the SolidWorks range. Particularly, we're seeing mainly just for the flow simulation. Is that in the solid that's portfolio. And then there's high end simulation, products we offer from the wider kind of that's our product range. So just to bring it all back together, it looks like based on the, poll results, at least it's probably times upgrade for a good number of people. And hopefully this has helped. You kind of forgot. Well, what do I need? And we're here to help. So make sure you've got an upgrade plan. Ideally it's. Yeah. So it's rolling. You continue to upgrade SolidWorks, checking things like this, requirements and does my, system still support solvers? Do we have servers for PDM or licensing or electrical? Are they still support the latest release at some point Microsoft stop supporting F4. So to SolidWorks. And if you're on Windows 10 now is the time to start planning. So I only got about six months to run until it's and the support. So, get that in place, make sure you're, know, getting those plans and budgets available. I will always say reach out to your account manager or support team. They're happy to help with advice. I said no, it was not just going to say, well, buy something from us. It's out. We don't want to have everyone calling up in October when, the support ends and you're in a bit of a sticky situation. So, so, I mean, you can do regular, you can review you sort of. It's PCs. What the specs are they supported? Are they going to work the latest release? Are they optimal? Same for servers. We can give you that kind of advice. And you can also, you know, help you work out how you, you know, have a look at a data set, perhaps. Are you using the best practices? Are there things we can help out with on that side. And we want you to avoid that situation. We bought a system and it didn't work out. And this is why I started doing recommended specifications. We had customers asking, as you go on this site, I'll tell you what the minimum requirements are. We want to tell you what's going to perform well for your workflow. It's a bit more complex now because there's more products, many related parts, assemblies and drawings. When I started making a little bit of simulation, now is a wide range of products visualization, simulation, flow simulation, etc. it's quite easy, particularly on the desktop side, to spend many multiples of the cost of our recommendations and actually get worse performance so that, you know, going for something that's 34% worse. And, it's a bit of an awkward situation. It's it's difficult for us to have that conversation off. You already spent the money, so please come to us for advice. We're happy to help and give you that advice on what we recommend, whether you're going to go for us. So we have some good deals on, Dell Systems and Dell Pro Max workstations and precision, laptops. And even if you're not going to go for us, we'd rather you get the right advice. We don't want you to just go away and, choose something that isn't suitable for SolidWorks.