SolidWorks CPU Recommendations

[KnightElm]

Budget (including currency): $3000 (USD)

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Solidworks (Mostly modeling and occasional simulation)

Other details: I'm looking for CPU recommendations (for laptop) to go with an RTX 5000, 64GB ECC RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD. This would be a professional workstation.

Update: After discussing it over with my coworkers we are specifically going to go for a laptop since we sometimes have to work from home.

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by KnightElm
After discussing it over with my coworkers we are specifically going to go for a laptop since we sometimes have to work from home.

[KnightElm]

Xeon processors are ridiculously expensive but are they worth the price for professional Solidworks use? What are the benefits to doing so? Drawbacks?

[Radium_Angel]

Does SW like single core speed, or can it take advantage of multiple cores?

Because a threadripper/Xeon build (I prefer Xeons, but that is a personal opinion only) would be great if it was multi-core multi-threaded aware

[TheStyne]

The only benefits of a Xeon over a consumer Core processor is going to exactly what's outlined on the specs page. They will(usually) have more PCIE lanes, support for certain workstation and server features, increased cache(sometimes), and will often have higher peak core numbers at the top of the line. But with two apples to apples CPUs(equal cores, clock speed, etc), there's no inherent advantage in a Xeon.

[Jurrunio]

5950X.

 

Intel CPUs dont support ECC unless you consider the Xeons, but those lose out in per thread performance and Solidworks is not that multithreaded (apart from simulations). Not to mention, Xeons are expensive to buy new or come with prebuilts that leave little options for customization.

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2020-SP5-AMD-Ryzen-5000-Series-CPU-Performance-2011/

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2019-SP3-AMD-Ryzen-3-vs-Intel-9th-Gen-Core-1555/

So from this, big improvement from Zen 2 (which is what Threadrippers available for sale are based on) to Zen 3. Until Zen 3 TR becomes a thing, Zen 3 R9 is the best choice.

 

Not sure about ECC certification. If there's one board that is on AM4, it's the Asus Pro WS X570 Ace. I doubt MSI's Prestige Creation or Asrock's Creation board are, but definitely not the gaming boards.

[WereCat]

You will most likely have less performance with Xeons since they run at lower clock speeds. 

 

Honestly, i9 10900k looks like a really good option for the price right now (if you're looking at that kind of budget). 

 

Xeon will give you ECC, providing you got a motherboard that supports it as well... not really relevant for Solidworks though. 

[Zando_]

They're CPUs binned/clocked for stability and support ECC registered RAM + huge capacities. If you need those then they're worth it. If you can get old ones for cheap and just need sheer cores and RAM capacity, then that's also worth it. If you're OCing on old platforms (X58 and I believe earlier, some Xeons on X79 and X99 are OCable but it's specific models) and they're cheaper than equivalent i7 CPUs, then they're worth it as well. Outside of those sort of use cases... naaaah not really worth it. 

[TVwazhere]

-Threads merged-

 

Please refrain from posting similar posts in separate sub forums. 

16 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Does SW like single core speed, or can it take advantage of multiple cores?

Solidworks has portions (Rendering) that take advantage of all the cores, but only some parts (stress simulations and the such) take advantage of more than one core. A majority of the day-today use is similar to inventor in that it only takes advantage of one single core (Modeling, assembly, drawing translation). 

22 minutes ago, KnightElm said:

This would be a professional workstation.

Is this a professional workstation for Student use / Small Buisness Single Cad Tech use? Or is this for employees to use? If it's for you alone, go with the highest single core clock CPU you can get (typically an 8 core Intel 10/11 series, or Ryzen 5000 series) and any Nvidia/ AMD GPU as neither Inventor nor solid works use the GPU for any part of the rendering; simply a video outsource. If this is for a business for multiple personnel besides yourself, I'd go with a Xeon and Quadro because Business Class workstations deserve Business Class Support which is what those series are all about. Are they good value to performance? No but you're paying for the "if it's broken we just fix it" service you typically get in business class solutions. 

[KnightElm]

16 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

-Threads merged-

 

Please refrain from posting similar posts in separate sub forums. 

Solidworks has portions (Rendering) that take advantage of all the cores, but only some parts (stress simulations and the such) take advantage of more than one core. A majority of the day-today use is similar to inventor in that it only takes advantage of one single core (Modeling, assembly, drawing translation). 

Is this a professional workstation for Student use / Small Buisness Single Cad Tech use? Or is this for employees to use? If it's for you alone, go with the highest single core clock CPU you can get (typically an 8 core Intel 10/11 series, or Ryzen 5000 series) and any Nvidia/ AMD GPU as neither Inventor nor solid works use the GPU for any part of the rendering; simply a video outsource. If this is for a business for multiple personnel besides yourself, I'd go with a Xeon and Quadro because Business Class workstations deserve Business Class Support which is what those series are all about. Are they good value to performance? No but you're paying for the "if it's broken we just fix it" service you typically get in business class solutions. 

We're looking at getting a couple of either laptops or desktops for industrial use at a small business. We often do CAD (modeling specifically) heavy work with thousands of complex feature parts. Judging by your explanation it seems maybe we should look at a Xeon/Quadro combo. We are looking to upgrade from Core/GeForce combo because we have been running into a lot of issues sometimes including not even being able to open drawings and even Solidworks support has no idea what's going on and they won't look too much into it because we're not using their officially certified hardware. 

 

16 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Does SW like single core speed, or can it take advantage of multiple cores?

Because a threadripper/Xeon build (I prefer Xeons, but that is a personal opinion only) would be great if it was multi-core multi-threaded aware

SW loves single core speeds since it's a tree based CAD software. Multiple cores would only be useful for something like simulation which we use once in a blue moon.

 

16 hours ago, TheStyne said:

The only benefits of a Xeon over a consumer Core processor is going to exactly what's outlined on the specs page. They will(usually) have more PCIE lanes, support for certain workstation and server features, increased cache(sometimes), and will often have higher peak core numbers at the top of the line. But with two apples to apples CPUs(equal cores, clock speed, etc), there's no inherent advantage in a Xeon.

I've often seen that consumer grade CPUs will often have higher clock speeds while the Xeons have ECC support. Do you know if the ECC support would be of any use in making Solidworks more stable?

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, KnightElm said:

SW loves single core speeds since it's a tree based CAD software. Multiple cores would only be useful for something like simulation which we use once in a blue moon.

Ok, so a high core count Threadripper/Xeon would be of limited use. The ECC support is handy if you need absolute precision and guaranteed error-free numbers, and in the case of a high-budget/high-profile/high-profit job, I'd go with ECC just because...

[KnightElm]

15 hours ago, WereCat said:

You will most likely have less performance with Xeons since they run at lower clock speeds. 

 

Honestly, i9 10900k looks like a really good option for the price right now (if you're looking at that kind of budget). 

 

Xeon will give you ECC, providing you got a motherboard that supports it as well... not really relevant for Solidworks though. 

Our budget is around $3000 or maybe a bit more if it's justified. Our requirements changed since yesterday and we'd be looking at laptops specifically now. Any processor recommendations for laptops then? So ECC wouldn't be worth it for SW? Why?

[brob]

Chose something on the Solidworks certified hardware list. 

 

Choice really comes down to availability that meets requirements. For laptops, once you settle on the amount of memory, NVMe storage, and gpu required the cpu choice will be evident. It will likely be an i9-10980hk but could be an i7-10875h.