What new workstation to buy?

[TomB]

I have not been having good fortune since I retired when it comes to buying a new workstation. Historically I have used Lenovo laptops because I traveled a lot and they fit in my briefcase, had very good performance and took the beating a road warrior gave out. But after I retired I went through a short period when my computers were breaking and I had to buy new ones. The new ones did not have the performance I expected. When I bought the last one I asked for a machine with a graphics adapter (GA) intending to use it mostly for Alibre. I may have made a mistake asking for a GA adapter rather than a GPU but at the time I did not know there was a difference. The lady taking down my phone order explained I did not need to buy a HW adapter as they had created a SW version so I took her advice and did not include a HW GA in the order. I have since found out that Lenovo means a TV adapter when they say GA. I have also found out that what is in my possession is not capable of running Alibre effectively. I want to use it for machine tool parts, for house addition design and for a in-lake weed puller. Currently the sensitivity of the mouse is not adequate. I find I have to jump to the 'zoom to window' and enlarge every view for almost every selection. I've also found that it is easy to somehow select the wrong thing and have it or perhaps a large group of things disappear. Hence I have to save the design every minute or two. All that jumping out of my mental design process is making success with Alibre extremely exhausting.

Hence I decided I'm going to buy a new laptop or desktop (I no longer travel, I hate it.) with a high performance GPU. My knowledge about high performance GPUs is limited. When the term comes up I think of NVIDIA and I know it can be programmed to do really involved work. Just before retirement I worked on a effort to install fully certified encryption on a PC scale processor riding in a fighter. I did not do the programming but I looked at some of the programming guides and thought I could do that and if I hadn't been so close to retirement I probably would have jumped in that pool. Now I'm thinking I should have scheduled me into some of the seminars as then I would understand what questions I should be asking. So excuse my ignorance but:
1) Is there a particular model machine that hosts Alibre well?
2) Does an NVIDIA suffice to offload the CPU workload when using Alibre?
3) Is Alibre written to take full or partial advantage of NVIDIA's GPUs? What GPU is minimum for an Alibre project?
I would prefer to use NVIDIA because I have in mind a non-Alibre project that would use NVIDIA's visual processing. But I could consider some other vendors device although that would be more of a learning curve. However I only have a few days study invested in NVIDIA so starting over on a different brand processor would not be a big loss.
4) Is there some other questions I should be asking?

Thank you, TomB.

 

[HaroldL]

Have you read thru the system specs? There is a link at the bottom of the Alibre Home page.

 

[Ken226]

It would probably be tough these days to find a computer that didn't meet Alibre's minimum specs.

I use an older model 500$ ish Lenovo laptop that is definitely not a high-end machine. It runs Alibre V25sp1 quite well. It's a Lenovo IdeaPad 3-15itl6 running windows 11.

I recently upgraded the memory to 32gb, but it ran Alibre just fine when it had the stock 8gb.

It has an Intel core i5-1135g7 processor,
Intel Iris XE shared graphics and a 256gb solid state hard drive.

What make and model computer are you currently using that is having performance issues?

 

[gwbruce]

This is what my laptop is and it runs Alibre just fine. I have since added a 1TB SSD drive for more storage. Best part is it didn't empty my bank account when I bought it. My plan is to up it to 32GB ram soon.

 

[simonb65]

See my signature on the bottom of this post to see examples of both desktop and laptop that run Alibre with good performance ...

 

[H-L-Smith]

You don't say what country you're in, so I'll assume it's the USA.

I've faced your issue a few times over the last 15 years. I just purchased a new workstation myself. I bought an HP Z4 outfitted very well from the refurbished stock of the HP Small Business Store. This is my 3rd refurbished system from them and I'm very happy with the results. You can get a really high performance system at a significant discount. They come with a warranty. You can buy extended, in-home, repair warranties through HP for a very reasonable cost. I've done so each time, but never had to use them. Still, it's cheap insurance.

After 10 years of service, my old Z400 system still runs Alibre 24 exceptionally well. It's just that it can no longer be updated to the latest version of MS Windows, and official support for Windows 7 Pro Workstation has ended now. It was just time to upgrade. I'm running Windows 11 Pro and Alibre 25 on the new Z4.

It's a bit of a hassle to buy refurbished systems from HP. You have to get on their mailing list, and monitor the inventory in that list each day until you find a system that matches your needs and budget. You have to master their abbreviation system to decode the listings, which isn't too hard. When you see a system that works for you, you've got to act right away because there are many others out there looking too. However, on balance, it's worth it I feel. HP supports their workstation systems with drivers and upgrades for years. They feature high-end graphics cards in their workstation lines, including NVIDIA, which is what I always select. High-end monitors and accessories are also available refurbished too.

Regards,

Lonnie

 

[Abhijit]

Hi @TomB .
I made a list of parts for a Mid-Tier workstation build that I think would serve you for a very long time and be future-proof.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/WZGPY9

For your intents I don't think you'd need a very powerful GPU.
From my understanding most of the tasks in MCAD benefit from a higher single core clock.
Some processes maybe multi-threaded where you'd see benefits from having higher core counts.
5900x therefore is a good solution.
5800x too would be great.
5950x if you want to go top-spec.
You can also instead of going with an X570 motherboard, go for a B550 or B450 as AM4 supports B450 sockets.
It all depends on what your needs are and spec your machine accordingly.
AM4 prices are below msrp and I wouldn't advise jumping to AM5 because it's way to early, high prices for CPUs and MBs as well as DDR5 Ram. AM4 would be a great platform.

When it comes to the GPU, a 3060Ti would be great for you with ample VRam.
Above it a 3080Ti would be great too if you need the extra Cuda Cores but that's usually for CGI workflows like Texturing, Rendering.
For your CAD Viewport a 3060Ti would offer great price/performance without costing a lot where you'd not see much benefits.
40xx series is launched so you might wait for 4060/4070 when they're out but that's estimated around Q1 2023, the prices for 30xx because of stock overflow are way below msrp so it's a good time to build a machine.
You could also go with a workstation card like A4000/A4500/A5000.
An A4000 with taxes costs $1k here in India, so all 3 above mentioned workstation cards sell way below their msrp but slightly higher than Geforce/Consumer counterparts.
I don't see much benefits going with Workstation cards, from my knowledge NX, Solidworks take advantage for workstation cards but I don't think Alibre would.
The stability, quality, and ECC memory though can be selling points but apart from these little things I don't really see any point going with A series cards, overpriced big corp devices.

Along with the Hardware Above, I'd also recommend the 3d Connexion Enterprise Kit2 (Spacemouse Enterprise + CADMouse Pro Wireless).
Absolutely worth the investment for people like us who spend all day navigating viewports.
3d Connexions software and ability to map commands and macro shortcuts and have them assigned to buttons as Radial Menus on both the devices I mentioned above is very powerful.
I don't really touch my keyboard and navigation is a breeze with the 6dof controller.

If you have any questions, use cases you'd wanna mention please feel free to ask so we can spec an amazing bang for buck workstation for you.

 

[danwrnr11]

Hi @TomB .
I made a list of parts for a Mid-Tier workstation build that I think would serve you for a very long time and be future-proof.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/WZGPY9

For your intents I don't think you'd need a very powerful GPU.
From my understanding most of the tasks in MCAD benefit from a higher single core clock.
Some processes maybe multi-threaded where you'd see benefits from having higher core counts.
5900x therefore is a good solution.
5800x too would be great.
5950x if you want to go top-spec.
You can also instead of going with an X570 motherboard, go for a B550 or B450 as AM4 supports B450 sockets.
It all depends on what your needs are and spec your machine accordingly.
AM4 prices are below msrp and I wouldn't advise jumping to AM5 because it's way to early, high prices for CPUs and MBs as well as DDR5 Ram. AM4 would be a great platform.

When it comes to the GPU, a 3060Ti would be great for you with ample VRam.
Above it a 3080Ti would be great too if you need the extra Cuda Cores but that's usually for CGI workflows like Texturing, Rendering.
For your CAD Viewport a 3060Ti would offer great price/performance without costing a lot where you'd not see much benefits.
40xx series is launched so you might wait for 4060/4070 when they're out but that's estimated around Q1 2023, the prices for 30xx because of stock overflow are way below msrp so it's a good time to build a machine.
You could also go with a workstation card like A4000/A4500/A5000.
An A4000 with taxes costs $1k here in India, so all 3 above mentioned workstation cards sell way below their msrp but slightly higher than Geforce/Consumer counterparts.
I don't see much benefits going with Workstation cards, from my knowledge NX, Solidworks take advantage for workstation cards but I don't think Alibre would.
The stability, quality, and ECC memory though can be selling points but apart from these little things I don't really see any point going with A series cards, overpriced big corp devices.

Along with the Hardware Above, I'd also recommend the 3d Connexion Enterprise Kit2 (Spacemouse Enterprise + CADMouse Pro Wireless).
Absolutely worth the investment for people like us who spend all day navigating viewports.
3d Connexions software and ability to map commands and macro shortcuts and have them assigned to buttons as Radial Menus on both the devices I mentioned above is very powerful.
I don't really touch my keyboard and navigation is a breeze with the 6dof controller.

If you have any questions, use cases you'd wanna mention please feel free to ask so we can spec an amazing bang for buck workstation for you.

Please be advised that the nvidia 3060 TI is an excellent choice but Nvidia recently and quietly changed the GPU memory amount from 12 gb down to 8 gb at the same price. With that in mind be aware of the GPU amount of memory upon purchase!

 

[HaroldL]

quietly changed the GPU memory amount from 12 gb down to 8 gb at the same price.

Sneaky. Kind of like leaving the price of a candy bar the same but reducing its size.

 

[danwrnr11]

Sneaky. Kind of like leaving the price of a candy bar the same but reducing its size.

I see that you use keyshot, are you happy with its performance and is it worth the subscription? and how about the rendering quality?

 

[HaroldL]

I've been using KeyShot since it was called Bunkspeed and went thru its ownership struggles. I even presented KeyShot to my work and three licenses were installed. I used it at work to create catalog images of the enclosure designs I was working on. I got my home license from Luxion and had been keeping its maintenance current but since I am now retired I elected to stop paying for maintenance on KS and will now stay at v11. Besides, I'm not a fan of the subscription system Luxion implemented for KS even though I could have stayed on an annual maintenance plan.

I am happy with the performance even more so now that I have a new computer that has the resources to run it. I always read about other renderers that have similar quality but I've never investigated them, except for SolidWorks Visualize, which is the old Bunkspeed dressed up in a new interface. I got to test it when it first launched and It was not comparable to KS at the time. No doubt they have made some improvements but I haven't checked on them.

Just for reference here are the specs on my new computer with an Acer Nitro XV2, 31.5 inch monitor:


This is probably overkill for my, much reduced, needs now but it's nice not having to wait several minutes for an image to render. What could take hours for a large image on my laptop is now only minutes on my new system.


There are a lot of training resources and tutorials for KeyShot and are helpful since it can have a steep learning curve. Some are free and some are paid. Will Gibbons comes to mind as one of the trainers that have their own web site and tutorials.

 

[danwrnr11]

Thank you for the information as I am looking for a good rendering tool blender looks good but my God the learning curve is very steep.
Best Regards,
Dan Warner

 

[Brandon]

It would probably be tough these days to find a computer that didn't meet Alibre's minimum specs.

I use an older model 500$ ish Lenovo laptop that is definitely not a high-end machine. It runs Alibre V25sp1 quite well. It's a Lenovo IdeaPad 3-15itl6 running windows 11.

I recently upgraded the memory to 32gb, but it ran Alibre just fine when it had the stock 8gb.

It has an Intel core i5-1135g7 processor,
Intel Iris XE shared graphics and a 256gb solid state hard drive.

What make and model computer are you currently using that is having performance issues?

Did you encounter any issues because of the GPU (Intel Iris Xe)? My laptop also uses the Intel Iris Xe and I am looking to purchase Alibre Atom 3D soon, but I would like to know if there would be any problems upfront due to the GPU since it is unsupported.

 

[Latitude]

Thank you for the information as I am looking for a good rendering tool blender looks good but my God the learning curve is very steep.
Best Regards,
Dan Warner

Perhaps this if it meets your needs: https://maverickrender.com/