Solidworks Laptop Buyer’s Guide in 2024

Designing software is usually highly resource-demanding and to work with them, you need to acquire a laptop that has high-end hardware specifications. Solidworks is no different, it is a computer Aided designing software that is made to work on Windows operating system. It is one of the most resource-hungry software for 3d modeling and design to this date and engineers all around the world use it to create a blueprint for their architecture and other projects. Finding a laptop for Solidworks is no easy feat, because it would need to handle resource-heavy functions.

However high-end laptops don’t come cheap and most of the time they aren’t even compatible with the software and just because they have a higher price tag doesn’t mean they will fit the criteria for Solidworks. Since you would also be looking to future-proof your components for a long run before going for a replacement or hardware upgrade, you would be needing a high-end laptop for this purpose.

Moreover, you need to have a better understanding of which components you will be looking for when working with Solidworks before we dive into the list of our top picks for laptops. For those aiming to boost their Twitch presence, consider leveraging tools from StreamOZ to enhance your follower and like counts effectively.

Important Factors To Consider – Buyers Guide

A laptop is made from plenty of components, however, only a few components drastically make the difference in both price tag and specifications. A computer-Aided software like Solidworks would need a robust computational component to work with any issue or compatibility listed below

Graphics Card

One of the main factors when looking for a laptop that’s compatible with Solidworks is a dedicated graphics processing unit that is compatible with the software without having any issue. A dedicated graphics card plays a crucial role in editing, rendering, and designing as much as a processor does.

There are two types of graphics cards that you can invest in depending upon your budget. Both options are suitable for a Solidworks laptop.

Consumer-Grade

These are ordinary grade graphics cards that you will see on plenty of desktops and laptops. However, they usually come with lesser VRAMs. To get the best results, you need to have dedicated graphics cards that have better and bigger bandwidth.

But if you are on a budget and want to look for cheap laptops for Solidworks, then you can settle for a consumer-grade GPU. The computer-aided software utilizes the encoder in your GPU to render or create models.

Both Nvidia and AMD make dedicated graphic processing units, however, Nvidia has an advantage when it comes to editing or software design due to its attribute of having CUDA cores.

Most of the software utilizes CUDA cores which can be used in rendering and other editing processes and they are considerably fast as compared to working on your processor or AMD graphics cards.

Workstation Graphics Card

These are not the traditional graphics card don’t do well in the gaming category and do have hefty price tags. This hardware is specially designed units for work purposes only and can perform heavy-duty rendering and editing without any problem.

They tend to have higher bandwidth which can help a lot in software like Solidworks, AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit.

Processors

If you are looking for intense computational speeds, then a Processor with higher Cores and threads can be your way to go, software usually relies on single thread and multithreading depending on the occasion. However, in our case, working with Computer Aided design like Solidworks works efficiently on a single thread. Although on some occasions it might use multithreading depending on your line of work.

Intel processors work efficiently for software and applications that utilize multithreading because of Intel’s expertise in the multithreading category. However, When Compared to an AMD Ryzen technology, even a Ryzen 7 will reap fruitful results since Solidworks utilizes a single thread of processing because it calculates processes one at a time.

To be on the safe side, anything above 6 cores and 10 threads will ensure that you complete your projects without hindering your progress. And if you are on a budget and want more value for your price, we would highly recommend the AMD Ryzen series since they tend to have higher scores and threads with lower price tags as compared to Intel.

RAM

It goes without saying that when it comes to Random access memory(RAM), the more you have, the less you’ll notice it while working on resource-hungry software. Of course, when looking for a laptop for Solidworks, this factor is extremely important to consider. Usually, it is better to have a minimum Ram of 32GB, however, if you are going for professional editing and rendering and heavy-duty work then you might want to increase your requirements to 64 GB or even 128GB ram

One more thing to consider is that RAM usually has a frequency, which defines the speeds they work and process tasks. Having RAM with anything above 3200Mhz will offer you seamless computational processing speeds.

Storage Capacity

As data is getting bigger due to the increase in file quality, storage capacity hardware like mechanical hardware and Solid-state drives demands are booming. Every day scientists and engineers work tirelessly to create a bigger storage capacity that is smaller in physical size and has better read and write speeds than its predecessor technology.

To consider this fact, we also need a laptop that has bigger and faster storage hardware such as an SSD or a mechanical drive.

Traditionally, desktops or laptops tend to have smaller Solid State drives since they have a hefty price tag as compared to mechanical hard drives, however, SSD does produce wonderful results when used in editing or rendering software.

This is because they tend to have better read and write speeds as compared to a mechanical hard drive which only has 7200RPM and relies on a magnetic spinning disk.

Display

A Display of your laptop is the most important part when you are committing to a hefty investment. Since it is the first thing when you open a laptop, it’s nonetheless the most crucial aspect as screen quality, color, resolution, and Panel type can play a huge role when you are working on your project.

The most superior choice would be investing in a laptop that has IPS panel technology in its display and has Full HD quality which will deliver the maximum spectrum of SRGB color palette while working on projects.

You can also invest in laptops with bigger and higher resolution screens, but it will not only cost you money but will also be resource-demanding and will require graphics cards that have more bandwidth.

Battery Life

Since these tasks tend to be longer and can range from minutes to hours, you need to have a laptop with a massive battery that could keep the machine running without shutting down, although if you are working from then you should ignore this feature since you will be readily able to find an electrical outlet. In any case, any laptop suitable for SolidWorks should have high battery life for better functionality.

High-end hardware specifications laptops tend to struggle with battery runtime because they usually draw much more power and aren’t power conservative.

Now that you know what kind of laptop you should get for Solidworks, you may want to consider increasing your productivity.