Best Workstation PC / Laptop for CAD, Autocad, Solidworks, Revit, Inventor

What is the best Computer or Laptop for CAD Software such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit or many others?

What is CAD Software anyway, and why is it so difficult to find reliable information on what type of Hardware Components you need to build a greatly performing PC for CAD?

Well, let’s dive right in!

What is CAD Software and what is it not?

You might have already read some of the Articles on this blog that talk about building the best Computers for DCC (Digital Content Creation) Software such as Cinema 4D, After Effects or for Video Editing and 3D Modeling & Rendering.

The thing is though, I do not consider Software such as Cinema 4D, Maya, 3DS max or Blender, CAD Software.

The reason is, that the mentioned Apps are targeted at Content Creation for visual purposes that don’t necessarily need high precision but rather should make an Image or Animation look believable or photorealistic, but not mathematically correct.

Because, hey, when I am sitting in the Movie Theaters and watching a VFX Movie, that Space ship hovering over the Earth is quite believable, but if it is Mathematically correct and possible, is not really the issue here.

Another important factor in DCC Softwares such as Cinema 4D, Maya and the like is, that they are mainly based on Polygons and not Curves.

Yes there are tools that let you create curves and NURBS Objects, but they main work is usually done with polygons that at a certain Polygon resolution suffice for making an object believable and smooth.

Image-Source: AutodeskCAD Software though is targeted at mathematically precise Forms of content creation.

Content that simulates real-life properties. It is of utmost importance that e.g. a rocket nozzle on a SpaceX Booster Engine is modeled to an extremely high mathematical precision, otherwise the Rocket might not last very long after launch. If it launches at all.

For the sake of this article let’s name the polygon 3D Softwares “DCC” and the Precision Softwares “CAD”.

CAD Softwares come in many forms and Brands, some open source, some whoppingly expensive.

In this Article on building the best PC for CAD Applications, I’ll focus on Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor and Revit, as these are some of the most popular ones out there.

Of course lots of the theory and Part Recommendations can also be applied to other CAD Software as they all tend to work very similarly.

How do CAD Apps utilize the Hardware?

Very Similar to 3D Modeling and Rendering in DCC Apps, CAD Software relies on high clocking Hardware, especially in the CPU and GPU for active work.

Active work meaning, you are sitting on front of your workstation and actively modeling and working on a project.

These I call attended tasks and they require you to interact and be present at all times, otherwise your project does not progress.

The other type of task is the unattended tasks. This includes things like Rendering and Simulation caching and other processing tasks.

These tasks run on their own and usually take longer than a few milliseconds to process (often hours and days).

Tasks that take days to process have a high probability to be targeted by developers earlier for making them ready for multi-processing. And of course, as soon as they are possible to be worked on by multiple cores, they can be processed much faster.

Look at this Single VS Multi-Core Performance scaling to get a feel for how more Cores can improve performance in multi-threaded workloads:

For these tasks you will need the maximum number of Cores and not necessarily a high core clock.

Of course having both, a high core clock and lots of cores is best, but not always possible.

So to recap: Your Active Work and snappiness performance requires a high-clocking CPU and GPU, whereas parallelizable tasks such as Rendering and Processing needs lots of Cores.

So let’s apply this to some real Hardware and see what components make the CAD work we do the fastest:

Best Processor (CPU) for CAD Software

As you can see in these benchmarks that measure the CPU performance in Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor and Revit, the tendency is quite clear.

The higher the IPC a CPU has the better it performs in the respective CAD Software.

IPC (Instructions per Cycle) of course is something that is not openly advertised by the manufacturer, so let’s take the Boost clock as an indicator.

The Turbo Boost Clock of a CPU is probably the closest we can match the IPC indicator of a CPU, with the benefit, that Boost Clocks are advertised on CPUs and this lets us easily buy and compare CPU Performance.

CPUs clock at a predefined Base Clock and can automatically overclock a Core or multiple cores to a higher Clock as long as the entire CPU with all its Cores does not exceed a power or temperature limit.

In the above Cinebench Benchmark, the single-core performance was measured at the maximum possible clocks the CPU will automatically clock at.

Let’s make an example: an Intel i7 8700K CPU has a base clock of 3,6GHz and a Boost Clock of 4,7GHz.

In this specific case the CPU can overclock 1 Core up to 4,7GHz, 2 Cores up to 4,6GHz 3C: 4,5GHz, 2-5C: 4,4GHz and all 6 Cores up to 4,3GHz.

This means, when we work in a Software that currently utilizes only 1 Core of a CPU, this CPU Core can and will most probably run at its advertised max Turbo Boost Clock.

The higher the Clock, the better the Performance.

Look at these Inventor Benchmarks of Finite Element Analysis Meshing. High-Core-Clocks with High Turbo-Boost Clocks win all the way (Lower is better):

Here are some Revit Benchmarks made by Pugetsystems.com. Again, in Single-Thread Workloads a High-Core Clock (IPC) wins, in multi-threaded workloads such as Rendering, More Cores win.

Performance relative to a i7 7700K that has 4,5GHz Boost Clock, 4 Cores, 8 Threads

Autocad 2D and 3D Performance Benchmarks taken with the Cadalyst Benchmark Tool showing how high-core-clocks win every time.

An one last CPU Benchmark for Solidworks, confirming what we have already seen:

Turbo Boost and IPC is so important, because many tasks can not be parallelized.

Either because a Software’s Code is old and hasn’t been updated or optimized in a long time, or because certain Tasks just can’t be parallelized, because of things like dependencies.

Think about this example concerning dependencies: You are modeling a House in Revit and have your Scene nicely optimized in Hierarchical Categories.

It looks a bit like this:

• House Wall Extrusion
  • Room1
    • Window Boolean
      • Edge Bevel
        • screw Booleans on Edge Bevel

Now we will thicken the House Wall Extrusion a bit. We have 5 different Objects and would think that having a CPU with (in this case) 5 Cores would speed up the thickening of the House Wall Extrusion, because every core can work on one object, right?

Wouldn’t that speed thing up nicely?

It would, but unfortunately because the Objects are dependent on each other as they are in a hierarchical chain, The CPU will have to step through the top-most Hierarchie first and then move on to the lower ones.

There is no way the screw Booleans can already be calculated before the Edge Bevel has been finished processing and so on. Because of dependencies. A single CPU-Core will have to work through the entire hierarchy chain by itself.

A single CPU will have to first calculate the thicker Wall Extrusion, after that it can calculate the Window Boolean, then the Edge Bevel on The Window Boolean, then the Edge Bevel on that Window Boolean Edge, and only after all of these have been stepped through can the CPU calculate the screw Booleans that are in the Edge Bevel.

An this is quite a simple example made for easy understanding. What usually goes on inside a CAD Software is much more complex.

So long story short: We need a high clocking CPU, that optimally has a nice Boost Clock on one or more cores, to be able to work as fast as possible with a responsive and snappy Viewport in CAD Applications.

Only considering IPC and Core-Clocks, the currently best CPU for CAD Apps when actively working on projects is the Intel i9 9900K which Turbo Boosts up to 5GHz on one Core.

Some more great runner ups are:

• AMD Threadripper 1900X
• AMD Ryzen 2700X
• Intel i7 8700K, 8086K
• Intel i9 9900X
• Intel i7 7740X

These are all high-clocking CPUs that will give you a smooth working experience.

What about Xeon?

What’s the deal with Xeon? It seems to be recommended very often on CAD Software Manufacturers Sites, so it should perform well, shouldn’t it?

Well the thing with Xeon is, you usually trade Realiability, Durability & Support and a high Price for Performance.

Intel Xeons are a lot pricier than i7 or i9 CPUs (or AMD CPUs of course for that matter), their clocks are lower, IPC is lower & the Turbo Boost Clocks are lower.

BUT, XEONs have ECC Memory Support (Error Correcting memory) that CAN in some cases make your CAD Software a bit more stable.

Also, often times expensive CAD Software Manufacturers only offer support when you actually have a XEON (that they recommend and then of course should also support) and not a mainstream or HEDT CPU.

So if you absolutely need reliability and need immediate support for your systems, then you would have to go the Xeon Route for many of the top tier CAD Apps out there.

Then again, if you value performance over reliability and can support yourself by googling or asking in forums, you should be getting a performance CPU as mentioned above, such as the Intel i7, i9 or AMD Ryzen / Threadripper CPUs.

Best GPU (Graphics Card) for CAD Software and the endless Quadro vs. Geforce debate

Let’s clear up this Quadro vs. Geforce debate once and for all.

The Benchmarks will support my writing: The Geforce GTX or RTX Cards are faster in almost all CAD Benchmarks. Autocad, Inventor, Solidworks, Revit you name it.

BUT, again, as with CPUs, the Quadro Cards have other things to offer.

They have different Drivers than their Mainstream counterparts that enable some  features in various CAD apps and also offer 10Bit Color support for your Monitors.

Also, again, the question of Support is not to be neglected.

Many CAD Application Manufacturers only offer (good) support if you have Hardware that matches their Hardware Recommendations, and that is usually Xeon + Quadro or an AMD Radeon Pro WX counterpart.

Ask yourself, do you value stability and professional support over performance, go with a quadro / WX.

If it’s just your own Workstation you have to worry about and you can help yourself and want the fastest experience possible and would like to save some money (because Quadros are so much more expensive) go with a Geforce GTX or RTX GPU.

As seen in the Benchmarks, an Nvidia RTX 2080Ti is on top of the charts pretty much everywhere, but followed closely by some lower-tier cards such as the 2080 RTX and 2070 RTX.

Even High-End Cards such as the Quadro P6000 that cost about 4000$ can’t compete with a 1200$ RTX 2080Ti.

Now that we have the most controversial Parts of a CAD Computer out of the way lets move on to some standards:

Best Mainboard for CAD Aplications

Different Mainboards won’t influence your performance all that much, but you should make sure the Motherboard you are getting supports all the features you need and matches the Hardware that you are going to plug into it.

Of course you should match the Mainboard Socket to the CPU you chose earlier. Get an LGA 1151 Mainboard for a i7 8700K, and an AM4 Mainboard for a Ryzen 2700X CPU and so on.

Other features you should look out for might be the amount of PCIE-Slots that you can plug Graphics Cards into, the amount of USB connectors, the amount of supported RAM and RAM Slots as well as the number of Storage Devices such as M.2 Slots you have available to use.

For the Intel i9 9900K, that I currently recommend highly for CAD Apps, you will need an LGA 1151 v2 Mainboard such as the ASUS Prime Z390-A ATX 1151.

Best RAM (Memory) for CAD Software

CAD Work is very similar to working in 3D Applications like Cinema 4D or Maya.

The amount of RAM needed depends very much on how complex your projects and models are and how many you have opened at the same time.

Another factor of course always is how many different Applications you have opened at any given time.

Running Windows 10, for example, and having Chrome, a Mail Program, some other DCC Softwares like Photoshop and Illustrator and a Word-Processing App open together with your CAD Software will surely eat away at your RAM much more than when you have only one App open at a time.

But it is ease of use that we are looking for, and closing down other Applications just so we can use our CAD Software is not what we have in mind.

For lighter CAD work you should be looking to buy at least 16GB of RAM. Yes, you can get away with 8GB, but it might get nasty very quickly, so better to be on the safe side!

With more complex assemblies you should be leaning towards 32GB of RAM over 16GB.

If money is no Object, of course, go with 64GB of RAM which should settle it once and for all.

If you are going the Xeon CPU route you can get ECC RAM that will correct some calculation errors and might make your CAD Software slightly stabler.

Good non-ECC RAM for Mainstream or HEDT CPUs such as the i7, i9 or Ryzen / Threadripper Line-up, that I can recommend include Corsair LPX DDR4 Vengeance RAM that come in all sorts of sizes.

As Clock Speed in RAM is usually negligible as a performance influencer, you can start with the cheapest, which is usually DDR4-2400MHz and work your way up from there if you want to.

Concerning ECC RAM, I have had good experiences with Kingston as in the Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 16 GB DDR4-2400 ECC RAM.

Best SSD / HDD / Storage for CAD Work

Assemblies and other Project Files can get quite big, especially on complex projects, and you will be happy to have enough space to keep the entire projects saved in multiple revisions as well as a fast drive to read and write the Data from and to the storage Device.

The currently best type of storage Device for a lot of PC-Users, including CAD purposes are the NVME M.2 SSDs.

This stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express M.2 (the form factor) Solid State Drive and basically is an SSD that has been further developed to

1. be smaller
2. use a faster interface and
3. be much faster in reading and writing data.

An NVME SSD you can plug into the motherboard without needing any cables. It is smaller than a candy bar and about 5 times as fast as a regular SATA SSD and even about 25x faster than a mechanical HDD.

I recommend getting a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD that come in different sizes.

Of course, NVME Drives are somewhat more expensive than HDDs or SATA SSDs and the best plan usually is to get both.

A smaller NVME SSD for active projects, apps and the OS. And a large HDD for Backup and Archiving.

Best Case for CAD Work

The Computer-Case of course will not influence the performance of your CAD Build in any way. Well maybe in terms of air-flow, but that can usually be neglected as CAD Work tends not to make your CPU or GPU overheat all that fast.

There are lots of Cases out there in all kinds of Colors, Sizes and from all kinds of Brands.

There is not much you can do wrong here. Be sure to get a big enough case for your components, usually ATX Midi-Tower or bigger.

A nice Case that I keep coming back to is the be quiet! Silent Base 601 orange, as it looks professional and has some noise dampening features that will make your best Computer for CAD quieter.

Best PSU for CAD

The Power Supply Unit should have enough Wattage to be able to Power your Components.

If you are unsure as to how much Watt your selected Components actually need, check out this easy to use Wattage-Calculator over on bequiet’s Website.

Some reliable Brands to look out for are Corsair, beQuiet and Seasonic that I have all been able to successfully use and test for quite some while now.

It is wise to get a somewhat stronger than needed PSU in case you upgrade your Computer in the future either with added hardware components or with new components all-together.

That way you can keep your PSU across different builds for several more years, as PSUs usually don’t go out of date and are always compatible with Hardware in the years to come.

For the Build that we are putting together in this Article, Intel i9 9900K, Asus Z390-A Mainboard, 32GB RAM, Samsung 970 EVO SSD, I’d recommend a 650 Watt PSU (or higher) such as the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 650W ATX 2.4, but there are lots of others that you might prefer.

Finished PC Builds

That’s about it for the Main Hardware Components needed for a great Computer for CAD Work!

Let’s take a look at some finished Builds at different price points, that will work well with CAD Apps such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit and lots of others.

Keep in mind, that these are Performance builds and not Realiability/Support Builds. If you are responsible for CAD Computers at a large Company you might want to trade performance for reliability and support, but that of course is up to you.

Performance Builds: Best Computers for CAD

Best Performance Computer for CAD, AMD ~700$

• CPU: AMD – Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor
• CPU-Cooler: Already included with CPU
• Motherboard: MSI – B350 PC MATE ATX AM4 Motherboard
• Memory: Corsair – Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
• Storage: Samsung – 860 Evo 500GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
• GPU: MSI – GeForce GTX 1050 2GB Video Card
• Case: Deepcool – DUKASE WHV2 ATX Mid Tower Case
• Power Supply: Corsair – CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX

PCPartPicker part list

Some Build notes:

If you are experienced enough to do a BIOS upgrade you should consider the AMD Ryzen 2600 that will work on this board with a BIOS upgrade. If you still want a second Generation Ryzen CPU but don’t want to flash your BIOS, go with a 400 Series Chipset that supports these already.

Consider upgrading to a Nvidia GTX 1060, if you can spare some more cash.

Best Performance Computer for CAD, AMD ~1500$

• CPU: AMD – Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7GHz 8-Core Processor
• CPU-Cooler: Already Included with CPU
• Motherboard: Asus – Prime X470-Pro ATX AM4 Motherboard
• Memory: Corsair – Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
• Storage: Samsung – 970 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• GPU: Asus – GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB Turbo Video Card
• Case: Fractal Design Define S – ATX Midi Tower
• Power Supply: Corsair – RMx 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX

PCPartPicker part list

Some Build notes:

This is a basic AMD build that you can build upon. The Case is professional looking, minimalistic and quiet. There is no room for Optical drives, you will need a different Case if you want to have DVD/CD Drives.

The AMD Ryzen 2700X is the fastest of the second Generation Ryzen CPUs with excellent Multi-Core and good Single Core performance. All AMD Ryzen CPUs usually come with included CPU coolers, so no extra Cooler needed here.

I added a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe Drive in this build that will give you extreme Storage Performance. The Asus Turbo Series GPUs are Blower-Style GPUs, meaning you can stack them on top of each other in Multi-GPU Builds, without loosing too much Cooling performance.

Best Performance Computer for CAD, Intel ~1900$

• CPU: Intel – Core i9-9900K 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor
• CPU-Cooler: be quiet! – Dark Rock 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler
• Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z390-A ATX 1151
• Memory: Corsair – Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
• Storage: Samsung – 970 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• GPU: Asus – GeForce RTX 2070 8GB Turbo Video Card
• Case: Fractal Design Define S – ATX Midi Tower
• Power Supply: Corsair – RMx 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX

Some Build notes: This is a basic build that you can build upon. The Case is professional looking, minimalistic and quiet. There is no room for Optical drives, you will need a different Case if you want to have DVD/CD Drives.

The Intel CPUs need additional CPU Coolers, so I added an excellent CPU Air Cooler from BeQuiet here. Air Coolers are usually quieter than AIO or Water Cooling solutions, as they only have one Fan. If you are planning on some more extreme overclocking, you might want to consider getting a different CPU cooling solution though.

Reliabiliy Build: Best Computer for CAD

Best reliability Computer for CAD,Intel XEON / Nvidia Quadro ~6350$

• CPU: Intel Xeon W-2145, 8x 3.70GHz
• CPU-Cooler:be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
• Motherboard: ASUS WS C422 Pro/SE
• Memory: 2x (or 4x) Kingston Server Premier DIMM 16GB, DDR4-2666, CL19-19-19, reg ECC (KSM26RS4/16HAI)
• Storage: Samsung – 970 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• GPU: PNY Quadro P6000, 24GB GDDR5X, DVI, 4x DP
• Case: Fractal Design Define S – ATX Midi Tower
• Power Supply: Corsair Professional Series Platinum AX760 760W

This is an excellent Reliability / Durability / Stability Computer for CAD Applications with potential of Support from Software Manufacturers. The Xeon gets you ECC RAM Support and the Quadro offers Drivers with additional Features in many CAD Apps as well as 10bit Monitor Color output. The price tag sure is hefty, but that is what you pay nowadays for reliability.

Custom PC-Builder Tool

Head on over to the CGDirector Custom PC-Builder Tool that let’s you configure your Computer at custom price points for all kinds of purposes. It suggest parts that work well together and gets the maximum performance out of your budget.

CGDirector PC-Builder Tool

Build your own Computer

Assembling your Computer yourself has many benefits. It is much cheaper to buy the individual hardware Components and assemble them on your own. It is lot’s of fun, it’s easy and you learn a lot.

With that knowledge you might be able to troubleshoot any problems that might arise later on yourself, without having to bring your Computer back to a shop to have it fixed.

You can upgrade yourself when newer and faster hardware is available and you learn a lot about how computers work, which is always great to know!

Start by taking a look at what parts you need for building your own Computer. After that, here is an easy to follow Video Tutorial of how to build / assemble your own Computer:

Best Laptops for CAD Software such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit…

So what about Laptops? We have been talking about Desktop Computers all this time but fortunately everything we discussed above can also be applied to a Laptop.

The Theory behind what is important to create a greatly performing Laptop for CAD Work is the same as in desktop Computers for CAD.

We will need a high-clocking CPU, a GTX or RTX GPU, 16-32GB of RAM and a fast M.2 SSD.

In Laptops, as the Hardware components are usually supposed to draw much less power the components will not reach the performance of Desktop Computer Parts.

But that is to be expected from such a small enclosure. In a Laptop you get the benefit of Mobility but trade it for performance.

In Laptops too, we will differentiate between performance vs reliability / support, as both the Xeon CPUs and the Quadro GPUs are available for Laptops.

Best Performance Laptop for CAD Software

If it’s Performance you are after, you will want to lean towards a high-clocking CPU and a higher-end GPU such as the GTX 1070 as you will find in the following Laptop:

The GIGABYTE Aero 15X v8-BK4 15″ Ultra Slim Laptop.

The Specifications on this Gigabyte Laptop are:

• CPU: i7-8750H
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB of VRAM
• RAM: 16GB RAM
• SSD: 512GB PCIE SSD
• Win 10 Home
• 15,6″ IPS Screen with a FullHD Resolution

Check the current Price here.

Some notes on this Laptop:

This Gigabyte Laptop has the “Gaming” branding in its Title. This can be misleading to many looker for a workstation Laptop.

The reason Laptops are often-times advertised as Gaming-Laptops is because of the strong Graphics Card. The Area of 3D and CAD is not big enough to have its own branding name. This Laptop though will be excellent for CAD work as well because we need a strong GPU for CAD.

It even has a higher Tier Graphics Card, the Nvidia 1070 GTX with 8 GB of VRAM. It weighs just slightly over 2KG.

Two more great choices with similar Hardware are the Asus GX531GS (Zephyrus S) and the Raze Blade 15.

Best Reliability / Support / Stability Laptop for CAD Software

The Lenovo ThinkPad P52 (2018) 15.6″ Business Laptop.

The Specifications on this Gigabyte Laptop are:

• CPU: Xeon E-2176
• GPU: Quadro P2000 (4GB)
• RAM: 16GB RAM
• SSD: 512GB PCIE SSD
• Win 10 Pro
• 15,6″ IPS Screen with a FullHD Resolution

Check the current Price here.

Some notes on this Laptop:

The Lenovo ThinkPad P52 has a 6-Core Intel Xeon CPU that boosts up to 4.4GHz. With 16GB of Ram, an Nvidia Quadro P2000 GPU and a PCIE-M.2 SSD you will get the Reliability Workstation Experience inside a mobile Formfactor.

That’s about it! What Computer or Laptop for CAD are you thinking of buying?