All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. Software needs at least one core to run in. Become Affiliate If you follow this guy’s recommendation you’ll have to go begging for more RAM, a new SSD and a better video card soon after you get your computer up and running. DraftSight. I like Lenovo’s touch-screen Yoga laptops, and I own a bright orange one. Thank you once again in advance . Tier1Online, Morgan and EuroPC are among the companies that deal in refurbished workstations, and there are usually quite a few on Amazon and eBay. Acer Nitro 5 is one of the best money value laptops where you can customize the RAM and storage. The best PC for running SolidWorks would be an airy tower system with a … However, if you use simulation software like Ansys or rendering software like Keyshot, you will gain a big benefit from the additional cores which over time will bring a good return on investment for the price premium of a higher end CPU. It may be inconvenient for a game to freeze during operation. ... 2019 at 11:24 am - Reply. It also comes with preinstalled Windows 10 operating system. Thank you very much The storage drive has no effect on speed. Most high-end systems are default equipped with an SSD boot drive (the drive where the operating system is installed) and I also recommend SSD at least for the boot drive of your CAD laptop or workstation. You can expand its RAM up to 32GB and storage by adding both SSD and HDD simultaneously. I was always just thinking about the processor and graphics card i never gave much thoughts about the monitor, well now that i am having redo on my complete work station i’m gonna give some real thoughts on the monitor! Generally, any laptop that can be used for gaming has the right hardware. They go beyond most laptops in power and performance. My old one is a 17” and the newest one is an ASUS Zenbook that is very light and thin and has a 512GB M.2 drive only. The best thing about this laptop is its upgradeable capabilities. The processors come with many cores and the speed with which these cores can perform calculations is referred as clock speed which is measured in gigahertz (GHz). Is this article up to date with current technologies? Testimonials although the graphics VRAM is little less here it does have SSD for the boot drive and additional 1 TB of HDD. The graphics card has a choice between Quadro K2200 or Quadro M5000 This also comes with Windows 10 preinstalled and boasts other features like backlit keyboard and FHD IPS display. I want your opinion about laptop as you studied this machine. Single and Dual-core processors are rare now, and most common processors these days have a minimum of four cores with the high-end i7 having 6 cores, Ryzen with 8 cores, and Xeons/Threadripper having over 12 cores and beyond. With 2 gigs of ram & intel HD graphics. For AutoCAD 2D purpose and 10 Best Free CAD Software Solutions 1. Even the CPU architecture is different for a true CAD station such as the Intel E5 processors. In this article, I have tried to discuss the importance of processor, memory, storage, and software in your PC and how they impact the performance of your CAD software. I understand that AutoCAD does not take advantage of multiple threads; this makes the program run more slowly. Whether you want the best small laptop, or the best portable laptop, or the best thin laptop, we're here to help By Robert Jones • 2021-01-17T16:28:38Z Best laptop 2021: the best … In the era of cloud CAD, these tools will become more robust, helping users finish designs faster. It also comes with NVIDIA GTX 1050 4GB graphics card and preinstalled windows 10. There are many other factors to consider when deciding on a GPU i.e. I work as a 3D CAD & Vault consultant specializing in delivering data management and implementation services and managing CAD systems. 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 2070 as you will find in the following Laptop: The GIGABYTE Aero 15 OLED 15″ Ultra Slim Laptop. It comes with Intel Xeon processor with four cores 16GB DDR4 RAM and 4GB NVIDIA Quadro VRAM. Have you got a question? At least then they’re on the hook for the spinning cursors, slow processing and frozen screens. Then the New Dell G5 is an ideal laptop for CAD works, which is now available at an even attractive price. There are more upgraded P series of Lenovo thinkpads are also available in the market like Thinkpad P71. This laptop comes with Inteli7 7700HQ processor which has four cores and it also has 8GB DDR4 RAM with 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD. ... 2019 HondaLink Infotainment Review: Looking better all the time. Today, the ThinkPad P1 looks about as close as you can get to a Yoga 730 while staying on the workstation side of the divide. In case of multithreaded software, I would recommend a standard consumer grade quad-core processor with hyperthreading or SMT (simultaneous multithreading). Pricing, HELP & SUPPORT So, this is definitely a feature-packed laptop for graphics-intensive tasks like rendering and simulation. So, in short, this is a complete package at an affordable price point and a great Laptop for AutoCAD and other 2D/3D CAD software. LEARN MORE If your work is using the hard disk virtual memory portion, operations will be much slower. If you were paying £200 to £500 a month just to rent software, you’d probably have a different view of the hardware costs. But it doesn’t make much sense in a corporate context. If you’re designing fighter jets, nuclear submarines, oil rigs or power stations, it’s not rational to save a few quid on a graphics card. Also, 8GB of RAM is not going to cut it if you’re running sims, especially something like SW’s Flowsim. Since cheap Nvidia GTX cards also have CUDA cores, we could see growing numbers of students and freelancers winging it with gaming graphics cards like the GeForce GTX-1050 mentioned in your question. Both M.2 drives are significantly faster than the normal SSD which can also be SATA or PCIe. This is something you could discuss with your tutors and/or future department. The Best Budget Laptop Deals This Week* Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Ryzen 5 15.6-Inch 1080p Laptop With 256GB SSD — $494.99 (List Price $634.98) It is more complicated for a program to be compiled using multiple threads and it is likely this reason that Autodesk has not undertaken this, but, there are definite speed improvements. Intel series like i3, i5, and i7 are predominantly used in the consumer grade PC and laptops and Xeon is almost entirely dominant in enterprise/drawing offices. This is a 21:9 aspect ratio and is 1440p mid-way between regular 1080p and 4K. Gaming graphics cards, by contrast, advance at a very rapid pace. There is a 15.6 inches minimal bezel screen that provides you a big display for movies and games. You want i7 as the basic starting point. Faster is better, but, the increase in speed from using faster RAM is only marginal. 6:43 PM EST. The laptop comes with a high-end processor combined with the latest GPU for a fast program opening and operating system. The 2020 iteration of Dell’s XPS 17 embodies everything you’d expect to find in a high-end large-screen laptop. Best Laptop to get for Autocad Lt with CAD workstation I have been interested in purchasing a new laptop for a while now, but I would like to purchase one that is compatible with CAD software. is not an easy task as these days you will get a number of laptops in the market and choose the perfect one from them is one of the challenging tasks.. No matter how good they may be, they can’t use Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA parallel computing platform, which has wide software support. I highly recommend using ultrawide monitors for CAD, look at the LG 34UC79G for example. The M.2 is either a SATA or a PCIe version with the latter interface being significantly faster. Work on various CAD software with its powerful and latest 8th generation Intel i7-8565U (Quad Core), 24 GB RAM and a high capacity 1TB SSD storage drive. This workstation comes with 10th generation Intel Core i7 eight-core processor with 2.9 GHZ base frequency (4.8 with turbo boost), HyperX 16 GB RAM, and 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX1660 Ti. It’s not really suitable for running heavyweight programs like SolidWorks, where “16GB or more” is the minimum recommended memory. Professional programs usually use Open GL, and they are often certified for use with Nvidia Quadro cards, as fitted to the ThinkPad P1 mentioned above. 1TB 5400RPM But Intel is not the only dominant player in the processor market. I am looking to learn AutoCAD on my own for a job. If your CAD program requires more RAM than you have installed then windows redirects the allocation to virtual memory (section of the hard disk that is set up to emulate computer’s RAM) that will allow you to continue to work, but you’ll find operations are slower and sluggish. Windows Surface, IPAD etc. I was anticipating using the PC lab during my apprenticeship at my Local, but Covid shut it down. Workstations sound expensive to students who are paying little or nothing for programs that typically cost £2,500 to £10,000 per year each to run, depending on the features required. 8 best Laptops and workstations for CAD software and how to choose one (2021 update), Start learning AutoCAD and Fusion 360 with video courses, eBooks and Q&A community, Get this AutoCAD command list as an eBook. It can be an ideal laptop for various purposes such as multi-tasking, CAD, hacking and drawing. 16GB RAM DDR4-2666 I need a laptop that can handle CAD and has a good battery life ... Thu 11 Apr 2019 01.00 EDT. Sir can u recommend me some laptop as I want to use solidworks ,creo ,autocad ,autodesk moldflow ,ansys and mastercam and sometimes I m in situation whee I want to use some of these softwares simultaneously, so would u please help me out to get a best laptop without getting any lag . Best laptop for 2021: Dell, HP, Microsoft, Apple, Acer, Lenovo and more Here are our top-rated picks for all types of users, including creatives and … So, these are some of our recommendations based on the discussion we had earlier. There are alternatives, and some Dell Precision and HP ZBook mobile workstations ship with AMD FirePro and Radeon Pro cards instead. My system at home has an 256GB M.2 for the operating system and main applications, a 512GB SSD for other lesser used applications, and a 4TB HDD for data storage. mob 98220 11529 It’s great for email, word processing and web browsing on the move. That HP Thunderbolt “dock” is a POS. Some laptops with graphics cards come with entry-level GPUs and some come with mid-range to high-end graphics cards or GPUs. I am conducting HVAC and Auto cad classes . The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 stays on the high-performance side of the laptop divide. This 34″ LG ultrawide monitor has 3440×1440 resolution with 21:9 aspect ratio. More RAM simply means you have more breathing space to work on bigger datasets before Windows begins to use the virtual memory. Laptops with entry-level graphics cards are good for casual … Or is this fact too obvious anyways? The new Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) isn't just the best laptop Apple has ever made, it's the best laptop money can buy right now. Autodesk AutoCAD 2D? My internet line is shared by an iPad 6Gen. no offense but this comment by Dik is not helpful, it is actually wrong in so many levels. For less than $700, you get a 7th Gen Intel Quad-Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage space, all of which can be upgraded as needed. 2. Some software cannot yet take advantage of these hardware features. They may have Intel Xeon instead of Core processors, can often handle 32GB to 128GB of memory, and may have space for two or more hard drives or SSDs. The HDD is the traditional option and it is generally seen in older laptops as well as desktops. This has LED monitor of 1920×1080 resolution and it comes with two HDMI and VGA inputs along with display which can be tilted to adjust the viewing angle. It is clear that Dik was trying to show off but he is wrong so if you know a few things about computers you are gonna laugh with the “info” provided here. Many CAD applications use the CPU for calculating what should be displayed on the screen, with the GPU mostly being used for storing texture information in the video memory on the card (VRAM). This is the first time a MacBook has topped our best … Of course, one drawback with running tested drivers on certified hardware is that progress can be slow. Welcome Zeeshan, but you should actually thank Neil for this article. If you make the same laptop do supercomputer-levels of computation to move complex 3D renders around, with four or more processor cores running flat out, the battery might not last the hour. In terms of visuals, this machine competes almost pound-for-pound with the best workstations for CAD on the market thanks to its two 4K screen options. A top model P1 with a Xeon E-2176M, 64GB of RAM, Quadro P2000 graphics and 1TB SSD would cost £3,559.80. CAD software’s are becoming increasingly demanding and the tasks are becoming more resource intensive consuming a lot of processing power and memory. Intel® Dual Band Wi-Fi 6 AX201 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2×2) The simple 3D modeling and drafting software like AutoCAD is mostly single threaded, that means it only uses one core to perform the task so in this case higher clock speed is obviously recommended. I need a Tablet platform, mainly doing 2D never worked with CAD or any other programmes, but now have a requirement at work to take building asset numbers down while on the move. Win 7, 32 bit, can use 4 GB RAM, With Win 7 64bit: Basic can use 8GB RAM, Win 7 Home Premium can use 16GB RAM, and Win 7 Pro can use 192GB RAM. Your blogs are just awesome. My question is that, i’m using a desktop, which have pentium dual core processor. My question is: Can I use this laptop to run cad? So, here we have prepared some recommended laptops which are suitable for most mainstream CAD software with the common type of CAD workflows. Formerly a lead applications engineer within the UK based Platinum Autodesk VAR specializing in Inventor, Vault Professional, and many other Manufacturing products. Here you will find Best Laptop GPUs from low-end to high-end. NVIDIA GeForce GT630M; 6GB DDR3 Memory. It should be pretty evident that 8GB minimum is recommended for simple 2D CAD workflows and obviously for 3D and sims you should go with more RAM. WOW! There are currently two main types of hard drives commercially available, solid state drive(SSD) and hard disk drive(HDD). The desktop will be more powerful, the laptop more portable, and the total price could come out roughly the same. The options are: SSD addresses the issues faced by HDD and in this case, there are no moving parts in SSD hence these are more compact and almost silent and far more reliable than HDD and obviously have a faster data transfer rate then HDD. For simple 2D CAD workflows, 8GB RAM should be the absolute minimum you should consider. The best overall CAD software is TurboCAD Deluxe because the 3D and 2D features are equally strong, enabling the user to facilitate a numerous array of projects at different levels of complexity. Rhya. They should also be tested and certified to run specified programs such as SolidWorks. If you want the best laptop for CAD software, there comes a Razer Blade 15 with an elegant design and the best specifications. I just purchased a Dell mobile workstation with a i7 6core 2.6ghz 4.4ghz turbo a nvidia quadro p2000 5gb a pci 512ssd a 500gb 7100 sata drive and 32gb of ram am I prepared. Top Laptop Graphics Cards from Nvidia and AMD for Gaming, Video Editing, Running and Working with Graphics Softwares and Applications. Sure, a gaming PC may qualify at that level. I’m learning from you many tips. Thinkpads are thought to be probably the most reliable professional laptops currently available in the market and this feature-packed Thinkpad is no exception. So, for home users or students it is fine, but I would never recommend a business user performs an overclock. Best Laptop for Autocad 3d Modeling and Rendering Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 is our top laptop and it is one of the best machines you can find in the market with some quality specs and top-notch features. Very disappointing how these articles for “professionals” are so totally inappropriate for the real job at hand. The user can design everything from a complex house to a simple chair. Some operating systems, like Linux, have the ability to select the number of cores used by applications. It’s an objective fact that overclocking increases the instability of a computer, it doesn’t matter how many stress tests that person has done and passed, an overclock increases the chance of the computer completely crashing. This also has Intel i7 quad-core processor with 8GB DDR4 RAM and 2GB NVIDIA GeForce Graphics. Dual xeon E5640; Dual xeon X5570 and Dual xeon L5640. It’s also worth mentioning that if someone is considering a 4K monitor, that resolution is not supported by many programs and can result in very messy dialog boxes and tiny unreadable text. Moreover not all processors support overclocking for example Xeons are not supported for overclocking and all AMD Ryzen based CPUs support overclocking. However, these are not very practical for mobile use, and if you actually ran workstation-class software, you’d probably have problems with battery life, too. Porsche reveals cheaper Taycan with a roughly $100,000 CAD price tag. Planned Updates. All modern laptops and desktops are offered with an SSD, it’s up to the user to make sure they specify it when buying. The Best Laptops For 2019 Here's everything you need to know when shopping for your next laptop, along with our top-rated models in a range of form factors and prices. Very informative article, thank you for sharing your knowledge. NVIDIA® GeForce® MX130 (2 GB DDR5 dedicated) Let us know in the comments below. Windows® 10 Pro x64, CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 ( baseclock: 3.6 GHz, boostclock: 4.2 GHz) Trying to make the best computer purchase for that. This is not always true; however, it can vary based on the vendor of the software. More recently, AMD has made a return to the high-end market with their Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs although they’ve yet to become a staple in corporate workstation configurators. Probably not mentally. This includes playing old Steam games. Are you looking for a laptop for SolidWorks? For 3D CAD applications, we always recommend a minimum of 16GB RAM. This is a perfect CAD software working laptop and checks all the right boxes. I do not have CAD yet and I think that CAD Lt would work best with the business needs I have. This workstation is good for light to moderate CAD, Graphics and simulation work. Keyboard and mouse: Scorpion KM400(Oh, they are beauty). Support and FAQ Think ThinkPadOf course, even mobile workstation manufacturers understand the appeal of sleek machines, and they are working to close the desirability gap. I also create beginner to expert level Inventor & Vault tutorials and tips & tricks on my YouTube channel TFI CAD Tips. About Us In this market, bigger is usually better, and many mobile workstations have 17.3in screens. Many office computers are part of a UPS power system to reduce losses in the event of a power failure. Our latest Asus pick for the best laptop under $1,000 is a well-rounded model that hides excellent specs under its unassuming design. I stopped reading when I got to “…any computer that is good for gaming is good for CAD”. Either way, if you want to run any serious CAD/CAM software – and SolidWorks in particular – you must go to the relevant video card page to check that it supports the specific hardware and graphics card you plan to buy. It also requires a much more powerful CPU and GPU as there’s roughly 4 times the number of pixels to send to generate and send to the monitor. With 500gigs of harddisk. Intel® Core™ i7-10510U Processor (8M Cache, 1.8 GHz) Do you agree with our recommendations? I’m an engineering student who wants to run professional design and manufacturing systems, Last modified on Thu 11 Apr 2019 01.01 EDT. Laptop for CAD software's, how to get realview in Solidworks, i will show you here some Workstation Laptop for CAD software's, like Facebook page. The added speed comes with a price. For frequently travelling Screen Size to be 13.3 or 14″. Hi, Neil Cross All of these features at an affordable price point are simply making this laptop a perfect choice for CAD software for your personal use. SATA solid-state drives are limited to roughly around 600mb/s data transfer rate which is the limit of the SATA interface, whereas PCIe based solid state drives can read and write at over 2500mb/s. As you have just seen that there is a lot to keep in mind before you decide on your ideal type of CAD hardware and hence recommending a laptop which is suitable for all type of CAD requirements is simply ambiguous. As modern software grows more complex, the need for more RAM becomes a factor but as always, your budget can be a limitation. My current laptops are both gaming laptops, and both ASUS. I notice the first comments are a couple of years old. Most software functions well with 16GB, but unless you are doing a lot of multitasking there is little to be gained by having more than 32 GB. My home desktop uses a 1080T graphics card. Most universities have workstations at the university but getting a laptop is really nice for when you want to do work at home you have to spend a lot to get angsts running well on a laptop mat lab works on practically anything and autocad has the specs on the website but try and save for the best specs for the lesser frustration later on. Factor in a pair of impressively loud speakers and solid battery life for a 4K laptop, and the new XPS 15 is one of the best 15-inch laptops you can buy. The graphics are handled by powerful NVIDIA Quadro P520 GPU with 2GB video memory. The number of threads available is a function of the cores available; two threads per core. I am regular visitor of this site. I Richard, though I appreciate your inputs I completely disagree with everything you said. This will be improved if you are using a solid state drive, but, the operations will still be slower than if RAM is being used. Will I be able to install and run w/o much hiccups the CAD software on this thinkpad. Now I just have an iPad with Fusion 360 and AutoCAD and other CAD programs. Today’s laptops have long battery life because their chips can do up to 4bn cycles a second while people type at a glacial 2.2 characters a second. Thanks! Though Autodesk is continuously developing and rewriting their source code to enable multi-threaded support for more features, there are now many features within 2D and 3D CAD applications which can utilize multiple cores. I’m using 32GB with Win 7 Pro. 2) Acer Predator Helios 300 Best Value For Money Laptop; 3) ASUS ZenBook 15 Best 4K Thin & Light Laptop For AutoCAD; 4) Dell G3 15 3500 Best Mid Budget Laptop for AutoCAD/Solidworks; 5) ASUS ROG Strix G15 Gaming Laptop; 6) Alienware Area 51M High Performance Laptop For AutoCAD/3D Modeling; 7) CUK MSI GF65 With 32GB RAM; 8) Alienware New M15 Gaming Laptop I’ve started comparing laptops and think I’ve found a potential candidate: a Lenovo Yoga 730 with an eighth-generation Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX-1050 4GB graphics card. The unit is further coupled with gigantic 32GB RAM, the size of the RAM showcases the amount of power the laptop … I was wondering if anyone had any input on the core processor, the hard drive, and the storage. For up to December 31, 2019, feature-rich CAD solution DraftSight will let you design in 2D or 3D using the 2018 free version and the ones that came earlier. Performance increases in a linear fashion when CPU clock speed is increased, with little reliance on the GPU. As the article points out “For simple 2D CAD workflows, 8GB RAM should be the absolute minimum you should consider. RAM must be matched to be compatible with your CPU, you can find this info on your CPU vendors website. So, depending upon the type of CAD software and the type of work you do with it the hardware and software need to be optimized to get the best performance from your investment. Most Intel and AMD processors are capable of being overclocked and there are many aftermarket cooling systems to enable this; the processor, the memory, and the graphics card call all be overclocked. You might have heard about overclocking, which apparently improves your processor’s performance. 1080) Aeons pass between keystrokes and mouse-clicks, so the processor can mostly just go to sleep while it waits. What about more portable applications? RAM or the physical memory installed in your PC dictates the number of and size of concurrent programs and datasets you can have open at any one time. Great article. It’s like he copied articles that make no sense, written by students or people that buy PCmag and think they are hackers. You can pick up suitable machines by searching for their Quadro graphics cards, and haggling. However, this was mostly just a standard Yoga 460 with an Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics card, and it was limited to 16GB of RAM, so I wouldn’t recommend it even secondhand. For 3D CAD applications, we always recommend a minimum of 16GB RAM.” Older operating systems may be restricted to the amount of RAM they can use. Laptop processors are obliged to run at much lower temperatures, and the ones in ultra-thin machines may still be throttled to reduce the amount of heat generated. A model with a 15.6in 1920 x 1080 pixel screen, 35W Core i5-8400H processor (Passmark 10126), 16GB of memory (expandable to 64GB), Nvidia Quadro P1000 4GB graphics card and three years of onsite service would set you back £1,569. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. A list of best laptops for AutoCAD, SolidWorks and other CAD software and a complete guide to help you in choosing the best laptop and workstation for your CAD software and workflow. This one is another great laptop with Intel Core i7 processor with four cores and the laptop has 16GB DDR4 RAM with 6GB of NVIDIA VRAM and 256 GB SSD. This is not necessarily the case if you need to run professional programs such as SolidWorks. Hello sir. WLAN and Bluetooth® 5 Combo Jan 19, 2021. but I always say to never ever overclock a PC that you rely on to make money i.e. if you do commercial project work on it or if it’s in a professional office, I do not recommend overclocking. I need a suggestion regarding the what laptop should I consider based on the requirement: 1. It also has 256GB SSD and comes pre-installed with windows 7 professional. Image-Credit: Gigabyte. This workstation can be used for heavy processor and graphics-intensive CAD modeling, Rendering or simulation works as it comes with Intel i9 eight-core 9900K processor and 64 GB DDR4 RAM with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB. Kindly recommend an ACER WITH UPGRADED SPECS FOR 2D/3D AUTOCAD. I appriciate your effort to make this list. A third type of hard drive is the mechanical hard disk drive or HDD. Generally useful to understand the basics and specs and requirements will constantly change… so I dnt worry too much about your recommendations as others do. Wow.so helpful and important tips There’s also a version with a 4K screen (3840 x 2160 pixels), but without scaling, that would only be practical on separate monitor. A colleague uses a laptop, but struggles with it plus the mouse and the role of stickers BLAH BLAH, any suggestions from anyone out there? Everything in this article is under powered. Moreover, your idea of starting with the best configuration is also not practical as what looks best to you might look obsolete to a super user who is ready to invest more in their CAD machine (we cannot recommend everyone to have 128GB RAM even when they have pretty simple 2D workflows) so it’s pretty logical to suggest the minimum and leave it up to the user to pick the better configuration based on their workflows and budget. You can also directly jump to our recommended list of best CAD laptops and workstations by clicking here. The 1920 x 1080 resolution makes it the best laptop for CAD per its detailed and precise graphics result. And this too comes with pre-installed Windows 10 operating system. If you wanted to spend some serious money the P52 and P72 versions support up to 128GB of memory and better graphics cards. Any rendering happens at a blink of an eye. The best laptop under $1,000: Asus ZenBook 14 UX425. But when these systems are refurbished at the end of a corporate refresh cycle, they can be ugly ducklings: the average homebuyer is not looking for a bulky laptop with a Xeon and an unknown graphics card. More cores will allow multiple simultaneous operations and hence faster processing. Gaming computers generally have high end processors and good graphics cards. Math and graphics intensive software could utilise perhaps half the available cores, or more, if the computer were running that software almost exclusively. Mechanical HDD contains a metal disk drive platter and they store data on their magnetic surface which rotates at high speed. 16 is barely enough for W10 and solid modeling. Hello sir Appreciate your effort on this. In actual use, it’s probably only half as fast, or worse. Best Performance Laptop for CAD Software. Lenovo P52 is the best CAD laptop that comes pre-installed with Windows 10 64-bit professional edition.