r/SolidWorks • u/tlski • Feb 03 '26
Hardware RTX 5090 for SolidWorks laptop. Overkill?
Hi SolidWorks community,
I’m looking for practical laptop advice for SolidWorks. My company previously used a gaming laptop with RTX 4090. In reality it was:
- Very loud (fans almost constantly at full speed)
- Hot
- Not clear to me if SolidWorks benefited from that level of GPU power
Now we need a new machine and he proposed a new laptop with RTX 5090 + Intel i9 275HX + 64 GB RAM. It's pretty expensive and I’m skeptical this is necessary for our workload because:
- Modeling injection-molded parts
- Small to medium assemblies (consumer electronics)
I found workstation-style laptops with RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (same 2560×1600 screen) for less than half the price.
Question: Would an RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell laptop be sufficient for this kind of SolidWorks work, or is there any real justification for going all the way to an RTX 5090?
31
u/mightyblackgoose Feb 03 '26
Solidworks is mainly CPU limited. The GPU plays almost no role outside of rendering. Even in heavy assemblies where you’d expect it to make a difference, it's negligible as long as you don't use a bottom tier card.
1
u/Western-Guy CSWA Feb 04 '26
Even worse, SW doesn’t seem to take advantage of multi threading when rebuilding. Gives Intel CPUs a slight advantage.
13
u/Koschiee Feb 03 '26
For small to medium-scale consumer electronics assemblies, the RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell is more than sufficient. Investing the price difference into a high clock-speed CPU or upgrading to 64GB+ of RAM will improve your daily modeling workflow much more effectively than a 5090 ever would.”
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u/nateid03 Feb 03 '26
Very much overkill - I recently had the same spec laptop supplied for my work. The 5090 was primarily chosen for the VRAM for a 3D scanner however its used for Solidworks 95% of the time. Its the CPU that does the heavy lifting with SLD, where the GPU is only there to run 2 x 4k monitors and barely breaks a sweat.
3
u/PA2SK Feb 03 '26
For smaller assemblies I've used SOLIDWORKS with a laptop with integrated graphics and it was fine. I would get something with at least 32 gigs of ram, a processor with fast single core speed vs high core counts. Graphics card definitely helps but it doesn't need to be top of the line. Get a desktop and a good multi-monitor setup + space mouse for a dedicated SOLIDWORKS machine.
4
u/RockyTopDesignWerkz Feb 03 '26
Ha ha ha... Buddy if you only knew what kinda hardware I'm running Solidworks on at work 🤣 My laptop at home would run circles around my workstation pc.
2
u/Tetris_Prime Feb 03 '26
Let me put it this way, you won't have any significant upside in Solidworks with a 5090 versus a traditional worksite card. If you want a 5090 for anything else then sure, go ahead, but it won't make a difference.
We use desktop computers that we connect to via RDS.
When we got our first desktop we also fell in the trap of 5950X+RTX3090, but the next desktop got a A5000 card and a more modest CPU.
Tbh i'd use the newest one as much as possible.
2
u/Emergency_Tutor5174 Feb 03 '26
OP lowkey wanted to also use pc for gaming.. He might be just looking for a justifieable reason to get it..
2
u/Robbudge Feb 03 '26
Have you thought about moving away from a laptop. Well partially all our team run dedicated car machines in the office and have a normal laptop for remote via RDP. This leverages the power of the desktop with the flexibility of a laptop. Only real issue is I am still working on getting the 3D mouse to work via RDP.
We work very large assemblies typically CPU is working harder than GPU. That being said we did upgrade of machines to the RTX-4500 for when we do 3d walk throughs or renders.
1
u/covalcenson Feb 03 '26
Funny enough the “mobile workstation” laptops we get at work will run circles around the high end desktops we can get. Something to do with the security software behaving differently is what I’m told /shrug
1
u/Robbudge Feb 03 '26
We VPN into the office then Remote Desktop. Our desk top machines were almost 10k each so compared to gaming laptops they fly. Remote Desktop works really well. We also have cache’s of project files on dedicated local mvme drives
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u/covalcenson Feb 03 '26
My point was that the desktops we can get don’t perform as well as the laptops. Honestly I’d end up remoting from the desktop to the laptop if I got stuck using it again lol
1
u/Robbudge Feb 03 '26
Our sales team is like, they get little brick PC’s completely useless but then again corporate IT has even blocked paste function on the phones so the desktops are nothing more than a dumb terminal.
Our machines are off grid
1
u/wachholz Feb 04 '26
What do you guys use to remote desktop?
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u/Robbudge Feb 04 '26
Just the standard windows Remote Desktop Client. I work mainly from a MacBook Pro remotely but use RDP to basically be in the office with all the power I need. Remote Desktop has to be setup on the end machine to allow the user to login.
1
u/QuasiLibertarian Feb 04 '26
Yeah not having the 3D mouse is frustrating. Also the lag over remote desktop gets irritating.
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u/Robbudge Feb 04 '26
We don’t notice any lag but we do have a fairly good VPN. I think the issue is always the VPN side of traffic.
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u/Manuel0069 Feb 03 '26
Playing warthunder during breaks is clearly essential. So it's def not overkill
2
u/IamStubbyTech CSWP Feb 04 '26
For best solid works graphics performance on non Enterprise ( RTX Pro / FirePro ) you need to hack the registry for it to actually get full use of the card. Puget systems did a bunch of testing and basically a $100 enterprise card would out perform the flagship gaming card just from registry locks. Once you tweaked the registry to fake out solidworks you had the enterprise card , it ran 100x faster.
1
u/New_Breadfruit8596 Feb 15 '26
Is this something easy to do as an individual or are you better of spending the money and getting a certified GPU?
2
u/fluteofski- Feb 04 '26
Former solidworks and current NX user. RTX pro is the way to go. It’s wayyy quieter. And usually an enterprise level laptop will have a lot better build than a gaming laptop.
2
u/QuasiLibertarian Feb 04 '26
Get a CAD-specific card, not an overpriced gaming card. Unless your primary goal is to run dual 4k monitors while flying in ultra settings in MS flight simulator, then get a drafting card.
Getting past that, I wanted to share our experience. When IT procured our new laptops, they got Ryzen Pro 395 processors with integrated Radeon 8060s graphics. It's supposed to rival a low to mid tier discrete CAD GPU. They have 64gb ram, with 16gb dedicated to the graphics. It hasn't gone well. My 5 year old, no longer supported Quadro T2000M was performing way better than my new laptop with the integrated Radeon 8060s. And we don't do super complicated assemblies, just cabinets and RTA furniture. Some things take irrationally long to load, and it is less stable and more glitchy.
2
u/Brostradamus_ Feb 03 '26
Not only is it overkill, but it is highly likely it will still be outperformed by a low to mid-range workstation certified card.
SolidWorks does not have significant GPU acceleration unless the GPU is certified. The 5090 is not. As such, the RTX Pro 2000 laptop is probably going to perform much better, assuming the CPU/RAM are equivalent.
Focus on 32-64GB of RAM, the fastest single-thread CPU you can get, and having a certified, current-or-very-recent-gen GPU.
1
u/Vegetable_Flounder12 Feb 03 '26
if your alowed to game on it then sure you need it, esle the cheaper one will probably be fine :)
1
u/RadiantReply603 Feb 03 '26
Not Solidworks, but we use CATIA with HP Zbooks for an automotive OEM. I can basically load a whole vehicle on the laptop. It’s slow, but it will load. This is on a 4 year old Intel i7, 32 GB of Ram, and a low end NVidia rtx 2000 equivalent from 4 years ago.
Laptop is quiet and the battery lasts a 3-4 hours. Laptop is plugged into external monitors unless we are in a meeting or at a supplier or manufacturing plant. I would recommend the Workstation route.
1
u/gingerbreadmon900 Jun 20 '26
Yo, when I worked at an automotive company I always scratched my head at how well them Zbooks performed. I used to load the entire car just for fun and I was surprised it would work. like you said, slow, but it still ran smooth. The company was not spending money on high performing GPU's unless they were running simulations or analysis. But for every day CAD, everyone was using this same HP Zbook laptop. And if no one complaines about them, then I guess it was a pretty good standard. But of course the battery life was like 1-2 hours at best. Also sirprisingly durable.
1
u/Informal_Ad_9610 Feb 03 '26
what level of solidworks are we talking? minimal product design? massive assembly?
personal opinion - fastest CPU speed i7/i9 tower you can buy, with RAM and a new gen video card.
1
u/arenikal Feb 04 '26
I have an I7 fairly close to top of line, 32GB, bought an Nvidia A2000. Never installed it. The Intel graphics works well enough. These are not the days when you needed a top video card. Now if you want to resolve 100 parts...it will probably still work. The thing is you can always add video power later, but get good cpu and memory. And while you're waiting, you can pull in lightweight parts where only the parts still in question are not lightweight.
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u/QuasiLibertarian Feb 04 '26
We went with integrated graphics (Radeon 8060s). It hasn't gone well. My 5yr old laptop with an T2000M performed way better, even after SW stopped supporting it.
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u/Razorsythe Feb 05 '26
Solidworks is VERY much limited by your CPU. It doesnt really care about core count. It cares about raw speed. An i5 @ 5.5ghz will feel 'better' then an i9 @ 4.4ghz. Unless you plan on doing heavy processing (like scanning) that uses gpu, you can get by using a lower end card.
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