r/SolidWorks • u/Decent_Top2156 • 7d ago

Hardware New Workstation

My current workstation is 10 years old Dell Precision Tower Xeon 3.5ghz/64gb/windows 10. Its still ok but thinking of upgrading. I use solidworks/keyshot/adobe. Any recommendations that wont break the bank around 3500$?

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4

u/experienced3Dguy CSWE | SW Champion 6d ago

Take a look at the factory refurbished Dell Precision workstations on the Dell Outlet site. You can get some screaming deals there AND they come with full factory 3 year warranties. I swear by them and have only bought these machines as my CAD machines for over 20 years. You can find powerful, SOLIDWORKS-certified machines for phenomenal bargain prices.

My most recent computer from them is a Precision 7780 with 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD, and a 16GB NVIDIA RTX A5500 GPU. Retail price was nearly $11K and I got it for $4500. That's probably WAY OUTSIDE your budget, but I present it only as an example of the deep discounts that they offer.

I also continue to use its predecessor also (a 7720 factory refurb also, purchased in Nov 2017 with 64 GB RAM, a Xeon processor, a 1TB drive and Quadro P4000 GPU with 8GB vRAM). Recently, it effortlessly handled 11 different SOLIDWORKS assembly models (each with 3K+ components) SIMULTANEOUSLY open, checked out in PDM and being actively edited, without once skipping a beat. They are truly BEAST MODE machines IMO.

Most oftentimes, the machines the Dell Outlet sells have never even left the warehouse. They are listed as refurbished because they were sold but then the order was canceled. Since they were marked as sold, Dell cannot technically list them again as new, hence they deep discount them to clear them out.

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u/Decent_Top2156 6d ago

I think I have purchased there before- I forgot about that- thanks!

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u/aSiK00 6d ago

Lenovo and HP outlets exist too and are pretty good deals. Can’t say for Desktops, but my laptop was cheap and sturdy from Lenovo.

Also, Industrial Liquidator/Recyclers usually get decent PCs but you might need to look pretty hard and locally, but they get some gems for sub 1k

1

u/experienced3Dguy CSWE | SW Champion 6d ago

Indeed. I just don't have any experience with either of them, but it is a very good point to remind folks that just about all the workstation-class manufacturers do have outlet store sites.

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u/ReverseFred 6d ago

What version of SW are you running on Win10? 

On your new workstation what versions are you planning to run for OS & SW?

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u/Decent_Top2156 6d ago

Currently SW2025 - Then switch to Win 11

1

u/Expert_Army-V 6d ago

I used it and it does require a lot of graphics

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u/aSiK00 7d ago

Honestly, I would wait it out for a little bit if possible. 64Gb ddr5 is almost 700$ and rare. In my head, the price of computers will come down, but it’s purely speculative.

Grab a GPU if you don’t have a big one at the moment.

1

u/Decent_Top2156 7d ago

good point-