Ditching iMac for PC for SU Pro 2018 and V-Ray. Help Please

A MacBook Pro from mid 2015.

Blockquote and hopefully they will let me be apart of their end user eval process for this next shift

Sorry OT but tools are here:

This is very interesting, though wandering off topic. I’ll start a new one to continue it.

I am a life long Mac user and I went through the same thing a couple of years ago. I ended up selling my iMac and bought a BOXX Apex machine. Yes, you can certainly build a cheaper machine on your own but this thing is an overclocked 4.8GHz i7 with a 1080Ti and it rips. If something goes wrong there is full tech support.

I find that SketchUp works fine on both platforms except for the materials interface but when you get into rendering and the need for CUDA, the Mac can’t compete. I keep my MacBook Pro around to remind me how much I Love the Mac OS and how much I hate that they left the creative community for dead by making a low power machine with a useless touch bar. But hey, I bought it and I’ll probably buy the next one so its a great business model.

Thank you MC, Yes I love my macs as well, and as you stated it is apparent that for material rendering with any render engine. Thank you so much for your input and suggestion. I’ll check it out and there seams to be a lot of folks that are in love with the 1080Ti and its performance.

Thanks!

D

Hi don,
I ended up building a hackintosh recently for similar reasons - i am also a lifelong macOS user (and with a mac based pipeline), I built a machine that you just cant buy as a Mac, CoffeeLake with a 1080Ti card, just transformed rendering performance in VRay and apps like Photoscan where you need CUDA, still excellent performance in SU as the CPU has a decent base clock. Stability isn’t an issue for me personally, the machine runs 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, I’m a 1 man studio so I can manage any issues myself. Its not for everyone I know but it may be a viable option.

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Just my two cents: buy several drives. One for operating sys, one for Sketch-Up and like products.
My reasoning is that when Windows crashes there can be a situation where the only recovery is a new install without files. Not common, but your work is very valuable, and recovering from the OS crash is much simpler than doing working through Restores. (Back up everything!)

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What we use. CTO = Custom To Order Lenovo

This will be current for a few years, and portable.

Check the function of a real graphics card, non-consumer grade,

in a laptop.

https://www.pny.com/nvidia-quadro-p5000

You missed the point from

donnchaidhWhat happens when the fancy custom-build expert moves to Baltimore

to live with his girlfriend or gets buried in a startup and the graphics adaptor firmware won´t upgrade to match

a software upgrade?

We also get great results with any maxed Thinkpad X1 Carbon,

almost half the price. We have a couple of generations which handle large commercial buildings in Sketchup

quite well with the integrated GPU.

If big touch screen or 4K is wanted with a discrete processor

then the new M920 coming this month which acts like an all-in-one would be cheaper too. Or the current Tiny M910x with the Radeon 460

which is rare https://www.cdw.com/product/Lenovo-ThinkCentre-M910x-tiny-desktop-Core-i7-6700T-2.8-GHz-8-GB-51/4602991

http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/flexible-and-modular-lenovo-thinkcentre-desktops-adapt-to-changing-workplac

Thx B, I wish I had your mad skills in the realm of building the perfect Macinstein! I’m sure “Its Alive!”

Thank you Steven, I appreciate your input.

D

Quadros (or FirePros) do not have any advantage for SketchUp but burning money.

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Agreed, no advantage in SketchUp, AutoCAD or Revit what so ever.

in general, for SU don’t seek for so called ‘workstation’ systems (w/ e.g. Xeon CPUs and GPUs of the nVidia/AMD CAD series) but for ‘gaming’ systems typically based on high-clocked Core i5/i7 (desktop) CPUs and consumer graphics cards, for SU preferrably a GeForce GT(X).

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@SketchUp3D_de, wWhat is your opinion of this machine? 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 - 1TB Hard Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive.

looks great but surely will make some noise if stretched :cyclone: :mega:

if money is an issue and/or the GTX 1070 a little bit overkill, the Asus TUF FX504GE or the Acer Predator Helios 300 might be an alternative option.

Thanks. Too late. Bought it. So far it seems to be fine.