PC recommendations

SketchUp
1

I have read many articles and opinions about CPU’s and graphic cards for Sketchup but it’s still not clear to me what the recommended hardware is. Also, the latest relevant information is posted quite some time ago and in the meantime, new components were introduced on the market.

My wife is using Sketchup and Photoshop. It might be that she will use render software in the future.

I have to buy a new buy PC for her. I’m thinking about the next components:

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or i5 9600. What do you think will work better; AMD or Intel?

GTX 1660 Super or second-handed GTX 1080 or maybe a RTX 2060. The 2060 is really the limit budgetwise.

And then I also need a motherboard and powersupply.

My budget for the complete PC, without SSD, is about 900-950 euro.

What do you think?

Thanks for your input.

2

I will let everyone else talk about the hardware suggestions, but one thing to know is that if she has a subscription that includes Photoshop, she should be able to install Adobe Dimension. Dimension can import SketchUp models and render them photo realistically:

3

Thanks, that looks good! I will ask her if she has a subscription that includes Photoshop.

4

Hi,

I can recommend the AMD Ryzen 3900X (12 core) processor. With 128 GB Ram it has some serious grunt. I would recommend a good fast Solid State (SSD) drive, ideally 512 or 1TB in size and only keep your programs on it, store your working files elsewhere (ideally on a NAS like the QNAP TS-431P). Oh and you’ll need a very good fan or liquid cooling as your system will get very hot!

I use Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premier Pro as well as SketchUp, Layout and some rendering / animation plugins Podium Walker and Podium 2.6 for VR’s.

I decided to upgrade because especially larger models were taking just way too long to work on, and animations and renders were taking what I considered to be way too long to wait for the output.

5

For SketchUp use the number of cores is of no importance as SU is single-threaded, there are cheaper and faster alternatives. Renderers can take advantage of multiple cores bu they can also use your graphics card.

1 Like
6

Thanks for your replies.

So AMD is prefered above Intel?

I have found a system that is within budget.: Ryzen 5 3600 with RTX 2060 graphics card on a MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX motherboard. As long as my wife only uses Skechup and Photoshop, I think this will do. What do you think? I can upgrade the processor in the future when necessary.

Thanks again.