Huh, they still going for those prices? Nice 
I thought about buying Snow Leopard but I do not have a Mac to transfer to a USB, do I need a mac or will that work from a PC? I tried booting from a USB to linux but all I get is a folder with a flashing question mark.
Have not tried from a hard drive yet.
Thanks for the info.
A 3D mouse & a relatively big screen might help.
Yes, I built the machine over Xmas, a bit of a step up from my 2013 13" Retina MBP, absolutely transformed my workflow.
Oh, yeah, that would be a problem. You would need somebody’s Mac to create a bootable drive with a system installed on it.
My cousin once got some version of LInux installed onto one of my machines, so I’ve seen it done, but I didn’t keep it.
yes, you need a Mac or at least one to create a bootableUSB drive on. Its pretty straightforward
A big screen is a trade off if it has 4K resolution. On the one hand you have more space to work with, while on the other hand you need more processing power for the resolution. The same goes with a 120hz display.
Of course in either of these cases one could always reduce the resolution or the refresh rate when working with large files.
But if the big screen is only 1920 by 1080 then it could still make more sense since reducing screen scaling, as is the case with windows, would allow for more space to work with. The only question of course that i dont know the answer to is whether 100% scaling as opposed to 125% would still require more hardware power. I presently use a 17" screen with HD resolution at 125% scaling at 120hz. Setting the scaling at 100% hurts my eyes.
As for the 3D mouse, i will consider it one day. But its one of those things that you can only know if you like it or not by trying it. And that means you have to buy one to try it and if you don’t like it then your stuck with it.
Well I guess I could always go to one of our Mac labs to buy it and download it. Didn’t think of that.
I tried to get ElementaryOS working as it is a nice clean linux distro. No go on DVD or USB boot but I did download and burn from a PC.
Speed is ultimately a measure of work delivered. You SSD cuts out hours of spin up hardrive waiting when using Layout as it frequently needs drive access to update. It also saves you time in the recommended frequent saves for your model’s progress. I wish I’d put in a better CPU to accompany the hot GPU because GPU doesn’t help Layout like it does Sketchup sadly.
So, on things hardware and productivity:
Invest in and map your signature top tier of “I use these 100x a day” shortcut keys to a multi button mouse. It’s cheap (say $100 for a gamer’s mouse) and it will save you thousands of keyboard clicks a week. This translates into better hourly productivity and more creative flow via less distraction. I mapped “reverse face” to the tile of my multibutton mouse wheel on one side, and “move” tool to the other side and it makes this perpetual and time wasting flip faces task go many times faster than having to mouse to it or right click etc. I’ve got hide similar components and hide model mapped to mouse keys so while mousing I can toggle views and never miss a beat. Super handy.
A beefy mouse also frees up the keyboard for the next level of handy but not as time saving shortcuts to be mapped close to the left hand for less shifting around.
This leaves typing in distances, which really desperately needs a better convention than the inches/feet which takes 2 keystrokes every time for people typing in standard units (eg., Americans). I’m looking into being able to type distances in on the keypad of a gaming mouse actually, but just haven’t gotten to it. A macro enabled mouse (I use logitech’s 7 button mouse, not full macro) would make non-shortcut menu based things possible I suppose, such as the ever present arch viz item of typing in the degree symbol.
Happy sketching, and I’d love to hear how your rig turns out. BTW, love my Nvidia GeForce. I run 3 hi res monitors and rarely experience lag. Also a blast for things like Photoshop. My lag’s in the CPU. Time to upgrade it.
The problem with getting higher, faster…more this, more that, is in the return on investment.
Slipping a decent sized SSD into an older notebook can do wonders in shortening boot, load and save times, but when you are dealing with one high-end CPU over it’s next biggest, you’re deluding yourself if you believe it is worth it.
Granted, if you have more money than POTUS, then feel free, but if you are dealing with a budget, my recommendation would be to get a second monitor. Not only does it make research or texture hunting easier, it also means you can get those pesky toolbars off of your work-space screen.
I guess that’s true of course.
If you are like me and use your working PC for other things then the ROI can be signed off as ‘fun’ I happily pay for upgrades that I don’t really need in a business sense but am perfectly happy to absorb the cost.
I have a HTC Vive and play a lot of games normally and flight simulators. Luckily thanks to GPU rendering the more I splash out on rendering cores for Thea, the clearer the buttons are in my VR cockpit!
The other upside of this, if I need to justify buying a new GPU to my girlfriend, I can just blame it on work! ‘Can you believe that SketchUp now needs 2016 Cuda cores, looks like I need an upgrade…whilst downloading game in background’
Edit: agree on the 2nd monitor, I think that’s the easiest investment to make for speed and efficiency. When I worked at a large publishing company it was almost mandatory.
Heh, heh…First person shooters are my drug of choice 
If multi-tasking is your typical activity, then just make sure you increase or max out your RAM. RAM helps in that regard more than a CPU\GPU upgrade. If, and or when you use up all your RAM, the CPU relies on temp cache folders on your HDD to keep your system running, but HDD speeds are pathetic in comparison to RAM speeds.
BTW, getting a Motherboard with M.2 NVMe SSD connectivity can benefit across the board, it uses PCIe bandwidth to REALLY cut down on read/write and boot times. A typical SSD read, write speeds are in the low to mid 500 MB/s when using the standard SATA interface. Samsung M.2 NVMe drives have read/write speeds in the area of 3,500 MB/s while using PCIe Gen 3 x 4 lanes, now THAT is worth a upgrade.
Good luck, eh.
Although i will be buying a new rig soon enough, the initial point of my post was to determine whether Sketchup utilizes parallelism of components for increased performance - with RAM being the exception. In other words, does Sketchup make use of multi processing, or multi GPU, or networks, or any other form of parallelism if they exist.
And of course the answer to that question is that with the exception of something like SLI used for third party rendering software then sketchup is essentially designed to be run by a a single computer that uses only one component of all the major components.
With that said, if one gets the top of the line for each major component in a system and doesn’t need SLI for rendering, then that is as far as it goes with being able to run Sketchup with fluidity with large files - which is the case for me.
With regards to a multi button macro enabled gaming mouse i can only say that i dont like pressing buttons with my thumb. I am currently using the Logitech MX Anywhere 2 and i think it works great.
Dual monitors is certainly useful for professionals, which i am not, and for this reason i don’t see myself getting a second monitor anytime soon.
If there was one thing that annoys me with respect to performance when operating Sketchup then it would be the process of having to move my hand away from the numpad to press the feet symbol near the letters. I am thinking about using Autohotkey to copy the feet symbol to the ‘num lock key’ on the numpad so that its near all the numbers and reassigning the ‘num lock key’ elsewhere. The inches symbol is not a problem since sketchup automatically assumes inches without putting them in.
I would recommend the space mouse wireless https://www.ergopartner.se/3dconnexion-spacemouse-wireless-tradlos-3d-mus-5451.html in conjunction with a mouse. The buttons are thumb enabled so you may not be a fan of that but pairing it with a standard three button mouse allows you to spread out the controls over two hands and stop reaching for the keyboard shortcuts so much.
enough RAM not getting swapping seems to be obvious… 32 Gb is typically more than enough, 16 GB often do suffice already. The speed of the RAM modules can be ignored, nothing the user does notice.
The performance differences of M.2 to SATA type SSDs are regularly over estimated too, the bandwith and I/Os doesn’t make a big change in real life performance impression., if any… simply because the SATA SSDs are already lightning fast… being lightning faster doesn’t help then.
Tell that to my brother’s gaming PC, it IS noticeably faster with the NVMe M.2 drive as boot…he gets bored waiting for windoze games to load, so he listened when I recommended the PCIe interface drives
Loading games, saving high Megabyte-sized and opening files through SketchUp DOES benefit from the increased bandwidth. Small file sizes don’t benefit a whole lot, but anything above say 3-4 MB will see a boost.
3-4 MB is pretty small, i.e. near to nothing for every common SSD, my old Samsung 850 Evo delivers already ~540 MB/s (read/write) and ~67,500 IOPS (read) resp. ~33,000 IOPS (write) and is booting Windows in seconds… nothing which will show a really relevant improvement by using a M.2 SSD.
If shelling out money for getting the best modeling performance in SU, do invest in the CPU, CPU, CPU… with a medium sized GPU typically more than fast enough.
I do much more than simply use SketchUp:
I have approximately 23 FPS games that I try to play on a semi-regular basis.
My wife’s medical clinic needs fairly frequent updates to the web site.
I watch Netflix.
I play DVD and Blu-ray movies
My desktop is the only PC in the house with a Blu-ray burner, so after editing my home movies, I get to perform all those interesting backups using 50 GB DL discs.
BTW, the winblows 7 default NTFS allocation unit size is barely over 4 KB, so 3-4 MB is not really all that small…I don’t know of too many folk who edit that to increase it’s performance.
To each their own, I guess.
Maybe not totally relevant but if you need to get round the GPU inflation crisis you can look at getting a pre-built with fixed costs. If you are in the UK then I would recommend https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/
Hi Liam, OT for this thread but I’ve been looking at the space mouse also the wired compact version. Have you tried the compact?
Cheers
Rob