What CPU do I need for SOLIDWORKS?

*(K/F) and (HS/HX) means any K or F or KF variant, so 12700K, 12700F, and 12700KF are all valid options, as well as 5900HS, 5900HX. 

Detailed Answer

Tasks performed by programs can either be serial tasks, or parallelizable. Meaning one task must wait for the previous task to complete(serial) or they can run at the same time (parallel). Most tasks in SOLIDWORKS are serial, such as rebuilding, the previous feature needs to be rebuilt before the next one can be rebuilt. What this means is having a lot of cores doesn’t help with these sort of operations, as serial tasks can’t be split across multiple cores(to some degree at least), thus the speed of the core is more important.  

This does not mean SOLIDWORKS is a single-core only program, in the tasks that can be parallelized, SolidWorks has made sure these tasks can take advantage of multiple cores. So it is important to find a balance between cores and core speed, putting a preference towards speed. Very rough “speed” can be measured with clock rate, but you cannot compare clock rate across CPU brands, wattages, or generations (i.e. you can’t compare an Intel 11400 to an Intel 10400 just on the core clock). Core clock is an approximate measure of how many “cycles” of calculations a CPU can do per second. Please see the note at the bottom on core clocks. 

An exception to the above is Simulation, especially flow simulation, which has a preference to more cores. If these are significant portions of what you do, it would be worth selecting Ryzen 9, Intel i9, or Threadripper CPU’s for these. 

Should I use a Xeon CPU: 

The main benefit of Xeon CPU’s is that they can use ECC memory, there is no evidence SOLIDWORKS benefits from ECC memory. On top of this, Xeon’s are both more expensive than similar i7 and i9 CPU’s, and for high core count Xeons, significantly slower i.t.o clock rate. 

Can I use Pentium or i3 CPU’s for SOLIDWORKS:

Yes you can, but you will have a very bad experience when dealing with assemblies or feature trees of any significant size. We recommend if budget is an issue, to look at i5 or Ryzen 5 CPU's, and look at older generations (generally 2-3 generations back are still quite powerful).

How do I know which CPU to choose:

In general, you can use the following questions and tools to help determine your next CPU choice:

1. What do you have, currently? Do you experience issues like slow rebuild, slow open and save, long wait times when creating certain features, or any non-graphical performance issue?
2. Do you deal with large assemblies, very large feature trees, or Simulations in SOLIDWORKS?
3. Do you run a lot of other applications alongside SOLIDWORKS?

Tools to use for selecting CPU:

1. Puget Systems Articles
2. Solidworks Share Your Score Website
3. Passmark CPU Benchmarks (Use this only to compare CPU’s with each other)
4. SpecAPC Solidworks Published Results

Note on Core Clock:

Many CPU manufacturers will tout 2-3 numbers for the core clock, usually a lower number, an extremely high number, and then something in between. These are usually the following in that order:

• Base Clock: This is essentially the frequency the CPU runs at when idle.
• All Core Boost: When all cores are being used, this is the maximum frequency it can achieve, this may or may not have a time limit (20s for instance).
• Single Core Boost: This is highest clock rate a CPU can achieve for a single core; this is rarely a useful metric.

For SOLIDWORKS, consider only the Base and All Core Boost clock, but keep in mind, that low wattage CPU’s might tout the same all core boost as a high wattage CPU, but they cannot sustain this and will quickly fall back to a much lower frequency.

Date: 22/05/2023