I’m currently on a Macbook pro running rhino through VMware fusion. It does ok for most things i do, but I’m starting to build heavier files that are just getting too cumbersome. I don’t really want to run bootcamp as I use the mac side quite a bit. Any recommendations on a low-cost PC ( tower or laptop) that would be a good performer for rhino and potentially doing some renders through Keyshot or something similar?
Let me know!
Ever build your own PC?
Best way to get the most performance for your $$$ in my opinion. A powerful desktop might come in handy for rendering since you already have a laptop.
Any quad-core laptop should be fine for most things. I picked one up for 500$ and everything’s been running really well.
It’s hard to build a desktop for the price of a lower cost laptop ( when you factor in the cost of a windows license, monitor and other things that all come built into a laptop)
What’s your budget? What do you plan to do with it?
You can easily build a great desktop for around $1k (at least in the US) these days. Less then that and you’ll make some compromises that probably aren’t worth the couple of extra dollars you’d save. Though monitors are a big investment if it’s your first desktop and you want something good (which as a designer you should have).
I agree with that! I found an IPS monitor for a really great price on sale and I love it!
Aside from being much more color accurate, It has a great viewing angle. You can look at it from even extreme angles and the colors still look correct. On my old TN panel the colors would change even if I moved my head just slightly.
OK, change in the spec. Looking for a LAPTOP with good performance to run Rhino at or around $2k. This is for work, so i’m not paying, but its a second laptop to my macbook pro and don’t want to push the envelope on price.
I’ve had to two recommendations on HP elitebook and Lenovo w520 or w530.
thoughts?
Have you given rhino for mac a try? It is work in progress and does have the occasional bug, but it’s free so no harm done giving it a spin for a day or two.
I have tried it, but there were enough features that weren’t functional due to the beta nature that i went back to the PC side to finish things, even though slower. Maybe i’ll check in out the latest release, as my beta license expired…
$2k is a lot of extra coin. I got a bunch of friends that just built out those w520s around $1400-1600. Quality, durable machine. Personally I have an XPS 15. It was also around $1500, not as great in build quality/design, but it’s fast enough.
I feel like you could get a good solution around $1500. I would have recommended you used bootcamp, but if it’s for work I wouldn’t use a personal machine. Other than that, those portable workstations are alright, but are heavy and just very thick/robust machines. The Thinkpad isn’t that bad, but the HP Workstation or Dell variant workstation is quite massive.
I’m pretty happy these days with my HP Elitebook 8560 - it’s got a lot of the macbook qualities that everyone is emulating these days tied to solid workstation hardware.
In reality, if you’re not working on massively complex engineering databases you could probably run Rhino just fine on a $750 laptop - it’s a pretty friendly program and any Quad core CPU + dedicated GPU + 8GB ram would handle it just fine.
in Rhino you can survive with a PC with the next specs:
CPU : AMD Athlon (single core) @ 2 ghz
RAM: 2 gb @ ddr3
VideoCard: 256 MB of a very basic video card
Hard Disk: 250 gb
This specs are from 6 or 7 years ago… and you can handle 110 mb Rhino files.
If you’re lucky you can get a pc like this (without a monitor), for free… or with very few dollars in your budget.