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We have a print department that uses Sketchup to create building prints (residential and agricultural,) for our customers. They use Enscape to render these prints for the 3D views they create. To get them a higher end PC, I bought them some MSI gaming desktops with these specs:

  • Intel Core i9-14900KF 36M 24-Core 3.20GHz
  • MSI MAG Core Liquid 240R 240mm liquid cooler
  • 2TB 7200RPM HDD SATA 6Gb/s + 1 TB SSD
  • AMD Radeon RX 7800XT 16GB GDDR6
  • 64GB DDR5 (32 GB x 2)
  • 850W Power Supply
  • Windows 11 Pro

I currently have five of these desktops in service with the oldest being about one and half years old. During that time, I have had a warranty claim on one of them, due to a GPU issue, and one is currently experiencing BSOD errors occasionally, which appear to be related to memory. (Still monitoring that situation.)

Due to those few issues, I thought it may be wise to see about something more business class, so I reached out to Dell and told them the specs of the MSI that I have been using. I have been priced both an Alienware Aurora ACT1250 and a Dell Pro Tower Plus QBT1250. The prices that I have been quoted are about the same as the MSI.

I have also started looking at the offerings from Boxx, which sound like a premium PC with good support: The World's Fastest Sketchup Workstations | BOXX. Boxx’s pricing would add another $1.5-$2k per device roughly for PCs designed for rendering.

Does anyone have any experience with these Dell models or the Boxx brand? Any recommendations or suggestions? Performance and reliability is more important to me than cost currently.

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Is there a sales rep at Enscape you deal with? What do they use there?

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Good question. I do not have a sales rep for Enscape, so I have not reached out to them. Good thought, it would be a good idea to see if they have any recommendations.

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We’re a Lenovo shop, our engineering staff use mobile workstations (laptops) but Lenovo has been my favorite (to work on) Engineering-Class hardware since I first started in IT.

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I dunno, my history is Lenovo is shaded. I am 0-2 for a Lenovo laptop lasting more than a year and a half, which has me a bit gun shy on Lenovo. I know a lot of people use them, the ones that I get just seem to fall apart for some reason. It’s probably some kind of anti-Lenovo aura that I have or something… Thanks for the suggestion though. I’ll have to think about that…

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I am the same. I tend to lean towards Dell or HP

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You have to make sure to get the correct series…nothing in the “Idea” line, stick to all-things “Think” branded. T-Series laptops, for your main userbase, for example.

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I’ve used both Dell and HP, they’re almost the cost of Lenovo stuff but almost always died way sooner than the Lenovo stuff I had…plus, it might have been the deal we had with our VAR on what we were ordering, but the Lenovo-branded stuff came with WAY less pre-installed BS.

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The last Lenovo I ordered was a ThinkPad T16 on 11/17/2023.
It completely died - no power or anything within a week of getting it.
The first service order to get it working again was completed on 11/29/2023.

I must be in a Lenovo Bermuda Triangle or something.

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I have emailed Enscape to see what they use.

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Awesome. Please keep us posted on what they suggest.

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Were those the ones with USB-C charging ports? Gotta say, I haven’t had one of those but no one has ever had a good one…that’s the worst thing that Lenovo’s ever done. Right up there with changing from actual click-in docks to USB port replicators.

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It’s a somewhat common misconception that a “gaming” system will automagically be well-suited to CAD/CAM use because they’re fast and have a high-end graphics card. This is not always necessarily true.

I suggest matching your hardware to the specs recommended/certified by whatever software you’re using, in this case SketchUp and Enscape.

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14

I see your point.

The MSI systems exceed the recommended specs from Enscape and can do the renderings very well. I am more concerned about reliability since a couple of the MSI’s have shown issues - having a user down for a week or more during our busy season would hurt their production significantly.

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We’re a smaller outfit but for CAD/CAM workstations running SOLIDWORKS and ESPRIT I have found HP Z-series workstations with Quadro or RTX Axxx graphics to be generally acceptable.

Whatever you decide to go with, if it’s mission critical I always opt for the most comprehensive warranty/support that makes financial sense.

I have had one that was more or less DOA (bad RAM, PSU or motherboard). It powered up but became immediately apparent that something wasn’t right. But with a 36-month warranty and priority parts availability it was more an inconvenience than a show stopper.

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Agreed. I was planning to opt in for a three-year warranty.

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It might be worth having one or two extras on hand, then. That way, you can just swap stations while you wait for repairs/parts from warranty!

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An additional one on hand is part of my plan as well. We are looking to use VR to show our customers a walk through of their house plan, so the plan is that the “extra” one will handle the VR in our customer center and can be used to replace one of the workstations in a pinch.

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