All stuff that I already have.

SOCKET AM 4 MSI X570 Gaming PLUS motherboard.
AMD X3700 8 core cpu.
32 gigs of 3200 ram
1 TB NVMe  v4.0 drive.
GTX 1060 video card.
420mm AIO cooler.
1600 watt power supply. OVERKILL but I had it sitting there doing nothing.

All shoved into my 10 year old Enthoo Pro case.

Running Solidworks on windows 11.

EDIT: It is in my hobby room that has zero distractions so I can concentrate on it.



The 5 year old i3 laptop my oldest daughter gave me a couple of months ago so I can watch videos and read technical ebooks.
I upgraded it with a 1TB ssd replacing the slow hard drive and up the ram to 16 gigs.

First project:


Telescope focuser, low profile, for my 6 inch scope project.

It's someone else's design that I found online that includes all the STL files and all the solidworks project files.

I just plan on tweaking it a little with a curved base or a curved adapter plate to fit my tube then print it up in CF PETG.

If your not doing serious modeling (that assembly is cake) you won't need much.

My latest workstation (3wks old) is
i9 14900 36MB
128gb ddr5 5200mhz
NVIDIA RTX A2000 12GB
850w PS

The station it's replacing is still a good machine, just needed a bit more
i7-8700 12MB
64GB DDR4
Nvidia Quadro P2000 4GB

My main desktop now is a AM5 motherboard with a RTX 3090 Ti dual booting with Ubuntu and Windows 11.

I got tired of switching back forth because by the time I rebooted I ended up getting distracted by something else.

Plus on the 4K, 28 inch 4k monitor, the fonts in Solidworks are either too tiny or just do not scale well so now its more comfortable to see on a 1080p monitor.

No I do not have the room for two monitors on my main pc's desk. And yes I tried all the scaling "fixes" I could find.

Now I can see everything on the screen without straining even if I am a tiny bit limited by the 1080p resolution and everything runs fine and I won't be distracted as easily.

Nope, just fairly simple things.

Gtx1060 is kinda sad...

I have a GTX titan X(Pascal) with 12gb and it runs pretty damn nice, dual 1440p displays.

Id go with something newer if i truly needed it

> GTX 1060 video card.

Only area that I would even consider upgrading is the video.  If
your video card it can drive  your video display(s) and a screen
rez you like...that config will work.


I do very light CAD stuff using Fusion 360 stuff and my hardware is happy.

I have about 4x the SSD space, and running with 64 gig - but that is needed
for some Virtual Machine work I play with.

I run with a single 32" 4k display that my video card was designed to run at
the screen rez I want.  

The CAD side of Solidworks is built on so much legacy code it runs CPU heavy so go for speed.

Bingo, specifically single core performance since CAD is by and large a single core workload.

An A2000 is plenty for most situations we 3D printer focused modelers run into.

It works fine for what I need.

Actually after working with it a couple of days the 1060 is a little lacking.

It works ok but not as a "professional" card like the RTX 3090Ti as in it does not have all the added visual stuff like shadows, reflections or textures.

EDIT: I does not do RealView, I had forgotten what it was called.  I guess if I really want that function i'll just swap the RTX 3090Ti in. Funny thing is that the 3090Ti does not show as a "certified" video card but does display RealView.

This is in Solidworks with my 3090Ti.

A 12gb card is really nice for doing any dual screen work.

RX 6700xt or 7700xt is as low as I would go. But if $$$ is tight, stepping down to an 8GB card will do.

Be warned, all the RX 5700xt cards on ebay have all been rode hard and put away wet by miners.