I use my desktop for the usual stuff but I've also got into my 3D printing again. All is going fine, got a Bambu Labs A1 Mini to play with and am using Sketchr3D as my design software. The last few designs I've had it crashing saying it has lost connection to the graphics card and looking on the forums this means the card is struggling. I've updated it's driver but that has just made it a little better, not solved the problem. I'm massively out of date on the hardware side so it's time to ask the STW crowd what's my best options. I'm thinking a new graphics card is in order but is there something else I can do first. The computer's a Dell and it's spec is:
Device Name DESKTOP-N5KC4ES
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz 2.90 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.74 GB usable)
Storage 932 GB HDD WDC WD10EZEX-75WN4A1, 238 GB SSD KBG40ZNS256G NVMe KIOXIA 256GB
Graphics Card Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (128 MB)
Device ID EA50EAF3-BF9D-4DE4-8B33-804D9115AFE5
Product ID 00325-81807-36255-AAOEM
System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display
If it is the graphics card that's holding it back what is a cost-effective option? This is the hardest use I do on it, Zwift runs fine and YouTube etc runs happily in 1080p. Or am I looking at a new PC, which seems nuts as the computer is otherwise great and responsive.
The GPU definitely looks like the weak link there, but cleverer folk than me will probably be along soon with some advice on how you can actually check exactly what's borking before you start chucking loads of money at new stuff.
If it's a Dell, they sometimes use proprietary gubbins so it might not be as simple as just slotting a new GPU in there. Plus you'll need to make sure that your power supply is grunty enough to power whatever you get (modern graphics cards can be pretty power hungry).
You have integrated graphics, so no dedicated GPU. I have a similar age Dell that came with a GTX 1650 super, they are very low power draw which will probably match the low wattage PSU you no doubt have. Dell are buggers for proprietary cables, you will need an adapter to plug a non-Dell card into a Dell PSU.
Had a feeling it was just integrated graphics, didn't prioritise it when I bought it.
So if that is indeed the bottleneck then what's the best to upgrade it with and what budget am I looking at? I'm pretty happy taking stuff apart so not averse to a bit of 'modding' to get things working but do want reliability!
8GB of ram looks a little on the low side and the onboard GPU is only using 128MB, you could try adding some more ram and then allocating more memory to the onboard graphics.
Do you have a link for Sketchr3D to see what the minimum spec is to run it?
it's crashing during the 3d modelling bit? not the printing? if the GPU was struggling that bad, you'd have disgusting performance, like unworkable IMHO
its not a temperature issue is it? working the CPU hard (with its integrated gpu) and really warming it up?
It's when I'm drawing the design it falls over, regardless of whether it's rendering or just sat there doing nothing. The slicing and printing is taken care of in Bambu Studio and the only sign of it struggling there is when I review the layers using the visualiser after the slicing and G code is generated, just a slight stutter between layers appearing. It's Shapr3D not Sketchr (stupid autocorrect always does that) and it lists the following:
- OS: Windows 10 (version 19041.0 or higher) or Windows 11.
- Processor: Intel Core i5 (8th generation, Coffee Lake, 2017 or later) or AMD Ryzen 5 series (2015 or later), with AVX2 support.
- RAM: Minimum 8GB, 16GB+ recommended for complex, large datasets.
- GPU: DirectX 11 compatible; dedicated GPU with 4GB VRAM recommended.
- Input: Touchscreen or mouse.
I know I'm at the bottom end of that spec but when I installed it the checker said it was fine, it just wouldn't do super fine detailed surfaces which I don't need anyway. It's ran perfectly fine for the last 4 months so this problem has only surfaced in the last week or so. I've used it a lot so it's not like I just haven't noticed any issues through lack of use.
The Dell bloatware is a resource hog too. I've just done a fresh install of windows and freed up a lot of SSD space and RAM usage is much reduced.
I'd say GPU and RAM upgrades are needed. And with the cost of both of those at the moment you might be as well just buying a new pre-built.
e.g. RTX3050 8gb GPU = £240, 16gb RAM = £80, 650W PSU = £60
New basic PC with the above
= £600
It all depends on your budget.
Can you run task manager in the resource monitoring mode to see what is maxed out when you're doing your 3D modelling? That should at least tell you if you need more RAM or a better GPU
CAD traditionally requires a different class of GPU, a workstation GPU with Drivers optimised for accuracy rather than speed*
I have had a lot of success with eBay purchases of older AMD FirePro cards. Theres also Quadro from nVidia, but frack nVidia. Also they'll likely drop support sooner than AMD for older cards.
YmmV
*Doom does not require surface placing at sub-mm accuracy, Solid Edge etc do for design and engineering.
If it used to work fine it should still work fine. Check for dust build up. Anything else new installed recently? Windows updates?
Also, I don't think you need any new hardware. Have a look at OnShape, which is free for home use, and runs in a browser, so no CAD graphics card needed. Ok, so you'll have to learn how to use it, but lots of Youtube tutorials to watch.
If it used to work fine it should still work fine.
That's why I suggested a fresh windows install. Dell steal some of your SSD for a large recovery partition plus all the rubbish they have installed. I've gone from the 256GB being completely full (I did have a a 30GB photo library that I moved) to now using 60GB, I genuinely can't work out what was using all the space.
I have a Dell with the same CPU and SSD. If you wanted to add memory and GPU then you would pick used stuff from the same era, 8GB of DDR4 RAM can be had for £30 and a GTX 1650 Super about £70. Really don't think you need a new one.
This isn’t my field
It says recommend graphics card with 4Gb of RAM. You are way short of that. I’m in the process of upgrading my pc to run Lightroom. If you tried to use the old one for ai noise reduction it says this will take 45 minutes and crashes. A basic graphics card should do that in less than a minute. There is a huge gulf between a proper graphics card and integrated graphics
Try looking in task manger whilst doing this task. Second tab down is Performance. Have a look and see what’s going on. Are you out of the memory? Is the processor at 100%? That will drive a feel what is holding you back
IMHO, integrated isn't awful for basic CAD models, hell it'll play basic games, if it works then it works.. if it works then crashes that's something else.
I mean ,the app could be shonky as hell and reliant of the heavy lifting of a proper GPU i guess, but as above, try a different app perhaps
Iva had good success buying second hand GPU's from ebay over the years, last one was a GTX 2060 for under 100 at the end of 2024 for the nipper's PC. and I sold an old old GTX 970 (was actually a 980 but i forgot) for £25 a few months ago. SO there are cheap options to try out
I use my laptop on cpu gpu to do basic stuff at work, sketchup etc etc, its slow when stuff gets complex. but it works.
One thing which hasn't been mentioned yet, what's your storage usage look like? There's two drives in that thing, a Toshiba SSD and a traditional Western Digital spinning hard disk. The fact that the SSD is listed second in that spec makes me slightly nervous. If for some harebrained the drives are configured with the WDC disk as the OS disk and the SSD as D:\ then the whole lot wants flattening and rebuilding. This should be highly unlikely but you never know.
The SSD should be your primary C:\ drive where Windows and apps are installed to. Anything requiring high speed storage access should be restricted to the SSD; in particular, Windows pagefile/swapfile should be restricted to only use that drive, and also any scratch files that your applications are using. Can you specify a working directory within the apps or some such? If it's running out of available RAM during intensive operations and paging out to that WDC drive, you're going to have a bad day.
If this is an out-of-the-box build then there's every chance that your documents, pictures etc are defaulting to saving to the larger WDC drive. This could be a performance hit. If you have the space I'd be tempted to move everything onto C:\ and consider D:\ to be a backup destination.
Agree with alan1977. Integrated graphics cards can run CAD. I know this is Solidworks, but there several people running UHD cards in the list below:
Not ideal, but should work. (But see my comment above on using OnShape.)
Oh here's another for free:
How much space do you have on your drives...? I currently own a computer mostly built from parts of another pc that was thrown out as uselessly unstable... It was just out of space causing crashes lol
As for the rest,
As others have said, most integrated graphics are garbage - they exist as a cost-saving measure - but they are sufficient for most use cases. There's a "what PC?" thread on here every other week and they almost all ask the same thing, "for browsing the web, email, occasional Office use" and so they don't need anything more. But you're not most use cases.
I don't know those applications so can't make specific recommendations without googling and, well, you've already done that. What I would say though is if you are thinking of buying a new graphics card, make sure first of all that your PC can take it. Is it a Small Form Factor PC, will a card even physically fit? Is there an available PCIe slot to put it in? Is your power supply capable of driving a bigger card? OEMs tend not to overspec PSUs because why would they when that's just additional cost and see the previous paragraph. If it is, does it have any additional power cables a new card might require?
If I were to guess I would say that pretty much any discrete GPU is going to be an improvement on what you have, but anything particularly beefy simply isn't going to work in that machine. But that's just that, an educated guess.
How much space do you have on your drives...? I currently own a computer mostly built from parts of another pc that was thrown out as uselessly unstable... It was just out of space causing crashes lol
This is an "it depends."
If disk space gets very low then you're going to start seeing issues with stability and performance, yes.
If disk space on your OS drive is zero then you're going to have considerably larger problems than it occasionally crashing under load! There's every chance that it might not even boot at all.
It is however a myth that deleting files will improve performance in so far as a 60% full disk is no more or less fast than a 20% full one. This likely persists from the days when fragmentation was a problem, and even then it was nominal unless the PC was on its arse anyway.
I mention this because even today I still see people recommending things like ccleaner or otherwise suggesting that people go on a random deleting spree and it needs to stop because not only will it achieve nothing, it is actively dangerous advice. We're not running Windows XP on badly underspecced machines any more. (I know that's not what you're doing here, BTW.)
Cougar is surely right. In the case I mention the boot/swap disc was 99% full. That was no good.
CCleaner was also compromised and spread malware!
In the case I mention the boot/swap disc was 99% full. That was no good.
Yeah, that'll do it. The OS is sitting there going FFFFFUUUUU...!! and desperately scrabbling for resources. I've seen plenty of those, they quite often will boot but take an absolute eon to get through login to a "useable" desktop. Like, in the order of hours. You can sometimes recover them, IF you can actually get to the file system before Explorer shits itself (and IF you know what you're doing😁), otherwise you're pulling the drive and putting it in a donor.
CCleaner was also compromised and spread malware!
Aye, I remember that compromise. I hate ccleaner with a passion, it's malware in its own right. There was a rash of these "PC optimizer" type programs in the 90s and 00s, registry cleaners and RAM doublers and the like. Most did nothing of value at best. I've spent hours un****ing computers that have been molested by this shit. My mantra at the time was "your registry isn't dirty, leave it alone."
The real problem with computers of that era IMHO was that unless you spent eyewatering money the hardware simply wasn't up to the job. The company I worked for in the 1990s flirted briefly with selling PCs without L2 cache (high speed memory) onboard, just empty sockets. Those were beyond shocking, the CPU was communicating with the RAM via pigeon post, no coverdisc freeware crap was ever going to fix those.
I have a totally unsubstantiated theory that one of the reasons Vista is so unfavourably remembered is the same reason. By the end of the XP era, hardware had caught up. It'd had, what, six years of evolution? A decent machine was slinging XP about. Then the hardware requirements from XP to Vista was a huge leap, what would have been a relatively high-end XP machine ran Vista like crap. But by the time Windows 7 rolled in the hardware had caught up again. That and for the first time in Microsoft's history, the promises of "faster!" were actually true. I remember a colleague and I sitting in the office upgrading Vista PCs to W7 for the first time and being incredulous that they didn't turn into paperweights, this was unprecedented behaviour.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, buy a graphics card. Possibly.
Storage is currently:
C: 146 Gb of 220 Gb
D: 1 Gb of 932 Gb
That makes me think that the SSD isn't running the OS? The computer is exactly the same as it's always been speed-wise when doing regular tasks, it's just the 3D drawing that's causing issues. I'm sort of wedded to Shapr3D as it's a paid sub that wasn't exactly cheap but it suits my workflow and I picked it up really fast. I tried Fusion 360 too as I originally trained up on AutoDesk 4.0 25+ years ago so thought it would be a short learning curve but it was so counterintuitive I gave up and tried Shapr3D on a free trial and instantly was up-to-speed.
I'm still on Win10 (although a fresh install two years ago) so would going up to Win11 make much difference? I'm thinking a beefier graphics card and some more RAM is looking the right way to go.
Storage is currently:
C: 146 Gb of 220 Gb
D: 1 Gb of 932 Gb
That makes me think that the SSD isn't running the OS?
No, that's how it should be.
That spinnydisk is barely being used so it does look like everything is on the SSD. Which isn't a bad thing. I'd be curious as to what that 1GB is; if it's a Windows page file then that could be hurting performance. The setting is under something like system properties / advanced / virtual memory (google it for your Windows version). You want to remove ... hold on, let me screenshot mine.
Set C:\ to System Managed (hit Set to apply) and then click any other drives in turn and set them to none. It should look like mine here, likely aside from the Google drive.
- Tried that and while the memory use is better I'm still getting the same issue as before. The majority of that 1Gb on the spinny disc was Windows updates.
Worth trying switching to Win 11 before going for hardware upgrades?
I wouldn't.
Wiping the disk and starting afresh, maybe.
Right, have tried a fresh Win10 install and the problem still persists.
Think it's time to get a new graphics card and see if that solves the issue. Any particular ones that are worth looking for around the £100 mark?
Right, have tried a fresh Win10 install and the problem still persists.
Whilst I don't disagree that a GFX card is probably the fix here,
How did you reinstall it, what did you do?
Your processor is OK but the rest of the spec of your pc is a pile of crap, to be polite.
Being a Dell, you'll probably find the power supply isn't capable or running a dedicated graphics card, so you need more ram, a gpu, and a new PSU.
Basically you need a new computer.
Yeah I've got a 1070 you could have for significantly less than £100 but I'd be very surprised if your machine would run it (it needs a chunky PSU and a fair bit of space in the case, assuming your motherboard has the right PCIE slot).
Right, have tried a fresh Win10 install and the problem still persists.
Whilst I don't disagree that a GFX card is probably the fix here,
How did you reinstall it, what did you do?
I used a copy of the last full, clean release of Win10 that Microsoft made available. Made it when they announced it was being removed and them forcing users to get Win11. Did make the machine faster on power-up and shutdown but the graphics message still happens.
Your processor is OK but the rest of the spec of your pc is a pile of crap, to be polite.
Being a Dell, you'll probably find the power supply isn't capable or running a dedicated graphics card, so you need more ram, a gpu, and a new PSU.
Basically you need a new computer.
It's nearly 6 years old now, bought it during the Covid shortage as my laptop completely died and I needed something to do job searches etc. I'm hoping to not need a new PC for a while yet as apart from this single issue it works perfectly. Happy to spend money on upgrades though, £50 on a higher power supply (going on named ones available) on top of a graphics card is fine. £200-250 after 5 years solid use isn't exactly going to break the bank.
We have the same base machine, I bought mine during covid too. I've told you what GPU will be a match for it higher up the thread...
Would I buy another Dell? No, because of proprietary parts but it is a perfectly decent machine.
I think you have two options:
Upgrade your graphics card or the whole PC (at least £100,maybe £500-600) This assumes you can find a graphics card that fits and is an upgrade.
Or, try Onshape, today, for free. It will work with your current PC and graphics card. You may like it, and save a lot of money.
See also the sunk cost fallacy!
I used a copy of the last full, clean release of Win10 that Microsoft made available.
Define "used." What did you do?
It's a direct download onto a USB stick. I just plugged it in, selected it to wipe the drive and do a fresh install and it did it. Exactly the same as if you were restoring a computer with a borked hard drive. All my files and programmes are saved to an external hard drive every week or so, just made an extra backup beforehand and reinstated them afterwards.
I've checked my notes from when I was selecting a design programme to use and OnShape was on that list. Notes say that I found it counter-intuitive for a lot of stuff so was put on the No list.
Right, excellent, that's the thread I was tugging on. As you were. 😁
Worth double-checking!
I've had a play around with settings etc and have managed to get it running better still but I'm still getting the disconnect message a few minutes in. A friend who I was out with earlier had said I can borrow an old graphics card and power supply he had in an old computer he designed things with up until a few months ago when he upgraded. It's a few years younger than mine but is a Dell of the same family as mine so worth trying before spending any cash. I won't be able to get the boys until next weekend though as I'm going away this week so will have to wait before I can move forward with this.
Right, have tried a fresh Win10 install and the problem still persists.
Think it's time to get a new graphics card and see if that solves the issue. Any particular ones that are worth looking for around the £100 mark?
A secondhand FirePro RadeonPro (new name, sorry)
Just to tie this up:
I've installed the graphics card and power supply my friend has loaned me to test with and the issue has instantly gone away. Runs smoother, faster and as a bonus Zwift looks sooo much better. The friend might be open to me buying them but that would really mean buying his old computer as he wants to sell it anyway and that's more than I can afford. I can find the same parts on eBay for £120 all-in for an AMD Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX580 8GB graphics card and the power supply from an Optiplex 5000 so will probably go that route.
Thanks for all the help everyone.
Still got the 1070 I need to sell if you fancy something a bit spicier but in the same ballpark... Probs after £70 posted. Let me know if you want details. It is a big old bugger though.
Both my old pooters always go BSOD if I opened too many youtbue clips as my graphic card no longer able to handle the load. I do have a "new" (2nd hand) Dell now but not set up properly yet, so I am hopeful things will go back to normal ... watching several youtube clips at the same time. 😀
Finally an explanation