I just recieved my ny computer, a Thinkpad X1 extreme, 16 ram with i7-8750H processor. The computer runs pretty hot and very loud fans. I am thinking of exchanging it to i5-8400H. Would it handle Rhino?
I haven’t downloaded Rhino yet, just used Rhino on my school. I’ve already used up my free trial period last time i bought a laptop (which i had to send back because of heating issues). If I download Rhino student version can I use it, install it on another computer later if I return it?
What sort of work will you be doing with Rhino?
If it’s mostly surface modeling, I doubt you’ll be able to tell the difference.
If you’re doing a lot of rendering, the additional cores in the i7 will help.
For some rendering tools, you’ll probably want a much better display adapter than you’ll find in an i5 based system.
Take a look at the System requirements on the Support page, and browse here in the Hardware category so you’ll get a better foundation for your questions.
thanks for the answer! what do you mean with display adapter?
“Display Adapter” is what Windows calls your video card.
Consider an nVidia GeForce or Quadro.
What does the display adapter do?
A plug-in card in a desktop computer that performs graphics processing. Also commonly called a " graphics card" or “video card,” modern display adapters use the PCI Express interface, while earlier cards used PCI and AGP.
but i can get a Gefore 1050ti with a i5-8400H.
Maybe, but I would be surprised.
My guess is the i3 and i5 systems will most likely only have inadequate embedded Intel display chips. You want a video card with robust OpenGL support and performance for Rhino.
but if a computer has a geforce 1050ti card with a i58400H. Isn’t that going to work?
It should work fine. Did you find one somewhere configured like that?
yes. A lenovo thinkpad x1 extreme
one more thing does rhino use many threads while modeling?
For single thread operations i5 are basically just as fast as i7 so you should be just fine!
Rendering and other multitreaded operations benefit from many cores and hyper threading that the i7’s have thouhg, but if you goal is to render a lot then a stationary is preferable anyway.
I used an i5 laptop for many years because it ran cooler and quieter than the others and I was very happy with that as speed isn’t everything.
(Now I have a three year old i7 macbook running windows. Nice and quiet and great and I don’t really notice any difference from the workstation)
No.
Modeling is a serial process.
Everything has to happen in a specific order so very few modeling operations are threaded.
Rendering is a big exception. The scene can be broken in to pieces, rendered in separate threads, and stitched back together.
first you draw a surface, then extrude it into a solid, fillet the edges, and then render it. You can’t start the rendering until the edges are filleted. You can’t fillet the edges until you have created the solid.
Great tips!
I use an Acer Aspire 7 17" laptop with Intel Core i5-8300H processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 4 GB video card. Works perfectly smooth, both with the laptop’s FullHD display or when connected to an external 4K monitor via HDMI. Rhino 6 performs multiple times faster than Rhino 5, so even such cheap mid-range laptop is more than capable of running complex scenes in 4K with more than 10 000 000 visible polygons at smooth frame rate with 4x anti-aliasing enabled. If you plan to buy a laptop with GTX 1050Ti, it will perform about 20-30% faster than that, but most Rhino modelers will never need such graphics power.
You can check the amount of polygons your 3d NURBS models have by running the following command in Rhino: PolygonCount
what do you mean by using PolygonCount, to check amount of polygons? What is that good for? Should I just model a random surface?
The “PolygonCount” command calculates the number of polygons (triangles and probably also quads) that are used to represent the NURBS geometry on-screen (the so-called render mesh). With the same NURBS model you can get different result depending on your settings for how detailed the render mesh is (Rhino options > Mesh). Also, every NURBS model could use a custom render mesh setting from the Properties window to make it more or less detailed on-screen. The “PolygonCount” command is useful when you want to test how many polygons your system could handle at smooth frame rate, before it reaches a noticeable slowdown. I use it to compare how powerful the graphics cards are. For example, with Rhino 6 evaluation my desktop PC’s GTX 960 2GB is on par with my laptop’s GTX 1050 4GB at FullHD. They handle the exact same 3d model with almost 10 million polygons at very similar frame rate. However, the GTX 1050 4GB is 10-15% faster in 4K resolution due to the extra video memory.
Ok. Do you have any example-model you’ve like to share? Not sure of how big I need to make it…
I can’t share the large file which is above 1,5 GB size, but the easiest way to build geometry with as much polygons as possible is to simply create multiple spheres. They have an extreme amount of polygons compared to any other primitive object in Rhino. It’s interesting that the medium size spheres have less polygons (14136 total triangular polygons) than the tiny or giant ones (both with 18752 total triangular polygons). Not sure why.
From my limited perspective, I doubt there will be any major differences between the I5 and I7 either working on rhino or resolving the temperature issues. What makes you believe that the laptop won’t run as hot with an I5?
Not as many cores=less heat. Someone, that seems trustworthy, also changed from I i7 to a i5. I am actually not sure. I’ve undervolted my computer but i am not really sure what is a ok temp. The i5 is possible to undervolt more.