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TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE

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SIGHT & SOUND

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WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3384 5297 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Consulting Editor Jessica Twentyman jtwentyman@gmail.com Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542

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T

he year 2026 has taken off at quite a pace and already it seems everyone is scrambling to keep up. Thankfully, you have DEVELOP3D on your side, and our goal is to keep you up to date and on track.

For starters, there’s this year’s Workstation Special Report – our biggest yet, containing all the information you need to make your next workstation purchase. Take time to explore issues around GPU memory, the joys and challenges of small workstations, the looming memory crisis, the world of pro laptops, plus plenty of CPU, GPU and workstation reviews. There’s also a deepdive into 1:1 remote workstations, which combine the benefits of centralisation and desktop-like performance. These look set to be a hardware hit in 2026.

It’s also one year since we published our first AI-focused issue. In the intervening period, the technology has evolved dramatically, as has its impact on day-to-day workflows. We speak to Darren Henry at Onshape about why he believes the company’s cloud-native CAD and PDM technology has future-proofed it for the inclusion of AI and get his views on why legacy CAD suppliers simply can’t make the same boast about their own products.

The impact of AI on visualisation technology is another big shift that we know affects many of our readers. With that in mind, we’ve spoken to Philip Lunn, CEO of Depix, to hear how he sees the market changing – and why those changes are likely to arrive faster than we’ve seen with any previous software development cycles.

When it comes to 3D scanning, AI is ready to revolutionise the way we get captured point clouds into CAD and thus create workable models. We speak to three executives from companies in this space about what they see coming down the line – and without giving too much away, they’re talking about a lot less pain, stress and wasted time.

Finally, don’t miss our cover story. Once again, we shine our spotlight on the excellent designers at Node Audio, who continue to rip up the rulebook when it comes to creating speakers and confound hi-fi traditionalists with their cuttingedge designs and amazing sounds.

We’ve all had a noisy start to the year – so take time to focus on what counts, to listen carefully and to distinguish signals from noise.

Stephen Holmes Editor, DEVELOP3D Magazine, @swearstoomuch

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01/02/2026 13:10

Design. Engineer. Ma 2026

25 March 2026 Warwick Arts Centre, UK

Speaker highlights

Chris Gould - Longbow / Avant Design

Oliver Duncan - Siemens

Gian Paolo Bassi - SOLIDWORKS

Chris Gould - Longbow / Avant Design Gian Paolo Bassi - SOLIDWORKS Spencer Livingstone - Presume Oliver Duncan - Siemens Ed Batchelor - Lacoste Jim Nottingham - HP

AI

Learn how AI is redefining product development

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Ryan McClelland Deputy Chief AI Officer (CAIO) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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CONTENTS FEBRUARY / MARCH 2026 ISSUE NO. 156

8 NEWS DEVELOP3D LIVE main stage speakers announced, InfinitForm targets design optimisation pains, Maxon flags up forthcoming Digital Twin product, and more 11 12 14 20 22 24 26

FEATURES Comment: Mike Haley of Autodesk on neural CAD goals Visual Design Guide: Hyundai MobED Pro COVER STORY A BIG NOISE AT NODE AUDIO Picture perfect: AI-driven visualisation tech from Depix Built differently: Onshape’s AI Advisor Talking heads: Exploring AI’s role in scan-to-CAD Record breaker: Remote control car The Beast’s design

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w D he L *f re IV oll ow in it E g £2 al 5m ls re no ta va tio r n

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28 THE LAST WORD An encounter with some pesky parasites has Stephen Holmes wondering about the intractable march of progress and how we may need to stay vigilant when it 2023 comes to the technology WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT The rise of the 1:1 remote workstation Why GPU memory matters for CAD, viz, and AI Results from our 2025 workstation user survey Compact vs tower workstations2023 20 September Memory shortages & rising prices: navigating the crunch Warwick workstation Arts Centre,laptops UK for 2026 Best enterprise-class + the hottest CPU, GPU and workstations reviews

Save the date

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The wood used to produce this magazine comes from Forest Stewardship Council certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material

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Accelerating product development to manufacture develop3dlive.com

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NEWS

DEVELOP3D LIVE 2026: MAIN STAGE SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED

Digital Twin in the works at Maxon

M

axon Digital Twin is an upcoming standalone application that Maxon executives claim will enable an entirely new workflow for creating and using photorealistic, high-fidelity digital representations of real-world products in modern marketing workflows.

Currently in development, Digital Twin is intended to help marketing teams maintain visual accuracy, consistency and creative control as product imagery moves across formats, platforms and tools, and from traditional design software to new AI-enabled applications. www.maxon.com

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n 25 March 2026, DEVELOP3D LIVE will wow its audience with a full day of incredible productdevelopment storytelling, with keynote presentations by NASA, Avant Design, car stylist Angel Guerra and more. The event will take place at the Warwick Arts Centre near Coventry.

Ryan McClelland, Deputy Chief AI Officer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, will explain how the centre is reducing spacemission development times from decades to months with a Text-to-Spaceship framework. This integrates AI with mission design workflows and amplifies human capabilities in the process.

Designer Angel Guerra, whose previous work includes the Rimac Nevera and the Bugatti Mistral and Tourbillon, will describe for attendees the design process

behind some of his latest work on the Garagisti & Co GP1 – a stunning, naturally aspirated, 800bhp manual V12 hypercar.

Chris Gould, design director at Avant Design, will explain the studio’s capabilities for developing jaw-dropping transport projects by pushing the latest software and hardware to the limits from its UK studio.

The main stage will also play host to executives from technology heavyweights including Dassault Systèmes, HP and Siemens Digital Industries, with more presenter names to be announced over the coming weeks.

A further two stages will host dedicated talk tracks on AI, Future Fabrication, Startups and Visualisation.

You can register for your free all-day conference pass at: www.develop3dlive.com

The designers of the Garagisti & Co GP1 hypercar (left) and a NASA satellite bracket generated

by AI and CNC machined (right) will present at DEVELOP3D LIVE

InfinitForm targets design optimisation pains

I

nfinitForm has launched its Generative Engineering Platform, with the aim of automating part design optimisation for traditional manufacturing processes and bridging the design-tomanufacturing gap.

Automated analysis accounts for multiple manufacturability variables.

These include wall thickness, draft angles, tool size and accessibility, as well as tolerance stack-up, assembly complexity and tooling feasibility. Parts can be optimised for processes including CNC machining, die casting, injection moulding, extrusion, additive manufacturing and hybrid manufacturing.

Infinitform’s Generative Engineering Platform marries proprietary GPUaccelerated solvers with InfinitForm’s AI Co-Pilot, enabling engineers to automate

Dell unveils giant 52-inch monitor

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ell's new UltraSharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub Monitor is the world’s first 52-inch 6K monitor designed for professionals who have vast amounts of information to manage.

With its giant proportions, this display is designed to replace multi-display setups with a single, seamless, 52-inch 6K curved IPS Black panel, maximising user productivity and reducing clutter.

Compared to two 27-inch QHD monitors and one 43-inch 4K monitor, it offers 61,000 more pixels and 25% higher pixel density, while taking up less space. www.dell.com

Synera introduces new add-ins

S DFM analysis, while optimising their designs for performance and cost.

This is claimed by the company to accelerate time to manufacture from weeks to days, since AI-optimised outputs are shown to reduce revision cycles and improve first-pass manufacturing yields. www.infinitform.com

The Generative Engineering Platform enables engineers to automate designfor-manufacture (DFM) analyses

ynera continues to expand its ecosystem, with newly announced nTop and Autodesk Fusion add-ins, allowing users to develop parts faster, automated by AI agents in Synera.

Synera add-ins allow communication between the Synera AI Agent Platform for engineering and leading tools for design, simulation, manufacturing and product lifecycle management, as well as with collaboration and productivity tools including Microsoft's Teams, PowerPoint and Excel products.

By leveraging these connectors, users can ensure critical data flows smoothly across their engineering ecosystem for enhanced operational efficiency. www.synera.io

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02/02/2026 20:18

SOLIDWORKS DEBUTS TWO NEW AI AGENTS, MARIE AND LEO

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ddressing a packed audience at the George R Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, Dassault Systèmes Solidworks CEO Manish Kumar unveiled two new AI agents to can assist designers and engineers in their work.

Aura – a co-pilot assistant launched back in 2025 – is now joined by Marie, for materials, chemistry and science; and Leo for engineering, mechanics, simulations and taking products to manufacture.

According to Kumar, if asked the same question, each of the three AI agents will give a slightly different answer, in line their particular specialisms – much as a human designer, engineer or materials scientist might do.

The three tools for what Kumar referred to as ‘Industrial AI’ are built on the Mistral AI foundational model that sits on Dassault Systèmes’ Outscale cloud. This provides high-performing models coupled with confidentiality and security standards.

Joined on stage by Dassault Systèmes CEO Pascal Daloz, Kumar performed a live demo showcasing Leo. Running in Solidworks 3DExperience XDesign, initial drawings were transformed to sketch (with adjustable measurements and parameters), before Sketch-to-3D transformed this into a 3D parametric model. Surrogate modelling allows Leo to conduct performance analysis on the modelling, running an FEA study on the part with nothing more than a simple prompt in a fast, computationally cheap mathematical approximation.

“AI is just the multiplier, you are the value,” said Kumar, keen to reassure

a room packed full of designers and engineers that the company’s plan is not to replace them, and promising that more is yet to come from its AI arsenal.

While AI was certainly the main focus for keynote presentations, break-out sessions perhaps better reflected audience priorities, with only 5% of some 355 sessions specifically focused on AI. Dassault Systèmes also took the opportunity at this even to announce its deepening partnership with Nvidia.

This collaboration is focused on AIdriven product development and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared on stage at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026 to address the audience. He emphasised for attendees that virtual simulations (in other words, digital twins) are essential for training physical AI safely. www.solidworks.com

Dassault Systèmes CEO Pascal Daloz showcases new AI agents for Solidworks

Both owned by Ametek, FARO Technologies and Creaform are joining forces to create FARO Creaform, an entity that brings together FARO’s more than four decades of 3D measurement and reality capture experience and Creaform’s innovations in handheld metrology www.ametek.com

Replique is expanding its collaboration with Alstom to produce more of the transport specialist’s parts globally and on demand.

Replique manages the entire process on Alstom’s behalf: design and qualification, production, finishing, quality assurance and delivery www.replique.io

S

“Generative AI and accelerated computing have ignited a new industrial revolution, transforming digital twins from passive simulations into the active intelligence of the physical world,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the CES 2026 announcement in Las Vegas. www.siemens.com

Novineer has partnered with Stratasys to integrate its FDM performance simulation within GrabCAD Print Pro. The collaboration aims to reduce physical testing times and costs for load-bearing parts and enable engineers to design lighter, stronger parts www.novineer.com

HCL CAMWorks has launched its 2026 CNC programming solution, adding AI-powered automation and new Swiss machining capabilities for producing small, highprecision components, along with new features to reduce programming times and machining cycles and extend tool life www.camworks.com

Siemens and Nvidia expand AI partnership iemens is expanding its partnership with Nvidia to build an Industrial AI Operating System, which aims to help customers change the way they design, engineer and operate physical systems. The partnership will build AI-accelerated industrial solutions across the full lifecycle of products and production.

The two companies’ stated aim is to co-build the world’s first fully AI-driven, adaptive manufacturing sites globally, starting in 2026 with a Siemens electronics factory in Erlangen, Germany.

Nvidia will contribute AI infrastructure, simulation libraries, models and frameworks to the partnership, while Siemens will provide additional AI expertise, along with hardware and software.

ROUND UP

Siemens CEO Roland Busch and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, together on stage at CES 2026 in Las Vegas

Scan Computers is now an authorised commercial partner of Dassault Systèmes Solidworks.

The agreement adds Solidworks 3D CAD, 3DExperience Solidworks and DraftSight 2D CAD licenses to Scan's portfolio of customer offerings www.scan.co.uk

DEVELOP3D.COM FEBRUARY / MARCH 2026 9

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02/02/2026 12:48

COMMENT

Design software should support rapid and iterative exploration of new ideas.

Neural CAD engines could be the best way for designers and makers to shift into a new age of AI enhancement, writes Mike Haley of Autodesk

I

n the early stages of a design project, during ideation and conceptualisation, tools should accommodate the broadest methods of expression. Early specifications, outlines, rough sketches and photos (among others) are all essential in expressing ideas.

Yet, the core paradigm of CAD software, parametric CAD, has remained largely unchanged for 40 years. These engines, built using traditional software technology, rely on a keyboard, mouse and typical user interface. Creators must explicitly define parameters such as the dimensions of an object. That can restrict creativity.

Creators need technology that doesn’t obstruct their creative flow. Instead, it should enable rapid and iterative exploration of ideas, regardless of how detailed or approximate they might be.

Over the past decade, research has underscored that early-stage explorations significantly enhance project metrics like cost, sustainability and suitability.

That’s why recent advancements in neural technology are generating such excitement.

A NEW ERA APPROACHES Today, we are entering a transformative era in design and make technology.

Picture a scenario in which a computer comprehends spoken language, sketches, three-dimensional design data and industry-specific workflows and now enrich that scenario with a team’s decades of project knowledge.

That is the work of pioneering neural AI foundation models that focus on design and make problems. Neural CAD engines enhance legacy parametric engines, offering novel ways to explore solutions and generate geometry.

They still honour the traditional precision and control designers require, but most importantly, they also introduce entirely new and richer ways for users to express and interact with ideas.

Unlike parametric CAD, they are learning and improving, so that they constantly align better to creators’ needs and ways of working. Meanwhile, they can reliably reason about the three-dimension and physical world.

Ultimately, these advancements are aimed at making creators faster, smarter and more competitive. The quicker designers can turn around their designs, the faster they can move products to markets – but the impact goes beyond speed. AI-powered design tools can directly reason about the immense complexity within design creation. It is this that sets the stage for vast improvements across the entire design and make category.

HUMAN/MACHINE INTERACTION Imagine you’re a product designer exploring some early-stage product concepts. While it’s well known that AI image generators can quickly create conceptual images, now consider that instead of just an image, you can generate a highly detailed CAD model just as easily. Simply by entering text prompts or sketches, the neural CAD engine will start to produce options instantly.

The deep neural networks behind this technology are directly reasoning through the surfaces, the edges and the topology that would satisfy any request. And it doesn’t just produce one model, but multiple models, allowing users to quickly explore trade-offs between different options. The result is first-class editable CAD geometry, so that a design can be immediately usable.

Buildings are a great example of the transformation these systems can provide, given their interrelated levels of details, representations and components. Changing something in one place invariably means creating or updating associated representations and structures. Much of this work is laborious.

It slows down creators’ ability to explore

Picture a scenario in which a computer comprehends spoken language, sketches, 3D design data and industryspecific workflows, and then enrich that scenario with a project team’s decades of project knowledge

alternatives and rapidly make changes.

Consider an architectural massing model that outlines a proposal for a new building; as the architect manipulates the shape, the neural CAD engine responds to these changes, autogenerating floor plan layouts. Generative AI creates a simple floor plan instantly, but for this to be truly useful, an architect must control the generation.

Leveraging the multi-modal interaction enabled by neural CAD, they can lock down certain elements, such as a specific stairwell, hallway or room, and then use natural language prompts to instruct the software to change structural materials.

Combining the power of large language models, the software can recompute the location and size of columns and create entirely new floor layouts, while honouring constraints specified by the architect.

In the future, these neural CAD foundation models will be customisable to an organisation’s proprietary data and processes. The integration of these models will transform the creative process, making it more intuitive, collaborative and abundant.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mike Haley is senior vice president of research at Autodesk. In this role, he leads the company’s industrial research focusing on uncovering new technologies for customercentric transformations and addressing challenges such as climate change, automation and industry convergence www.autodesk.com DEVELOP3D.COM FEBRUARY / MARCH 2026 11

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01/02/2026 15:47

VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE HYUNDAI MOBED PRO

» Designed with flexibility in mind, Hyundai Motor Group’s MobED (Mobile Eccentric Droid) Pro is a robust and innovative match for a wide range of indoor environments, outdoor terrains and applications that span last-mile deliveries, factory work, mobile signage and even golf caddy services

SMILE! Designers wanted to give a friendly face to mobility and urban movement, so smiley motifs can be found throughout the design of the MobED, Urbanhopper and MobED Golf

SELF-DRIVING CAPABILITIES AI-powered sensors combined with LiDAR and cameras perceive surroundings in real time for predictive navigation, obstacle avoidance, optimal route generation and moving object recognition and tracking

ERGONOMIC SEAT A carefully considered ergonomic seat design ensures a comfortable ride and natural posture, no matter how long the journey

SMOOTH SAILING Eccentric Wheel Technology actively stabilises the platform by dynamically adjusting posture and height on uneven or inclined surfaces, enabling the MobED Pro to remain level on slopes, maintain balance and navigate uneven surfaces smoothly, even while carrying heavy loads

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FLEXIBLE FRIEND The MobED is fully customisable to suit both industrial and personal applications. From delivery to logistics to research, its modular nature gives users the freedom to tailor the platform and adapt its use to evolving needs

INTUITIVE CONTROL The Hyundai MobED Pro’s wide touchscreen controller with its intuitive 3D user interface makes life easy for new users and supports self-mapping, location designation and autonomous driving

OPTIMISED GOLFING EXPERIENCES Set up in Golf configuration, MobED carries golf bags while offering players amenities that include cup holders, a small refrigerator and a tablet that displays specific course information, weather conditions, scores and strategy tips

CUSTOMISABLE DESIGN Below the handlebars, modules for delivery and food storage can be installed, while the front screen displays scannable QR codes that unlock the compartment allowing customers to collect their delivery

PRICING & AVAILABILITY The Hyundai MobED Pro is scheduled for sale in the first half of 2026 robotics.hyundai.com

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01/02/2026 13:36

COVER STORY

SIGHT& SOUND » Node Audio’s eye-catching Atom speaker system contains a hidden secret – a 3D-printed gyroid infill that gives it a distinct sound.

Gabrielle Brown hears about a technology that sets Atom apart from its competitors

T

he Atom speaker is characterised by understated yet unmistakable luxury.

Sleek and sculptural, it looks as good as it sounds, thanks to some special components hidden away from the admiring glances it commands.

Designed and manufactured in the heartland of British hi-fi equipment, Atom is the second product range launched by Cambridge-based Node Audio. It’s crafted to turn heads and packed with the latest tech for the best possible sound.

Designers Ashley May and David Evans clearly love sound as much as they love designing outside the box. As directors of design consultancy Studio 17, they have already developed products for a number of homeware giants, including Joseph Joseph and Fiskars.

In 2018, they founded Node Audio, launching their debut product, the Hylixa loudspeaker the following year (www.tinyurl.com/D3DHylixa).

What began life as a side project was soon a hit in the audio segment, garnering international recognition for its patented internal helix structure, which is designed to eliminate cabinet coloration of sound and to generate a deeper bass.

The goal with Atom, explains Ashley May, was to take the best acoustic principles from the Hylixa speakers and bring award-winning sound quality to an even broader audience.

With this follow-up to the Hylixa, May and Evans were looking to cater to a different market. “What I think we’ve learned in the intervening period is that our market is typically a bit more conservative and so our follow-up product tries to move a little bit more in that direction,” he says. “So we’re packaging our Helix technology within these speakers, but instead of it being in a sort of jet-engine shape firing forward, it’s now vertical in a more expected form factor.”

Like its predecessor the Hylixa, the Atom speaker contains Node Audio’s Helix technology, but in a more conventional form factor

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COVER STORY

11 The hi-fi market typically offers standalone bookshelf speakers and taller floor-standing speakers boasting greater bass. With the Atom range, May and Evans wanted to address both of these needs by offering two models, with an optional floor stand for the smaller of the two.

Physical 3D-printed prototypes in combination with quick digital renders produced in Keyshot allowed the design team to both adapt original designs and test out brand-new ideas.

“We have the ability to produce bigger speakers if we want an even bigger floor standard with a bigger bass driver in the future. That’s the beauty of additive. You can quite easily test these things and prove the market before you produce too many of them.”

SOUND SPACE The results are impressive. Sturdy but minimal, the Atom’s metallic accents reflect light. The speaker has four precise feet that give it the appearance of hovering rather than sitting. Visually speaking, it will make a statement in any room – but it’s the sound of these speakers that will really dominate the space, the result of its patented internal Helical Transmission Line or HTL. Traditionally, internal considerations 2 in speaker design have had to grapple with whatever space is available inside the speaker cabinet. With 3D printing, however, a speaker can take whatever form gives the clearest sound.

With Atom, the resulting helix creates a very low impedance path, because of its continuous round form that enables air and sound to both flow efficiently around it.

The HTL (a coiled acoustic waveguide) forms a continuous bass tube far greater than the cabinet size.

The complex internal geometries can only be achieved with additive manufacturing. The long-throw woofer channels energy into a central chamber that feeds a

precisely engineered helical pathway, reinforcing and projecting low-frequency output.

The elimination of sharp edges and parallel surfaces, now synonymous with the brand, improves acoustics and reduces degradation of stereo images.

Launching with two configurations and a range of refined finishes, the Atom packs in not only the revolutionary HTL but also a new 3D-printed and patented MonoCell damping technology.

1 Sturdy but ● minimal, and exuding understated luxury, the Atom’s design really catches the eye 2 A gyroid infill gives ● the speaker improved stiffness and clearer sounds

DAMPING DEBUT MonoCell is 3D printed from gyroids, giving its internal structures wave-like walls and hollow chambers that, by adding internal bracing to the design, adds stiffness to the overall speaker body, while adding less weight than traditional fibrous damping materials stuffed into cavities. The result is a significantly reduced cabinet coloration and a clearer listening experience.

While the cabinet, electronics and hardware are designed and positioned in Solidworks, the new MonoCell damping technology required an entirely new workflow. To produce the new infill, gyroid modifiers in Bambu Lab Studio software allowed the designers to selectively apply the infill pattern to specific parts of the CAD model, ready for printing.

May explains how its goal is to replace traditional big heavy walled wooden boxes with the latest in materials science.

“Using additive, you can bring those two elements together, get rid of the wall stuffing, and have this really fine join with a lattice structure to damp the sound, but also provide a mechanical stiffness to the part, because it’s throughout the whole internal volume,” he explains, adding: “We wanted to create something that’s completely different from anything else in the hi-fi industry and better, frankly. It’s all done in the name of acoustic performance.”

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We wanted Functionality is at the forefront of all Node designs. ‘‘ May and Evans’ experience in designing products for a to create something that is both completely different and, frankly, better. It’s all done in the name of acoustic performance

Ashley May, Studio 17

’’

wide range of industries means that they are not shackled by traditional acoustic designs and manufacturing techniques when it comes to creating innovative and unique products.

ADDITIVE AT ITS HEART Node employs a combination of FDM, SLA and SLS 3D printing processes across the Atom range to create internal structures impossible to manufacture using conventional methods. While the Hylixa is built from dense, glass-filled nylon SLS, the Atom is manufactured using the more affordable FDM. “We spent four years exploring different manufacturing methods and materials to give us the rigidity of SLS at a much lower cost. FDM has improved greatly over the past couple of years,” May explains.

“What was once reserved for prototyping is now a viable production solution for us.”

After testing multiple size and speed machines, the team decided on using Bambu Lab printers, bringing in-house Bambu’s H2D printer and a fleet of its PS1 3D printers. The team speaks highly of their dependability, as well as their widespread use in printing bureaus.

May reveals that, after much testing, the designers settled on PLA filament: “We’ve experimented with all

3

kinds of filled filaments and acoustically - and this is quite surprising - PLA does perform the same as the more exotic materials. So certainly for repeatability and ease of manufacture, PLA performs just as well, and there’s no reason to use additive infills.”

All of Node’s products are produced and assembled in-house, giving the team there full control over the design and manufacturing process. The creation of each and every component is carefully overseen and quality checked, and any changes immediately updated.

Node also downsizes any risk of 3D-printing production by producing its speakers in multiple parts. The design cleverly factors in connectors, clips and screw inserts, and once each component is printed and quality checked, the speaker is assembled using mechanical joints and strong silicon adhesives.

Unlike its more exclusive sibling the Hylixa, the Atom range will see Node expand the team to support the UK manufacturing of the range.

FABRIC FINISH Once assembled, the cabinets are then wrapped in a multi-layer acoustic fabric to support vibration control and offer the opportunity to expand the range of colourways and fabrics available.

“Initially, we were looking at an aluminium extrusion to cloak the 3D prints, but it quickly became clear that to produce something, it would be far too difficult to extrude such a large piece of aluminium, with lots of tolerance issues and quite expensive for the tooling,” explains May. From further tests, fabrics were shown to perform well, especially thicker fabrics like felt, leather and those with a foam core. Node’s experiments in this area continue.

In an age when a good chunk of shopping is conducted online, communicating the message of sound quality to customers is a challenge the team is looking to overcome. “They need to see and hear it, and they need to understand what is so special about the way we’re manufacturing,” says Evans. To cope with the demands of an ever-growing online market, Node uses Blender to create smoke simulations that visually communicate the sound performance benefits that HTL delivers.

The Atom range is not just manufactured, but carefully crafted, speaking to May and Evans’ love not just for top-quality sound but also for innovative design and production methods that throw away the rule book. www.node-audio.com

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3 Developed using ● Bambu Labs 3D printers, testing of Atom showed that standard PLA filament performed as well as more expensive options 4 Carefully designed to ●

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channel the airflow inside, the parts also feature clever joining points and fixtures for tight seals

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Sponsored content

SwissDrones’ Uncrewed Helicopters Are Redefining Aerial Infrastructure Inspection By: Emily Suzuki

T

he worldwide demand for energy resources continues to climb exponentially. But the infrastructure is aging, and the need for continuous maintenance is increasingly challenging. Inspections are traditionally done by manned helicopters, and, far too often, there are dangerous crashes due to bad weather, dark conditions, and flying over unsafe areas. That’s where SwissDrones comes in with a solution.

As a 50-person aerospace company headquartered in Zurich with manufacturing and engineering in Buchs, Switzerland, SwissDrones is reimagining what’s possible in aerial inspection. By replacing risky helicopter missions with uncrewed helicopters, they provide critical infrastructure inspections more safely, efficiently, and sustainably.

“We build unmanned helicopters that can precisely repeat flight routes,” says Pol-Victor Gisquet,

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Team Leader Mechanical Systems Integration and Aerospace Engineer, SwissDrones. “Using LIDAR payloads, it can map entire infrastructures and detect the slightest issues or shifts as small as one millimeter. It also reduces CO2 emissions by up to 90% [compared to manned helicopters].”

To reach these ambitious goals, SwissDrones relies on Autodesk Fusion to make it happen.

Reaching new heights with Autodesk Fusion From the very beginning, it was important for the SwissDrones team to have a single point of truth and connect everyone from around the world.

“Fusion as a cloud solution offered a perfect fit,” Gisquet says. “We can start with not only engineering and design, but also continue with production maintenance and general configuration control within the same environment. This allows us to release a prototype at a much faster pace to the market while ensuring high quality and complying with aviation standards.”

Collaboration across teams is crucial. Fusion allows SwissDrones to view the most current view or even roll back the history if necessary.

“We always have the latest and greatest model available, which facilitates communication between engineering, testing, production, logistics, you name it,” Gisquet says.

Accessing data with Fusion and Fusion Contributor Of course, a key manufacturing requirement is exact and correct design data. With Fusion Contributor, SwissDrones can internally share URLs with technicians and engineers to ensure the assembly team works on the latest and correct models.

“Fusion Contributor allows us to share this huge data backbone throughout the team seamlessly,” Gisquet says. “Technicians and mechanics can work closely on the aircraft with their laptops or on any display monitors, accessing real-time design data and reducing the risk of error or wrong assembly.”

01/02/2026 15:44

Sponsored content

The future of unmanned aircraft manufacturing will be even more data at a faster pace. With Fusion, we are ready for this. We can work at the quality of a big aerospace company more quickly and at a fraction of the cost Alex Lemus, Program Manager and Head of Airworthiness, SwissDrones

When it comes down to the actual manufacturing, the SwissDrones team is finding even more benefits with data and CAM integration in Fusion.

“We use CAM in Fusion to manufacture our carbon parts with our CNC machine,” Gisquet says.

“This allows us to maximize the number of pieces we can get per plate, giving us better control over time and cost to meet the strict requirements in the aviation industry.

Making an impact With Fusion, SwissDrones can work at the speed of a startup with the ability to compete with the major players and leaders in the aerospace industry. At the same time, they are also keeping a much bigger vision in mind.

“We are really trying to make the world a better place, and cutting CO2 emissions is one of the key challenges of our time,” Gisquet says. “This motivates me, and I can have an impact to really try to improve our world.”

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A

To have a complete digital twin of the aircraft we need to show variant control. The PLM solution with the Autodesk Fusion Manage is at the heart of this process for us, and we are currently working on expanding it.”

Pol-Victor Gisquet, Team Leader Mechanical Systems Integration and Aerospace Engineer, SwissDrones

01/02/2026 15:44

TECHNOLOGY

PICTURE PERFECT » Suppliers of visualisation tools have been some of the fastest to adopt and evolve AI technology, and Depix is one of the companies leading the field and wowing designers. Stephen Holmes spoke to Depix CEO Philip Lunn for his view on what AI capabilities bring to design workflows

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rtificial intelligence (AI) has completely solved rendering, according to Philip Lunn, CEO of visualisation tools company Depix. It’s a bold statement, but coming from Lunn, it’s one that deserves closer attention.

After all, Lunn was CEO of Bunkspeed when it launched real-time ray tracing with Hypershot back in 2008. That introduction fundamentally changed rendering for good, transforming long cycles into instant updates – and enabling designers to make tweaks to lighting, materials, camera angles and so on in a matter of seconds.

So it’s a surprise to hear him downplay that achievement. “When I look at that now, or I look at any rendering, per se, it seems obsolete,” he says. Today, far bigger changes are coming down the line, “and they’re much larger than I ever imagined.”

AI-enabled rendering has made some serious inroads into workflows in the past year. But this category continues to be plagued by concerns around image quality, user control, output scale and legal issues.

So when someone with Lunn’s industry experience announces that their ‘ultimate tool’ is powered wholly by AI, you’re bound to sit up and take notice.

“What we’ve built is an end-to-end workflow for the whole design process, from planning all the way to presentation,” explains Lunn. “It comes from years of experience.”

It’s certainly true that the Depix team boasts significant know-how. Lunn exited Bunkspeed in 2013 when it was sold to Dassault Systèmes, but has continued to work in visualisation, XR and 3D data capture.

Depix chief product officer Christian Braun, meanwhile, was an artist at Porsche for 20 years. As a result, the linear design workflow followed at Porsche has been influential in shaping Depix, says Lunn, but can now be applied to many different categories of products, from consumer electronics to skyscrapers.

“It’s so fantastic and amazing to use,” he says. “This is a game changer, and it uses AI deeply from start to finish.

I’m a firm believer that the intelligence is actually there, and I’ve been using it deeply for two years now.”

1 6

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REAL CONNECTIONS The great benefit of Depix, according to Lunn, is the time it gives back to designers when they don’t have to render images. Its incredible speed means that a single scene can take minutes, rather than hours, enabling them to work on other tasks.

But even while AI-generated content floods the internet, the human-to-human aspects of business aren’t going away, he insists. Product designers and engineers will still brainstorm new ideas with colleagues, network to find new business

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and spend time getting to know clients better. “That’s not going away,” he says, adding “Personal connections between humans are going to matter way more than ever.”

But he acknowledges that, despite AI’s benefits, resistance to adopting AI tools in workflows persists.

Some will naturally dwindle as the technology evolves and delivers incrementally better results. The issue of quality, for example, is being addressed by rapid advances in underlying generative AI capabilities, while legal concerns tend to fade as a fuller picture of the benefits emerges.

If businesses allow their staff to use Google Search, then they’re already using AI, says Lunn. “It’s the same thing! If you think about Google, it has all the information in the world. Now, it’s all be tokenised into a giant ball and you can put your query in with a text prompt. It goes exactly to the right spot and pulls something out in a way that combines images and text and video together – and it’s fantastic.”

The rapid evolution of Google’s AI tools in the space of a few months, he continues, strongly suggests we are on a trajectory of massive, exciting change.

So, as a start-up, does this mean that Depix risks getting pushed aside by wave after wave of new technology – or, alternatively, swallowed up by a larger vendor from the CAD and visualisation market, such as Autodesk or Siemens (or perhaps even Google, OpenAI or Grok)?

Lunn considers the question, before suggesting that it all comes down to the foundational trained AI models.

Only a few of these are “worthy”, he says.

“Obviously, Google has its entire AI suite open. OpenAI is another one. There’s Grok, Claude, there’s these various different suites and then there’s all the image models. There are Chinese ones, and there’s the German one, Flux. If you’re Autodesk, you can’t compete with that [by building your own].”

He cites the example of Adobe, which tried to compete in this market with the introduction of its ‘more ethical’ Firefly product, but subsequently struggled because even a company of that size doesn’t have enough images to make it work well. “It only had 600 million [images] or something,” says Lunn. “You know, they need all the images on the global internet – like Google does – to make it work really, really well. So you can’t fight those things.”

In Lunn’s view, Depix has the freedom to stay ahead of bigger industry players, acting as a layer built on top of the foundational AI models with the freedom to move to the latest and greatest at any given time. Currently, its default engine is Google’s Nano Banana Pro, but that could change.

While offline versions of Depix Image Lab and Design Lab are possible through an MIT or Apache licence, the online version of the software has the brakes taken off.

“There are some big changes that have to come, and organisations at some point are going to have to decide, ‘Do I want to move fast, or do I want to stay in the slow lane?’ I can assure you that companies in China are in the fast lane for all products and all things that are made, and if we don’t make this transition within the West, we will be relegated to never manufacturing again.”

IMAGINATION FACTORY

1 The original input ●

image: a Bertone blueprint of the vehicle in side profile

2 Next, an initial ● render is produced with appropriate setting, lighting, textures and details 3 Then, a human figure ● is added to the mix to increase realism, add scale and create an emotional connection in viewers

With AI rendering issues like image quality and scale now fixed, the next big challenge (and one on which Depix has been hard at work) is improving scene control for users.

Depix Design Labs gives them the ability to add to a scene 4 Colours can be ● basic geometric 3D shapes and sketch data, and to position adjusted until the designer is happy with objects within it, from items of furniture to people. the overall effect What’s jaw dropping is the level of intelligence at work 5 Likewise, specific ● here. Requests that might previously have proved tricky features can also be – such as requesting the primitive be turned into a jar edited – in this case, the of peanut butter sitting next to a jar of hand wash – are grille of the car handled in seconds with no confusion. A photorealistic, 6 Finally, the whole scene ● Jif-branded jar, complete with appropriate text and colours, can be transported to a different location, to suit is scaled neatly next to the hand wash render, with perfect the needs of the project lighting, textures and details. No Google search is likely to find a single image of these two products next to one another, but by synthesising all the images into a big pile, the AI has the intelligence to grab the correct products and know the context in which they will be combined.

Depix Design Lab is not simply about renders, but also about delivering a full styling workflow that offers control, sparks new ideas, and allows for variants to be expanded or concepts to be dialled in, and for it all to subsequently be exported in 8k.

Visualisation expertise used to be a very long journey, requiring study, practice and time spent in order to get materials, lighting and everything else right, says Lunn.

“Now, within a couple of clicks, you’re there,” he says.

There’s resistance to this change, he acknowledges, and it’s harder for some users to absorb, but ultimately, he sees Depix as an amplifier of creativity rather than a replacement for human input.

What needs to change is the relationship between designers and AI. In particular, designers need to get better at asking AI to deliver what they want and need. It comes down to two things: first, being able to articulate what you want in a prompt to AI; and second, being able to convey details in the form of sketches.

What his experience tells Lunn is that AI tools like Depix are only limited by the user’s imagination. In other words, the creativity and ingenuity of designers should keep them firmly at the helm. www.depix.ai

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TECHNOLOGY

BUILT DIFFERENTLY

» Following the launch of Onshape’s first AI tool last year, Stephen Holmes speaks to Darren Henry, SVP of general operations at the company, to learn how, as a cloud-first SaaS, Onshape has some immediate advantages when it comes to adopting AI

‘‘ With a

databasedriven system, you can access all of the design, even back to its origin, as well as all the steps it took to create it Darren Henry

’’ 1

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nshape made its first moves towards tangible AI-led benefits in its cloud-based software with the addition of AI Advisor in April 2025.

While several other CAD packages have added AI co-pilots to offer users guidance and to answer their questions, as an SaaS offering, Onshape has more inquisitive minds driving its AI strategy.

The past decade has seen Onshape gradually build up its tools and capabilities. Industry perception has quickly transitioned accordingly. What was once seen as a ‘maker tool’ subsequently came to be viewed as a secondary CAD tool, and finally, a competitive, professional CAD package.

Following another solid year of growth in 2025, Darren Henry, senior vice president of general operations for Onshape is full of enthusiasm for what is yet to come. It’s a sign, he says, that more designers and engineers are inclined to modernise their toolsets and workflows.

Over 80% of new business last year was driven by “rip

and replace” implementations, he says, with Onshape’s data management and collaboration tools cited as a big draw for larger enterprises.

As trust in cloud compute and storage increases in the business world, Onshape has gone further still, adding a tier that runs on AWS GovCloud, with security features that adhere to US government mandates.

This trend, Henry predicts, will continue to gain momentum as business leaders look toward AI to help speed and shape design workflows – something with which legacy installed software has issues.

“If you want to come out with new AI tools, they’re only going to work with the latest version, so you’re going to have to update and install. And, as you know, that’s a big ask, especially in a large enterprise where you’ve implemented PDM and PDM servers.”

A user base confronting adoption issues like this immediately puts legacy CAD brands on the back foot and gives Onshape a distinct advantage, he adds.

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02/02/2026 12:36

DATABASE-DRIVEN According to Henry, it’s important to understand not just that Onshape is a full, cloud-native technology that can run on any device in a browser and on the same ‘clean’ system in which it was developed, but also that its storage is all online, with every user working from a single version of the truth.

“There’s also a huge advantage in the database-driven approach, and that determines how seamless PDM can be,” he continues. “If you have a file-based system, like the legacy systems, it’s check in, check out. You’re making copies behind the scenes. Here, with a databasedriven system, you’re just accessing the database, and you can access all of the design, even back to its origin, as well as all the steps it took to create that design.

It supports the way that users work together, he adds, because “with a database-driven system, you can do that simultaneous editing.”

Database-driven means being able to design “fearlessly”, he says. “You can restore back to any point, all data is recoverable, and you actually track who did what and when it was done.”

This ability to capture every activity also feeds into AI, which gets an added boost from knowing who made a tweak to a design, when and why, not to mention what mistakes they made and how they fixed them.

Henry suggests users should think of AI not as part of the software, but as a teammate who you invite into your design.

“It gives you extreme control over how AI interacts with your design. You can control when and how it accesses your information. You have clear logs of what it changed and what it didn’t. And because it’s not based on ‘File Save As’ or ‘File Save’, it’s not the last-save version, so you can always recover from what AI has done to your model.”

This approach is significant, he says, as it highlights the amount of control and visibility you have over using AI, and reflects how using different AI agents with specific abilities can be invited into your workflow at different times, such as other team members, specialists or suppliers.

While PTC is investing heavily in developing its own AI agents, Henry is keen to highlight the growing ecosystem of partners at work here. One of the biggest is Amazon Web Services (AWS). Technology and help from AWS enabled Onshape to develop Onshape Advisor. The Onshape app store features engineering and simulation add-ons that reflect the company’s maturing status as a tool for professionals.

At a time when many start-ups offer cloud-first technologies, and established competitors such as Solidworks have begun charging royalties to third-party software developers, Onshape is looking to capitalise on its advantages.

“AI can leverage those models and look at those and utilise them to be trained. And we store all activities, so our data is more high-dimensional, in that it stores your mistakes as well as how you recovered from those mistakes. It has that topology where it will actually tell you how a model was built, step by step. Every model has that sort of data.”

Henry adds that Onshape’s architecture offers full REST API capabilities, allowing for millions of requests to be managed simultaneously by distributing requests across multiple servers and for simpler integration of complex AI models.

Its own programming language, FeatureScript, is a structured, code-based language for generative design that allows AI models to learn, generate and automate complex 3D modelling actions.

Some issues still remain. Onshape still relies on Parasolid and B-Rep geometry, which is not ideal for generative AI. But its current position, with a user base proactive about designing in the cloud and adopting the latest technologies, strongly suggest that the next decade for Onshape could be just as transformative as its first 13 years.

1 Onshape added its ●

AI Advisor co-pilot to its CAD & PDM software in April 2025 and has since added to its capabilities

2 The AI-enabled ● assistant adjusts variable-driven designs by automating changes in the CAD model 3 ● 4 By entering ● prompts, users can quickly render a CAD design as a photorealistic setting with full lighting and materials

www.onshape.com

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ONLINE HISTORY Onshape sees itself as the most documented CAD system, a trait that benefits the training of Onshape Advisor.

Released in the age of YouTube, every three-week update to Onshape has been explained through an uploaded video and its online help centre is kept up to date.

“We feel that AI has the ability to ingest more about our application than all these legacy CAD systems,” says Henry.

And that’s before considering all the data available through the Onshape Public Repository, a library of over 15 million 3D models, collated from free-licence users.

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3D SCANNING

WHAT DOES AI MEAN FOR DATA CAPTURE AND WORKFLOW? ART YUKHIN PRESIDENT & CEO / ARTEC 3D

The digital revolution is already well underway and 3D modelling is diversifying.

Users are no longer tied to arbitrary file types. They can quickly digitise entire scenes by combining different data sources. If someone had told me this would be possible 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it!

automation is key. We recently launched Workflows in Artec Studio, our AI-powered software, which automatically fuses captured data (this could be photos, videos or various types of 3D scan) into a watertight model, ready for analysis. It even features scripting, so users can create an end-to-end workflow, go completely hands-off and carry out other tasks. This is only getting easier for engineers to accomplish.

With this approach, you no longer need the hands of a technician. You don’t need a PhD. And you don’t need to spend a lot of time. You can also feed big data directly to AI and extract the information you need.

That’s what our team is working

‘‘

AI is arguably the biggest buzzword in the industry right now, but the technology can play a very real role in reverse engineering and inspection processes

’’

Now, the challenge is finding a way of extracting information from these 3D models.

Arguably, AI is the biggest buzzword in the industry right now, but it can play a very real role in reverse engineering and inspection processes. Let’s say you’re repairing an engine.

With our metrology-grade 3D scanners, you could digitise the entire block, then manually compare scans to CAD drawings. This would allow you to see if a plane is flat enough, or if an angle falls within predefined tolerances.

But imagine if there’s tons of data, like in a production scenario. This is where

on. There are different names for it. We call it ‘Scan-to-CAD’.

Artec Studio already has all the essentials for autosurfacing, surface thickening, and key feature extraction. But now we’re going further.

Over the next decade, I anticipate this becoming a trend. We’re working on streamlining the process and users can already see the benefits in our products. As such, AI isn’t just a buzzword for us. We’re harnessing the technology to deliver actionable insights. I’m excited to see how AI changes the game here in the near future.

■ www.artec3d.com

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ADAM STANLEY MANAGING DIRECTOR / T3DMC

AI will make 3D scanning far more usable for designers and engineers by removing the interpretation bottleneck that sits between capturing data and creating value from it.

For the last few years, scanning hardware has leapt ahead. We can generate clean, dense 3D data faster than ever. The real challenge now is what happens after the file is created. Today, someone with specialist expertise must still spend hours turning point clouds and meshes into something practical — a CAD model, an inspection result, or a decision the business can act on.

This is exactly where AI will change the game. Most design and engineering workflows don’t need an artistic surface model; they need intent. In CAD terms, that means cylinders, planes, circles, holes, edges, and functional features that can be edited parametrically. Because this work already happens in a digital environment, AI can learn to recognise geometry, segment surfaces, fit features automatically and propose a structured model that an

engineer can refine, rather than build from scratch. The result is faster reverse engineering, faster model creation and far fewer manual steps.

The same shift applies to inspection. AI will increasingly interpret drawing requirements, identify what needs to be checked, extract measurements from scan data and report pass/fail against defined tolerances (including GD&T characteristics), with exceptions highlighted for review.

That turns inspection from a labour-heavy programming exercise into an exception-driven workflow, where engineers focus on risk and root cause, instead of repetitive set-up.

However, there’s a nonnegotiable caveat: AI will only be as reliable as the data it is fed.

‘Data in, data out’ isn’t a slogan; it’s an engineering constraint.

If scan data is too noisy, incomplete or captured without good process discipline, the AI will either fail or, worse, produce plausible-looking outputs that aren’t trustworthy.

The organisations that benefit most will be those that pair AI automation with robust measurement methods, consistent workflows and validation on representative parts.

In short, AI isn’t going to be about making 3D scanning faster. It will be about making scan data usable, translating raw capture into design intent and measurable engineering decisions at production speed.

■ www.t3dmc.com

‘‘

AI can learn to recognise geometry, segment surfaces, fit features automatically and propose a model that an engineer can refine

’’

01/02/2026 13:41

TALKING HEADS

Data capture technology has made some spectacular advances in recent years, but the process of putting scans to work in CAD has always been a stumbling block. DEVELOP3D spoke to four industry insiders about what changes AI will bring to 3D scanning and what this means for product design and engineering

JAMES EARL MANAGING DIRECTOR / OR3D

Modern scanners can capture highly detailed geometry quickly, but for many designers and engineers the challenge begins once the data is captured. Raw meshes and point clouds are informationrich yet difficult to translate into usable CAD. Artificial intelligence is increasingly helping to close this gap, but its effectiveness depends heavily on intent.

A critical first step in any reverse engineering project is understanding the desired end deliverable. Is the goal to create a design-intent CAD model, where wear, distortion and manufacturing tolerances are interpreted and potentially corrected? Or is an exact CAD representation of the scanned part required, accurately reflecting the asbuilt or as-worn condition?

This distinction fundamentally shapes how scan data should be processed.

Without this clarity, even the most advanced AI tools can produce technically impressive but practically unsuitable results. Nuance is essential whenever CAD models are derived from scan data alone.

AI adds value by accelerating and structuring the interpretation of scan data.

Tasks such as mesh clean-

up, region segmentation and feature recognition can now be automated to a high degree. More importantly, AI can assist in identifying underlying geometric intent, enabling scan data to be transformed into editable, parametric CAD rather than remaining a static reference.

A strong example of this is Geomagic’s Design X software, where automated workflows are embedded directly into the reverse engineering process.

Its wizard functionality guides users from raw scan data through to CAD, analysing geometry and recommending appropriate feature-based workflows. Planes, cylinders, holes and blends can be recognised automatically, while still allowing engineers to decide whether features should represent nominal design intent or remain true to the scanned condition.

This guided approach lowers the barrier to entry for non-specialists, while giving experienced users the control needed to manage tolerances, symmetry, datum strategy and downstream manufacturability.

The result is CAD that is not only accurate, but usable across design, simulation and production.

At OR3D, working daily with complex scan data, we see AI as an enabler rather than a replacement for engineering judgement. When AI tools are combined with clear intent, quality data and domain expertise, 3D scanning becomes a practical, reliable part of everyday engineering workflows rather than a specialist bottleneck.

■ www.or3d.co.uk

RACHEL ZUCKER HEAD OF AI / BACKFLIP

3D scanning is nearing a massive leap in accessibility, driven by new AI tools that are finally addressing scanning’s key weakness. The technology has long been held back by the incompatibility of 3D scan data with CAD software, but new AI models like ours can now quickly rebuild a scanned object as a native, parametric model in CAD. There’s fantastic 3D scanner hardware on the market that gets better every year and it’s never been easier to create a high-quality 3D point cloud or mesh from a physical object. But

model is not just a shape. It’s a sequence of decisions. Given a noisy, partial observation (a scan), the system must infer the most likely sequence of CAD operations (sketches, extrusions, fillets, etcetera) that a proficient CAD engineer would have chosen to produce that geometry. This is a combinatorially hard, ambiguous task and full of trade-offs.

Humans do it via intuition driven by experience. We’re building AI that’s fluent in 3D geometry and can navigate those same challenges.

Currently, Backflip’s AI models can take 3D scanned geometry and reconstruct editable, parametric CAD with a feature tree, letting engineers immediately modify or remanufacture a part design.

Over time, these tools will evolve into something even more powerful: systems that understand design patterns, functional intent and manufacturing constraints, and which can bake that knowledge

‘‘

If you give three different engineers a scan, you tend to get three unique paths to modelling the same part

’’

engineering CAD software wasn’t designed to edit meshes, so users typically get stuck rebuilding a 3D scan manually before they can do anything with it.

Backflip accelerates this process and reconstructs the scanned geometry in CAD automatically.

Not just any AI model can handle this task, though.

Our team has had to develop specialised AI models with innate 3D comprehension that treat 3D scan reconstruction as a planning and reasoning problem. A CAD

into the generated sequence of CAD operations.

What’s next?

Modelling strategy personas. If you give three different engineers a 3D scan, you tend to get three unique paths to modelling the same part. Everyone designs in CAD differently. What if our tools can not only build a part in your CAD, but model it the same way you would, for a specific manufacturing process? That’s when we truly supercharge your workflow.

■ www.backflip.ai

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RELEASE THE BEAST » The quest to build the fastest ever remote-control car is reaching new heights and hitting speeds that drivers of even the best track cars can only dream about, writes Gabrielle Brown, who meets Stephen Wallis to discuss his race to break a world record

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mission to notch up a car speed world record probably summons up thoughts of huge engines, an unlimited budget and a workshop set-up as sophisticated as that operated by any Formula 1 team out there. But with the motorised creations of Stephen Wallis, it’s more a case of ‘blink and you might just miss it’.

In September 2025, Wallis broke the Guiness World Record for the fastest remote-control car with a diminutive design capable of reaching a jaw-dropping 234 miles per hour (mph). It smashed the existing record by 15mph, thanks to its unique design. It’s a set-up previously unheard of in speed tests run by the Radio Operated Scale Speed Association (ROSSA).

An engineer at Triumph Motorcycles by day, but a remote control (RC) hobbyist at heart, Wallis was drawn to the ROSSA speed testing events by YouTube videos of previous speed runs.

“They really captured my imagination, and when I saw that the rules were almost completely open, I could sense an opportunity to start with a blank sheet of paper and come up with something completely different to what had gone before,” he says.

1 The chassis Wallis’ theory – based on a vehicle boasting four motors ● and aerodynamic with direct drive to the wheels – needed to be put to the lightweight body test, he decided. (RC cars typically have between one and of the Beast was four motors and a transmission to take the drive from the designed in Onshape motors to the wheels.)

2 3D printing was ● Wallis first began with a proof-of-concept, built from an essential to the old quadcopter drone dubbed the Crone, using horizontal Beast’s prototyping and final form wheels instead of vertical props on the shafts.

It turned out that when it comes to maintaining highspeed directional stability, the drone’s flight control system with its accelerometers, gyroscopes and other built-in sensors did an excellent job.

With 43mm diameter wheels and a length of 0.6m, the Crone achieved an unexpected 129mph at ROSSA in June 2024. Wallis was clearly on to something.

Between June and September 2024, he worked tirelessly to develop the Crone’s bigger brother, the Beast, setting himself the goal of topping 200mph.

BUILDING THE BEAST Wallis began his design with hard data, developing a spreadsheet that simulates a speed test run, into which he could enter different car and powertrain parameters

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‘‘ After many CFD iterations, my design allows air under the car, while the canards provide some assistance in reducing pitch sensitivity and providing downforce Stephen Wallis, Beast designer

’’

1

for basic physics calculations. “I used this to come up with the initial sizing of the electric motors, batteries and speed controllers,” he explains.

Using Onshape, Wallis then planned an initial layout of the chassis and designed an aerodynamic lightweight body to be wrapped around it using CFD simulation.

Testing was performed using Simscale, in which he could see the effects of different layouts and body concepts on the design – but he soon ran up against a problem. The ROSSA runway in Llanbedr Airfield in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, is far from completely smooth. Wallis needed a car that could cope with undulating ground at high speed.

“I saw a lot of other cars with front splitters, commonly used to give front downforce, take flight when they hit bumps, so I sought to make my design less sensitive to ride height variation, while still developing downforce,” Wallis says.

“After many CFD iterations, my design allows air under the car, while the canards provide some assistance in reducing pitch sensitivity and providing downforce.”

Initially, the Beast didn’t have mechanical steering and relied on torque vectoring to steer, like the Crone.

But at its first test event in September 2024, this caused problems. “Round 3 ended in total disaster,” he says.

“Everything went wrong, and I burnt £300 worth of electrical components.”

Two motors burnt out in an initial test. Once that was repaired, all four speed controllers burnt out. The whole car had to be redesigned to add a mechanical steering switch to the VESC (Vedder Electronic Speed Controller), which can better control the current going to the motor in comparison with typical RC speed controllers.

3D-printed prototypes were essential to the design process and make up important aspects of the Beast’s final form. The 1.1m-long aerodynamic bodyshell is 3D printed, as are the carbon fibre leaf spring suspension spacers and rear damper mounts.

RECORD BREAKER The Beast made its debut at ROSSA in September 2025. In Round 1, it achieved a personal best of 196mph, but there were issues with ESC cuts and battery power limitations.

After some tweaks, Beast’s Round 2 speed smashed Wallis’ goal of 200mph,

2 accomplishing 213mph.

Welsh weather conditions pushed back Round 3 by a few days, allowing Wallis to change the layout of the chassis and fit an upgraded battery set-up, which not only gives a higher voltage (75V compared to 63V) but also higher current capability.

“For Round 3, I had my eye on the outright RC speed records of 218.47mph through speed traps and 226mph on GPS,” he says.

Despite wind and rain continuing to trouble the course, the Beast hit a speed of 234.71mph through the speed traps, breaking the Guinness World Record.

Records, of course, are there to be broken. In Wallis’ case, that record has since been toppled in 2026, but this has only added further drive to what he has named Project 250, as he targets speeds that even the world’s best hypercars would struggle to achieve, proving once again that size isn’t everything. www.youtube.com/@steveeng1826

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LAST WORD

A recent encounter with some pesky parasites has got Stephen Holmes thinking that the march of progress can catch the best of us off-guard – but take your eye off AI and you risk damaging your own competitiveness

H

ead lice. Tiny parasites with six clawed legs that cling to human hair, sticking to an evolutionary pattern that genetic studies suggest began some 1.68 million years before Homo sapiens even walked the earth.

I’m reading these wearisome details on my phone, standing in the bathroom at home, where my wife is combing the head of our child and occasionally declaring in triumph, “Another one!”

It’s as if she wants me to have the head of each and every vanquished louse stuffed and mounted on the wall.

I’ve got past form when it comes to parasites and pests. My various encounters include bed bugs from a Las Vegas hotel, moths from an old carpet, ticks from the dog and rats while living in London, where rats are basically everywhere. So my son’s infestation is a relatively minor one by comparison, but the treatment for it is very different from what I remember from my own childhood.

Those of you who also attended school back in the twentieth century might share the memory of a person referred to as ‘the nit nurse’. I doubt their work required a full medical degree – but the skill involved in grappling with a feral primary-school pupil long enough to drag a closetoothed comb through their unkempt hair shouldn’t be underestimated. (I suspect they got bonus points for removing a good chunk of hair along with every louse captured.)

Pupils found guilty of harbouring lice were sent home with a shampoo that may well have been derived from unsold batches of napalm, along with a plastic comb, so that their own parents could continue the task of painfully scraping at their scalps.

But times change and the kit you need to tackle head lice has moved on, too, much to my delight. Combs are far more efficient; for my money, the best in the business is the Nitty Gritty. Each of its 33 teeth has a

spiral groove along its length, like a tiny drill bit. Lice and their eggs get caught in this groove and are quickly dispatched.

Anti-lice shampoo has improved too – and that’s just as well because, having built up a resistance to poison over time, they must now be suffocated instead.

The upside is that the chemical warfare stench is a thing of the past, at least in this particular arena of combat.

BIG LEAPS FORWARD

down with the company’s CEO for this issue of DEVELOP3D. In my head, AI renders still meant six-fingered hands, nonsensical text, iffy lighting and poor levels of user control.

Some AI renders are still like that, to be fair – but not at Depix. In fact, the pace of development there in just a couple of months has been shockingly fast.

So go and take a second look at that newer technology or toolset. You may be amazed at what you find. Either way, your competitors are probably weighing them up, too – and the risk here is that their willingness to consider more modern approaches could accelerate their workflows and leave yours in the dust.

While I’m on the subject, the march of progress is a very good reason to attend DEVELOP3D LIVE. Our annual event offers attendees the opportunity to see firsthand what’s available now and also catch a glimpse of what’s coming down the line.

It’s a chance to ask the questions that have been bugging you about a particular technology or toolset and to speak to your peers about their own experiences.

When change comes thick and fast, it’s tempting to keep your head down. But for those of you willing to stick your head above the parapet, please do make sure that it’s lice-free first.

The recent scene in my bathroom prompted me to consider that all tools and processes eventually move on. Hopefully, they evolve and improve. And the more attention we pay to reassessing them, the more surprised we are at the seemingly inexhaustible march of progress.

People often look at what’s new and decide it’s not for them at this particular time, for their own particular reasons. Fair enough. But when they do get around to checking back in with a technology several weeks, months or years down the line, they’re likely to find that a technology has become dramatically more accessible, more affordable, less complex, or just a better fit for work they need to get done.

If they don’t take the time to reassess regularly, then these improvements simply pass them by, often until it’s way too late to catch up. To my mind, this rule seems to apply to AI, too – but big, big changes are much more noticeable, especially when they arrive at a faster rate and over a shorter period.

This time last year, DEVELOPD3D presented readers with a list of exciting new AI tools for design and engineering workflows – and, sure enough, the majority of the companies featured and the products they offer have advanced substantially since then.

Take, for example, Depix. Despite being fed a steady trickle of Depix renders and demos via social media, I had absolutely no idea of the intelligence and judgement of which this tool is now capable until I sat

With AI, the rule seems to be that big, big changes are far more noticeable, especially when they arrive at a faster rate and over a shorter period

GET IN TOUCH: With a household of clean scalps now assured, Stephen admits to feeling slightly let down that no radically new approach to tackling head lice has yet emerged. Perhaps that’s a business idea for one of you? On Twitter, he’s @swearstoomuch

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01/02/2026 13:51

WWW.DEVELOP3D.COM

Workstation special report Winter 2026

Personal touch From dedicated blade workstations to micro desktops adapted for the datacentre we explore the rise of the 1:1 remote workstation

Workstation GPUs

Best pro laptops 2026

Micro machines

Why GPU memory matters, plus in-depth Nvidia Blackwell and Intel Arc Pro reviews

Our pick of the best enterpriseclass mobile workstations for CAD, viz, and simulation on the go

Can compact workstations handle big BIM, CAD, and viz?

Plus in-depth reviews

WS01_D3D_FEBMARCH26_Cover.indd 1

01/02/2026 14:21

3d animation

AEC

A.i.

BIM

Autodesk

visualisation

Product Design

The ultimate remote working experience for any graphical application.

IMSCAD Services have over 10+ years experience in delivering remote working solutions. Our solutions range from cloud based and on-premises VDI, to hosted physical workstations.

• Consulting • Project scoping and sizing • 24/7 support • Work with the experts

Contact us for your Free Demo

www.imscadservices.com

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28/11/2025 11:14

workstation special report

The memory challenge DDR5 memory shortages and rising prices are reshaping workstation buying. Greg Corke explores how architecture, engineering, design, and manufacturing firms can adapt without panicking same fabs. Then there are If you’ve priced a new pro GPUs, which demand workstation recently, one far more memory than their thing is clear: memory now consumer cousins. Business takes up a much larger slice Insider reports that a 24 GB of the quote than it did just a Nvidia RTX Pro 5000 few months ago. There’s no Blackwell GPU in a Dell need to panic quite yet, but mobile workstation now this significant change in the carries a $530 premium.

IT sector cannot be ignored.

All of this leaves firms Since October, DDR5 prices asking a simple question: have climbed sharply, and for architecture, engineering, Treat memory how do you make sensible workstation purchasing design, and manufacturing like you did decisions when the market is firms that rely on memorytoilet roll in so unpredictable? heavy workstations, this The most obvious tactic has become a planning and Spring 2020: is to shop around, though purchasing challenge that buy wisely, don’t presume prices will demands careful thought. stay calm, and stay still for long. Lenovo has So why has this happened? you’ll get been kicking the proverbial The short answer: the AI boom broke the memory through the DDR5 can down the road by stockpiling memory, market. Samsung, SK Hynix, crunch but how long will that last? and Micron have shifted unscathed Unfortunately, boutique large portions of production integrators don’t have the to high-bandwidth memory same buying power, and for AI accelerators and datacentres, leaving DDR5 supply for PCs some have even been forced to ration stock.

Consider buying pre-configured and workstations starved. For some, what used to be a routine workstation purchase workstation SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) now feels more like hunting for toilet roll already in the channel. You may also find more pricing stability in systems where in the early days of Covid.

Unfortunately, the disruption isn’t memory is soldered onto the mainboard. temporary. Analysts expect this shortage, For example, a top-end HP Z2 Mini G1a and sky-high prices, to continue through with 128 GB of memory that cost £2,280 in mid 2026, with some warning it may August 2025 now goes for just £50 more extend into 2027 before supply stabilises. (see review on page WS28).

Another approach is to extend the life of How this affects workstations what you already have. If your workflows Rising memory costs are already impacting have evolved from pure CAD/BIM to the price of workstations. In just a few visualisation, upgrading the GPU — for months, DDR5 prices have surged — in instance, to the Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 some cases tripling or quadrupling. A Blackwell (see review on page WS48) — can 96 GB kit that cost £200 in July can now breathe new energy into your workstation. command £800, while a 256 GB ECC Furthermore, if you’re maxing out the kit that sold for £1,500 in August may system memory in your current machine now push £4,000, if it can be sourced at and you still have spare DIMM slots, all. Prices remain volatile, dramatically adding a bit more RAM is cheaper than replacing all of your memory modules. shifting week to week, even overnight.

If you must buy new systems, planning The memory crunch is also spilling over into other components. SSDs have for future upgrades is more important climbed in price too — not as sharply as than ever. Look for platforms with four DDR5, but enough to notice — because or more DIMM slots so you can start with some of their components are made in the a baseline configuration and add more

‘‘

’’

www.develop3d.com

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memory later when prices come down.

Don’t splurge on top-tier modules today — leave some room to grow. This way, you meet your immediate needs without blowing the budget, and you’ll be ready to expand when the market stabilises.

Software and workflow strategies can also stretch existing resources.

Optimising projects to reduce memory footprint, closing unnecessary applications, or offloading demanding tasks to the cloud, such as rendering, simulation and reality modelling, can all help ease memory pressure.

Renting cloud workstations is another option. With a 1:1 remote workstation (see page WS6), you get the performance you need without tying up capital in potentially overpriced hardware. Some workstation-as-a-service providers, such as Computle (see page WS10), have even locked in prices across their contracts.

Strategies for smarter purchases The memory crunch isn’t going anywhere fast, so buying a workstation now requires more thought than usual. Preconfigured SKUs, squeezing more life out of your existing machines, and careful planning upgrades for later all help stretch your budget. Cloud processing and remote workstation subscriptions can also ease some pressure. The market is unpredictable, but firms that mix foresight with flexibility can keep design and engineering teams productive without overpaying. In other words, treat memory like you did toilet roll in Spring 2020: buy wisely, stay calm, and you’ll get through the crunch unscathed.

February / March 2026

WS3

01/02/2026 14:42

workstation special report

Workstations at work To help shape our 2026 Workstation Special Report, we surveyed over 200 design professionals on real-world workstation use. Thanks to everyone who took part. Here are some of the results, but how does your setup compare?

5% Remote / cloud

9% Desktop Micro / Small Form Factor

50% Desktop Tower

36% Mobile / Laptop

6% AMD Radeon Pro

What type of workstation do you primarily use?

What brand of GPU do you have?

Desktop towers remain the most widely used form factor, reflecting ongoing demand for maximum performance and expandability.

Mobile workstations account for over a third of use, underlining the continued shift toward flexible and hybrid working. Small form factor desktops represent a niche but notable segment, suggesting interest in space-efficient systems.

Meanwhile, remote and cloud-based workstations remain a small minority, indicating that they have yet to reach mainstream adoption

Nvidia RTX leads, reflecting its dominance in professional workstations and broad OEM availability. GeForce, primarily a consumer GPU, also has a strong showing, offering good price/performance for visualisation, mainly in specialist systems. It’s not surprising to see Intel integrated’s tiny slice, while for AMD integrated we’ve yet to see the impact of its impressive new ‘Zen 5’ chips, including the Ryzen AI Max Pro, which is currently offered by only a few OEMs, mainly HP

3% AMD Ryzen Threadripper

5% 48 cores or more

8% AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro

21% AMD Ryzen

53% Intel Core

11% Intel Xeon

WS4

February / March 2026

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1% AMD integrated

51% Nvidia RTX (professional)

7% 4 cores or fewer

How many CPU cores do you have?

What CPU do you have?

Intel Core continues to dominate, but this is not surprising considering it offers the best performance for CAD. Intel Xeon still plays a role in more enterprisefocused workstations, though its share is relatively small. AMD shows a strong overall presence, with Ryzen accounting for a fifth of systems, despite very limited availability from the major OEMs. Higherend AMD Threadripper (Pro) systems remain niche but important, serving users with extreme compute, memory, and I/O requirements that go beyond mainstream workstation needs

33% Nvidia GeForce (consumer)

7% AMD Radeon

2% Intel integrated

38% 16-32 cores

25% 6–8 cores

25% 10-16 cores

Most respondents use mid-to-high core count CPUs, reflecting the dominance of Intel Core. However, buyers may not be choosing these chips specifically for their cores, as they also deliver the highest clock frequencies, which is critical for CAD. Systems with 6–16 cores remain popular, balancing performance and cost. Very low core counts are rare, likely indicative of ageing workstations, while ultra-high core counts point to specialised use cases such as high-end visualisation and simulation

www.develop3d.com

01/02/2026 14:43

9

ed

ted

workstation special report

2% Laptop screen only

21% 3 or more monitors

11% More than 4K

24% 1 monitor

53% 2 monitors

29% Full HD (1,920 × 1,080) 31% 4K (3,840 × 2,160)

29% QHD (2,560 × 1,440)

How many monitors do you use?

What resolution is your primary monitor?

Dual-monitor setups dominate, supporting workflows like modelling on one screen and reference apps or visualisation on the other.

Single-monitor setups remain common, used by nearly a quarter of respondents, while three or more screens indicate more complex or immersive workflows. Very few rely solely on a laptop, showing most professionals prefer larger, dedicated displays for detailed design work

Monitor resolutions are fairly evenly distributed, with 4K leading slightly, reflecting demand for detailed visualisation and design work. A smaller segment uses resolutions above 4K, likely for specialised workflows requiring extreme detail. Overall, most professionals prioritise clarity and workspace efficiency, though FHD, still common in many laptops, remains widespread

What are the biggest performance bottlenecks you face?

Slow model loading, often dictated by single-threaded CPU performance, is the most common performance bottleneck, affecting over half of respondents. Viewport lag and long rendering times affect around a third and a quarter of users, while network and cloud sync issues impact more than a quarter. Crashes, slow simulations, and storage limitations are less common. Only a small fraction report no issues. Notable “others” include single-core-limited applications, drawing production, and poor interface design 52% - Slow model loading/opening 27% - Long rendering times 32% - Laggy viewport performance 26% - Crashes and instability 16% - Slow simulation or analysis 10% - Storage speed 28% - Network/cloud sync issues 8% - None 10% - Other

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1% 8 GB RAM 8% 16 GB RAM

4% 96 GB RAM

How much system memory do you have?

20% 128 GB RAM or more

31% 32 GB RAM

36% 64 GB RAM

www.develop3d.com

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Take our 2026 survey

Most workstations feature 64 GB of RAM, reflecting the growing demands of CAD, visualisation, and simulation workflows.

128 GB or more is used by a surprisingly large minority for highly complex tasks.

16 GB is rare, probably indicative of ageing systems that may well benefit from a RAM upgrade. Our heart goes out to the two respondents who suffer with 8 GB, which is barely enough to load Windows, let alone run CAD. Overall, the data shows design professionals prioritise ample memory to support performance and multitasking

February / March 2026

WS5

01/02/2026 14:44

workstation special report

The rise of the 1:1 remote workstation From compact ‘desktops’ to purposebuilt blades, a new wave of dedicated 1:1 datacentre-ready workstations are redefining CAD, BIM, and visualisation workflows — combining the benefits of centralisation with the performance of a dedicated desktop, writes Greg Corke

F

or more than a decade, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and cloud workstations have promised flexible, centrally managed workstation resources for design and engineering teams that use CAD, BIM and other 3D software. But a parallel trend is now gathering serious momentum: the rise of the 1:1 remote workstation.

In a 1:1 model, each user gets remote access to a dedicated physical workstation with its own CPU, GPU, memory and storage. There is no resource sharing, no slicing of processors, and no contention with other users. In many ways, it combines the performance predictability of a local desktop workstation with many of the management, security and centralised data benefits traditionally associated with VDI. This shift is being driven by performance demands, changing IT priorities, and the growing maturity of remote access technologies. And it is appearing in several distinct forms.

multiple users typically share CPUs and GPUs through virtualisation, a 1:1 remote workstation assigns an entire machine to a single user. That machine typically sits in racks in a dedicated server room or datacentre, either on-premise or hosted by a third-party service provider. However, it could also sit under a desk, or in the corner of an office.

The user accesses the workstation remotely using high-performance display protocols such as Mechdyne TGX, PCoIP (HP Anyware), NICE DCV (now Amazon DCV), Parsec or Citrix HDX. However, from a compute perspective, it behaves exactly like a local workstation.

How the trend is emerging

1) Compact desktop workstations in the datacentre One of the most visible indicators of the 1:1 trend, especially for design and engineering teams that use CAD and BIM software, is the relocation of compact desktop workstations into the datacentre.

Machines such as the HP Z2 Mini and Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF are increasingly being mounted in racks rather than sitting on desks. Thanks to their small form factors, these systems offer impressive density. With the ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF, for example, seven individual workstations can be housed in a 5U chassis.

What is a 1:1 remote workstation?

Density matters for several reasons.

Unlike VDI or public cloud environments Higher density reduces rack space like AWS or Microsoft Azure, where requirements, lowers hosting costs, and

HP Z2 Mini G1i / G1a

Compact

HP’s 1:1 remote workstation spotlight falls on the HP Z2 Mini, a tiny powerhouse that comes in two flavours.

The HP Z2 Mini G1i packs highfrequency Intel Core Ultra CPUs with discrete Nvidia GPUs up to the powerful RTX 4000 SFF, while the HP Z2 Mini G1a runs on the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro processor with integrated Radeon graphics (see review on page WS28).

Thanks to its smaller processor package and integrated PSU, the G1a offers a slight advantage in terms of rack density, fitting five units in 4U, compared with six G1i units in 5U. ■ www.hp.com WS6

February / March 2026

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improves energy efficiency per user.

Crucially, these are still true desktop workstations. Users get the same CPU frequencies, GPU options and application performance they would expect from a machine under their desk. Remote management and access capabilities are typically added via specialist add-in cards, enabling IT teams to control and maintain systems centrally.

Compact desktop workstations do have their limitations. While they can offer the highest-frequency CPUs — capable of boosting into Turbo for excellent performance in single-threaded CAD and BIM applications such as Solidworks and Autodesk Revit — they are typically restricted to low-profile GPUs or integrated graphics.

In the past, this confined them largely to traditional CAD and BIM workflows. However, the latest compact models are surprisingly capable, with models including the Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada and Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell SFF, having enough graphics horsepower and GPU memory to comfortably handle mainstream visualisation workflows in applications such as Enscape, Twinmotion, KeyShot and Solidworks Visualize.

For more demanding users, high-end desktop tower workstations with high core count CPUs, lots of memory, and one or more exceedingly powerful full height professional GPUs, can also be racked, extending the adapted desktop model

Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra

Compact

Lenovo’s 1:1 workstation offering centres on the ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF, a compact system with a BMC card for ‘servergrade’ remote management.

Configurable with Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) CPUs and Nvidia RTX GPUs up to the RTX 4000 SFF, it packs a punch for CAD and viz workflows while delivering good density with up to seven units in a 5U rack space. For even higher density, the ThinkStation P3 Tiny delivers twelve systems in 5U. However, the micro workstation is limited to CAD and BIM workflows, with a narrow range of GPUs up to the Nvidia RTX A1000.

■ www.lenovo.com www.develop3d.com

01/02/2026 14:45

workstation special report

‘‘

The strongest argument for 1:1 remote workstations is performance.

Each user gets dedicated CPU, GPU, memory and storage.

There is no noisy neighbour effect, no unexpected slowdowns because another user happens to be rendering or running a simulation

’’

to advanced visualisation, simulation and AI workflows. However, achievable density is massively reduced.

The major workstation players – Dell, HP and Lenovo – design most of their tower systems to be rack mountable, as does Boxx. However, that’s not the case for all systems, especially custom manufacturers that often use consumer gaming chassis.

2) Dedicated rack workstations – blades Another strand of the trend is the resurgence of the purpose-built workstation blade, a form factor first pioneered by HP in the early 2000s. Each blade is a slender, self-contained 1:1 workstation

Dell Pro Max Micro

with its own CPU, GPU, memory, and storage, engineered specifically for deployment in the datacentre.

In 2025, new systems have arrived from Amulet Hotkey, while Computle has gone one step further, launching a workstationas-a-service offering built around its own dedicated blade hardware. Established players such as Boxx and ClearCube also continue to offer blade-based workstation platforms.

Blades provide a clean, highly modular approach to workstation deployment.

The density is impressive with typically around 10 blades slotting into 5U or 6U chassis. Blades also integrate neatly into existing datacentre infrastructure,

Compact

Compared with HP and Lenovo, Dell is much less vocal about its 1:1 remote workstation offering, which centres on the Dell Pro Max Micro desktop, which packs seven units into a 5U rack.

Unlike the HP Z2 Mini G1i and Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF, which can be configured with 125W Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPUs, the Dell Pro Max Micro is limited to the 65W Intel Core Ultra 9 285. However, this is unlikely to impact performance in single-threaded CAD and BIM workflows. GPU options include the Nvidia RTX A1000 for CAD and the RTX 4000 SFF Ada for visualisation workloads.

■ www.dell.com www.develop3d.com

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relying on centralised and redundant power, which simplifies cabling and makes them inherently well suited to remote-access scenarios.

From a performance perspective, blades are ideal for CAD and BIM workflows, commonly featuring high frequency CPUs and single slot pro GPUs. However, some blades can also support full height, dual slot GPUs, which can push graphics performance into the realms of high-end visualisation, beyond that of the compact desktop workstation.

For organisations standardising on remote-first workflows, blades represent a highly engineered interpretation of the 1:1 workstation concept.

Amulet Hotkey CoreStation HX

Blade

Amulet Hotkey’s CoreStation HX is built for the datacentre combining redundant power and cooling with ‘full remote system management’ via a 5U enclosure that can accommodate up to 12 workstation nodes.

The CoreStation HX2000 is built around laptop processors, up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H and MXM GPUs up to the CAD-focused Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada. For more demanding workflows, the upcoming CoreStation HX3000 will feature desktop processors up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, paired with low-profile Nvidia RTX and Intel Arc Pro GPUs. ■ www.corestation.com February / March 2026

WS7

01/02/2026 14:45

workstation special report

3) Dedicated rack workstations – 1U and 2U “pizza boxes” Sitting alongside blades are 1U, 2U, and 4U rack-mounted workstations, purposebuilt, single-user workstations designed specifically for racks. The ultra-slim 1U systems are sometimes called “pizza boxes”.

Rack workstations appeal to organisations seeking maximum performance, full-size professional GPUs, and good integration with existing server infrastructure — without the need for a blade chassis. Like other 1:1 approaches, they deliver predictable, dedicated performance while avoiding the complexity of heavy virtualisation.

The downside of rack workstations is their low density—particularly for CAD and BIM workflows, where the most suitable graphics cards are often small, entry-level models, leaving much of the large internal space unused.

There’s a tonne of firms that offer dedicated rack workstations, including Armari, PC Specialists, Novatech, BOXX G2 Digital, Exxact, Titan, ACnodes, Puget Systems, and Supermicro. HP and Dell also have rack systems but these are now several years old and, presumably, being phased out in favour of small form factor workstations.

Performance predictability The strongest argument for 1:1 remote workstations is performance.

Each user gets dedicated CPU, GPU, memory and storage. There is no noisy neighbour effect, no unexpected slowdowns because another user happens to be rendering or running a simulation.

CPUs are typically Intel Core processors, which deliver very high clock frequencies and aggressive Turbo behaviour. This is especially important for CAD and BIM applications, which often rely on single-threaded or lightly threaded performance.

Computle

In contrast, VDI and cloud workstations rely on virtualised CPUs, where users receive a fraction of a processor. These virtualised environments often use server-class CPUs such as Intel Xeon or AMD Epyc, which prioritise core count over frequency. Even specialist CADfocused VDI platforms based on AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro involve CPU virtualisation and typically do not allow the processor to go into Turbo.

And frequency really matters for performance. Even simple tasks, such as opening a model or “syncing to central”, are significantly impacted by low CPU frequency. When working with huge models, this can create a major bottleneck, potentially taking hours of out of the working week.

On the GPU side, 1:1 systems avoid contention entirely. While GPU sharing is rarely a major issue for day-to-day CAD and BIM work, it becomes critical for visualisation and rendering workflows, where the GPU may be driven at 100% utilisation for extended periods. A dedicated GPU ensures consistent, predictable performance.

There’s also the matter of GPU memory to consider. A typical entry-level pro GPU for design viz, such as the Nvidia RTX 2000 Pro Blackwell, comes with 20 GB of memory. To get this amount in a VDI setup would be very expensive. And if you don’t have enough GPU memory to load or render a scene, performance can drop dramatically, or software can even crash.

On-premise or fully managed services As with VDI, organisations can choose where and how their 1:1 workstations are hosted.

Some firms deploy systems onpremise, purchasing hardware from vendors such as HP, Lenovo, Amulet Hotkey, ClearCube and Boxx. Lenovo,

Blade

Computle is a workstationas-a-service offering powered by its own 1:1 custom blade workstations, which are purpose-built for the datacentre.

Customers can choose from four standard configurations centred on the Intel Core i714700, with GPU options up to the Nvidia ‘Blackwell’ RTX 5090.

For more flexibility, components can be mixed and matched, including the Intel Core i9-14900, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, or Threadripper Pro processors. Professional GPU options include the CAD-focused Nvidia RTX A2000 and high-end RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell (96 GB).

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in particular, is working to simplify deployment through its Lenovo Access Blueprints, which provide reference architectures and guidance.

Others opt for fully managed services, hosting dedicated workstations in third-party datacentres. Providers such as IMSCAD, Computle and Creative ITC deliver managed 1:1 workstation platforms, combining dedicated hardware with subscription-based services.

Interestingly, neither HP nor Lenovo has gone so far as to offer their own workstation-as-a-service platforms directly. Instead, they prefer to work through specialist partners, allowing customers to choose between ownership and service-based consumption models.

Flexibility – but with boundaries VDI’s greatest strength has always been flexibility: the ability to resize virtual machines and dynamically allocate CPU, GPU and memory resources.

A 1:1 workstation is inherently more fixed. You cannot simply dial up more cores or memory on demand. However, organisations can still achieve flexibility by deploying a mixed portfolio of workstation configurations tailored to different user profiles.

Many firms are also adopting hybrid strategies, combining VDI for lighter or more variable workloads with 1:1 remote workstations for power users who demand guaranteed performance.

The middle ground Not all solutions fit neatly into either camp. Service providers like Inevidesk occupy a middle ground: its vdesk solution virtualises a Threadripper Pro CPU shared among seven users, but each user receives a dedicated GPU. This approach sacrifices some CPU predictability and frequency but ensures

ClearCube CAD Pro

Blade / rack

ClearCube stands out for its extremely broad portfolio of 1:1 workstations that are purpose built for the datacentre.

At the heart of its range is the CAD Pro, a rack-dense system that fits ten blades in a 6U chassis.

The CAD Pro can be configured with a choice of Intel Core CPUs and single-slot Nvidia GPUs, up to the viz-capable RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell, which is more powerful than the SFF variant found in compact 1:1 desktops. For higherend workloads, the CAD Elite line offers dedicated 1U and 2U rack workstations with GPUs up to the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Max-Q. ■ www.clearcube.com www.develop3d.com

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While GPU sharing is rarely a major issue for day-to-day CAD and BIM work, it becomes critical for visualisation and rendering workflows, where the GPU may be driven at 100% utilisation for extended periods

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consistent GPU performance, making it attractive for demanding visualisation tools where GPU contention is the primary concern.

Inevidesk’s approach also offers good flexibility, with the option to quickly reallocate CPU and memory resources to different VMs or pool GPU resources at night for compute intensive workflows such as rendering or AI training.

Sustainability Energy efficiency is often promoted as a key advantage of VDI, with vendors claiming it has a smaller carbon footprint than maintaining multiple 1:1 workstations. The logic is straightforward: instead of powering and cooling multiple processors, graphics cards, and power supplies, a single shared infrastructure can support many users.

If reducing energy consumption is a priority, it pays to examine the details.

Some past carbon comparisons we’ve seen don’t hold up under closer scrutiny, based on maximum power draw rather than typical usage. However, a recent report commissioned by Inevidesk comparing its vdesk platform to a hosted 1:1 desktop workstation, takes a more measured approach and demonstrates tangible energy savings in practice.

That said, 1:1 workstation vendors are also taking energy consumption seriously.

Amulet Hotkey, for example, offers lower-

Boxx Flexx

energy laptop processors, HP has machines with the energy-efficient AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro processor with integrated graphics, and Computle is exploring ways to reduce energy use in its blade systems.

Cost 1:1 workstations can also offer cost savings, but there are several factors to consider.

On the hardware side, multiple entry-level GPUs — such as the Nvidia RTX A1000 — are often less expensive than a single high-end datacentre GPU used for VDI, like the Nvidia L40, though this depends on how many virtual machines you intend to support. This principle extends to more powerful GPUs as well: some vendors, such as Computle, provide gaming-focused GeForce GPUs instead of the more costly, passively cooled datacentre variants. On the other hand, 1:1 workstations require more individual components, including multiple motherboards, power supplies, fans, and in the case of adapted desktops, aesthetically-pleasing chassis that never see the light of day.

The software stack for 1:1 workstations is also more simple. There is no need for virtualisation software, and GPU licensing is straightforward. For example, slicing a GPU for VDI requires an Nvidia RTX Virtual Workstation (vWS) software license, whereas standard free Nvidia RTX drivers are sufficient for a 1:1 workstation.

Blade

Boxx Flexx is a datacentre– ready 1:1 workstation system, that can support up to ten 1G modules or five 2G modules (or all configurations in between) in a standard 5U rack enclosure.

Boxx Flexx offers an enviable combination of density and performance, with the 1G modules offering liquid-cooled Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) CPUs and one double-width Nvidia GPU, while the 2G modules support two double-width GPUs. Boxx also offers BoxxCloud, a workstation-as-a-service solution where Flexx workstations are hosted in regional datacentres.

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Conclusion There are many compelling reasons why design and engineering firms may favour 1:1 workstations over VDI, with performance chief among them. Time and again, we’ve heard of VDI proof-of-concept projects that fail due to user pushback, particularly when performance falls short of what designers and engineers expect from a CAD workstation. In some organisations, this has become a hard line: firms such as HOK, for example, have stated they will not consider cloud workstations / virtualised server CPUs because of the performance penalties associated with single-threaded workflows.

By contrast, 1:1 remote workstations preserve the familiar performance characteristics of a physical desktop. As long as the remote access infrastructure is robust, the transition can be largely transparent to users — delivering high clock speeds, predictable GPU performance, and a consistent experience for demanding CAD, BIM and viz workloads.

That’s not to say VDI doesn’t have its place. Its strengths lie in flexibility, centralised management, and, in the case of public cloud offerings, global availability at scale. But for organisations where performance, user satisfaction, and workflow continuity are paramount, 1:1 remote workstations remain a highly compelling choice for those making the move from desktop to datacentre.

Inevidesk

VDI

Inevidesk offers a VDI solution that has some characteristics of a 1:1 remote workstation.

Each rack-mounted server or ‘pod’ can host up to seven GPUaccelerated virtual desktops called vdesks.

The Threadripper Pro CPU and memory is virtualised, but each vdesk gets a dedicated GPU, such as the Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, for predictable graphics performance. Virtual processors and memory can be adjusted, while multiple GPUs can be assigned to a single vdesk to boost performance in GPU rendering or AI workflows.

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Computle: rethinking remote workstations Blending high-performance 1:1 hardware with streamlined software deployment and smarter energy use, this workstation-as-a-service startup is hard to ignore, writes Greg Corke

I

n the world of CAD workstations, ‘the cloud’ often comes with compromises: shared virtual GPUs, lower-frequency CPUs, complex licensing, and unpredictable performance. Meanwhile, energy use is hard to understand, let alone control.

Computle is taking a fundamentally different approach.

Instead of pooling resources and slicing them up virtually, the UK startup delivers dedicated one-to-one workstations in a fully managed datacentre, built on consumer-grade hardware but delivered as a subscription-based service.

The result, Computle argues, is better performance, lower costs, and a clearer path to energy and cost optimisation — especially for architecture, engineering and construction firms.

Computle’s approach is both economic and technical. On the economics side, there are fewer software licensing costs, which can be significant in traditional virtualised environments.

“If you were taking a traditional graphics card and carving it up, you have to then pay Nvidia virtual workstation licences, whereas because we have dedicated (1:1) graphics cards, there’s no licensing costs associated to that,” explains CEO and founder Jake Elsley.

By leaning on open-source technology, Computle also saves money on the platform side, “Because we can move away from commercial solutions such as VMware, we can essentially use hypervisors built into our free, open-source software stack, so we can get the same performance without all the sort of overhead and costs associated with that, and no noticeable performance impact for the user,” he says.

The net effect is that, instead of each user having a slice of a larger machine, they each get their own dedicated workstation housed in a fully managed datacentre, with monthly billing typically spread over a three-year term.

And because the core components are pretty much the same as those found in a custom desktop workstation, for architecture and engineering firms used to physical machines under desks, this maps neatly to existing expectations.

The hardware setup Instead of using a high-end server or workstation CPU (such as AMD Epyc or AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro) and subdividing WS10

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its resources through virtualisation, Computle offers individual workstations, each dedicated to a single user.

These custom blades, which slot into a rack, are purpose-built for the datacentre, and come with their own dedicated CPU, GPU, RAM and NVMe SSD storage.

Computle primarily uses consumer-grade processors, such as Intel Core, which can reach the high frequencies that CAD workflows demand.

Customers can choose from four standard configurations, each built around the Intel Core i7-14700 CPU (up to 5.4 GHz Turbo), 64 GB RAM, and a 2 TB SSD. GPU options range from the new Nvidia ‘Blackwell’ RTX 5050 (8 GB) up to the RTX 5090 (36 GB). Pricing is aggressive, starting at £123 per month for a 3-year term.

For more flexibility, a full online configurator lets customers mix and match components, including the Intel Core i914900, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and a choice of AMD Threadripper Pro processors up to the 96-core 7995WX. There’s also a large choice of professional GPUs, such as the CAD-focused Nvidia RTX A2000 or super high-end Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell (96 GB), along with options for more memory and expanded storage.

available for Windows and macOS, which wraps and simplifies access to the Hands-on with Computle underlying pixel streaming protocols.

“There’s two options for the customer,” We took one of Computle’s most powerful says Elsley. “We have Nice DCV, which is cloud workstations for a test drive, a protocol owned by Amazon, and then we connecting from our London office to a have Mechdyne TGX, which is suitable for datacentre in the North of England using dual 5K [monitors], so it comes down to Computle’s Windows-based client and the what the customer wants.

Nice DCV protocol.

“Rather than having the user install Machine specs multiple applications and set up VPNs, • AMD Ryzen 9950X CPU etc., we fully streamlined it [the client • Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU application].

• 128GB DDR5 RAM • 2TB NVMe SSD “It’s custom coded from the ground up to integrate natively with those two Running Revit and Twinmotion at 4K, the protocols, giving them a much easier viewport felt just as responsive as a local connection experience.” desktop. Single-threaded CAD benchmarks matched our fastest liquid-cooled Ryzen While most remote users connect 9950X desktop, while multi-threaded via their laptops or desktops using performance lagged slightly — 7% slower in Computle’s client software, the company V-Ray and 13% slower in Cinebench. also offers its own thin client devices, The RTX 5090 topped our charts for preloaded and ready to go.

GPU rendering in Twinmotion and V-Ray. Meanwhile, for firms with historic Overall, a cloud workstation experience that investments in platforms like VMware felt every bit as capable as a top-end local rig.

Horizon, Computle can still slot into those environments — but Elsley notes there is a clear trend away from these older stacks constantly syncing down. Panzura towards their native client and DCV/ caching nodes can be placed in the TGX-based delivery. same rack as the workstations. “There’s He then goes on to reveal that Computle no hidden charges, no bandwidth is also developing its own streaming costs. It’s all just based on the storage Pools and hot spares protocol, built to support multiple consumption,” says Elsley.

For some customers, Computle With fixed hardware in each blade, 5K monitors and multiple connection also serves as an introduction to these Computle may not offer the same devices, such as iPads and tablets. technologies. “We recently had a client flexibility as a fully virtualised solution, but with the right planning, IT teams can Close to compute, multi-site by design that had no understanding of cloud still maintain a good level of adaptability.

Computle is more than just ‘a workstation storage solutions. We were able to bring Each user can be mapped to one or more in the cloud.’ The company offers a range of in some partner firms to get LucidLink specific machines, and organisations storage solutions from enterprise-grade file set up for them and then deploy Computle can create pools of differently specced servers to intelligent caching systems from across three locations.” says Elsley. workstations for different workflows the likes of LucidLink, Panzura, and Egnyte.

— say, lighter CAD/BIM-only boxes Storage is charged at a flat fee and Sustainability / energy-aware billing alongside heavier visualisation rigs. resides in the same datacentre as the One of the most distinctive aspects of “We have users that Computle’s roadmap is have, for example, a set its plan to rethink how of [Nvidia RTX] 5090s customers are billed.

With dedicated 1:1 hardware, featuring highand then a set of 5080s Today, most cloud frequency CPUs and the latest Nvidia Blackwell and a set of 5070s,” workstation providers says Elsley. “We also GPUs, Computle promises cloud workstations that bundle power costs into have some customers a flat monthly fee, based feel just like desktops under the desk who have a majority of on assumed average low-end machines, and usage. Computle aims then a few high specs, to change this. so you can fully customise it across each workstations for fast access. “We offer two “What we’re planning for next year to location as required.” tiers — all flash based on NVMe drives, really upend the market even further is a Crucially, Computle also bakes in and then a slower archiving tier,” says move towards consumption-based billing redundancy at the workstation level, Elsley. “And what we tend to find is that on the electricity side,” says Elsley. “So, as Elsley explains. “[On request] we customers will engage us to do an all-flash moving towards two costs. You have a provide hot spares, so, if there’s any issues setup, one per location.” hardware cost, which is a fixed cost every connecting to a machine, you have access Computle deploys its hardware month, and then a cost based on actual to two or three extra devices.” in datacentres across the world. For data centre charges.”

In its current model, Computle typically customers with multiple offices and Streaming, clients and thin devices regions, Computle works with LucidLink bills for 12 hours of usage a day, but as At the heart of Computle’s user experience and Panzura to offload backend data Elsley explains, for firms that might only is its own custom coded client application, to AWS or Google Cloud, with data be actively working on machines 9-to-5, the

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[For energy reporting] we’ll be able to give you a graph per user, what they’re doing, etc., and we can really drill down, because that’s what drives decisions Computle CEO and founder Jake Elsley

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they’re doing, etc., and we can really drill down and give that data, because that’s what drives decisions.”

For firms under pressure to reduce reported energy use and emissions — while simultaneously ramping up GPUheavy tasks like real-time visualisation and AI — this kind of visibility could be very important.

Computle is also exploring other ways to bring down costs. In 2026 it will introduce Computle Flex, offering customers the opportunity to save 50% on their idle workstations, as Computle’s Hannah Newbury explains, “A company can reduce their footprint costs by sleeping or suspending their machines during quieter times,” she says. “Credit Jake Elsley, is then applied to the bill at the end of the Computle CEO and founder term. For example if you have a 50 person firm, you could be spending £7K monthly.

If you suspended 50% of them in monthly new model could cut costs substantially.

“For the typical architect, they’ll be blocks you would get £1,750 off.” able to lower their costs probably by 20 to 30%. So, if you have 100 machines with Estate management: beyond imaging that, that’s going to be a good cost saving.” Another area where Computle is investing Underpinning this is granular control heavily is in streamlining application of power states, implemented at the deployment and workstation management. software stack level. For example, “One of the things that our customers Computle can detect when GPU-heavy have struggled with historically is looking applications are no longer in focus and after their estate,” says Elsley. “The drop machines into energy-saving modes historical way of doing services would be or enforce scheduled power throttling image-based deployments. overnight. “You have full control of the “If you have a 200 person architects they entire software stack,” says Elsley. “But will spend, typically a week or so, updating it’s about giving people choice because an image and building it, and then within a some customers like to use it as a render month, that image will be out of date.” farm overnight.”

Instead of constantly rebuilding and Beyond billing, Computle is also rolling out full images, Computle has plans looking at energy analytics, so customers to introduce its own version of Microsoft can see exactly where power is being Intune, allowing admins to orchestrate consumed and why.

CAD application deployment at scale.

“They’ll be able to see the real time data.

Admins upload installers for common We’ll be able to give them a report of how CAD, BIM or viz applications once to many kilowatts they’re using. We’ll also be a central portal, then provision each able to give them trends. So, we can say ‘OK, machine on the fly. “Taking that admin you’re using this much overnight, have you time down from many hours to minutes is considered using our new way to standby our vision, and that’s going to be a free add your machines overnight?’ So, lots of ways on for all of our customers,” says Elsley. we can help them reduce that down.”

“The way it works is, there’s the software Computle is also exploring energy catalogue, where the end user can pick reporting at a more granular level. “We’re from a curated list of applications, for looking at some hardware and software example, Revit, and then there’s a back options that give us that per machine level end for the admin so they can say, OK, of information,” says Elsley. “So we’ll be when this machine is built, these are the able to give you a graph per user, what applications I want to get installed.”

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Global footprint, aggressive ambitions While Computle is still heavily UK-focused, it also operates out of datacentres in New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

UK capacity is currently in a wholesale datacentre in the North of England, but change is on the horizon.

“We plan to build our own facility, probably in the next one to two years, so we can then get even greater savings for our customers, with the view that this will then get us to our 100 million workstation goal.”

That goal, which Elsley later confirms as 100 million workstations in just ten years, seems overly ambitious, even for a tierone OEM, let alone a startup — especially considering that market research firm IDC (www.idc.com) forecasts total global sales of desktop and mobile workstations will only exceed 8 million by 2026. Even so, Elsley’s bold vision is impossible to ignore.

Conclusion With dedicated 1:1 hardware, featuring high-frequency CPUs and the latest Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, Computle promises cloud workstations that feel just like desktops under the desk. But its approach isn’t just about outperforming virtualised machines — the company also deserves much credit for addressing other key challenges, such as smarter energy use and streamlined software deployment — all combined with aggressive pricing.

While its growth targets are ambitious to say the least, there’s no question that this UK startup is emerging as a credible challenger to established cloud and VDI workstation providers, certainly making it one to watch for 2026.

■ www.computle.com

Com p wor utle b lad kst pro ation e toty 6 pe

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workstation special report

Lenovo Access: simplifying remote workstations Think remote workstations are complicated? Lenovo begs to differ.

With its new ThinkStation P-Series-based ‘solution blueprints’, the workstation giant is looking to take the mystery — and the headaches — out of deployment, writes Greg Corke

L

enovo workstations have been clock, it’s all about instructions per clock, as Workstation-first centralised for years, but a that’s how you get the performance.”

In many ways, Access serves as a subtle That’s exactly what you get with Lenovo rebuke of traditional VDI for design dependable remote workstation solution involves much more than Access, especially with the ThinkStation workloads. Rather than virtualising a simply putting machines in a server room P3 Series, which features Intel Core graphics server to behave like multiple or datacentre. Traditionally, centralising processors with Turbo frequencies of up CAD boxes, it starts with actual workstations has been left to experts, given to 5.8 GHz, significantly more than you get workstations and exposes them remotely. the layers of hardware and software with a typical processor used for Virtual The Access story begins with the involved to ensure predictable perfor- Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or cloud.

ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF, where Access didn’t emerge in a vacuum. up to seven of the small form factor mance and manageability. Lenovo Access aims to change that, providing a frame- Lenovo has been iterating this approach workstations are housed in a 5U work that makes the deployment of remote in public at NXT BLD, Autodesk ‘HyperShelf’, a custom tray developed workstation environments easier and more University, and Dassault Systèmes by RackSolutions. That concept has now 3DExperience World for several years. expanded with the ThinkStation P3 Tiny, accessible to a wider range of IT teams.

Instead of carving which offers even up shared servers, greater density — Lenovo Access up to twelve ultraRather than virtualising a graphics server to behave compact workstations centralises one to one physical desktop in the same 5U space. like multiple CAD boxes, Lenovo Access starts with workstations – the The ThinkStation actual workstations and exposes them remotely ThinkStation P series P3 Ultra SFF has – in racks, then layers some clear technical on management, benefits over the monitoring, brokering and remoting But customer priorities shifted sharply ThinkStation P3 Tiny, including a protocols. The result is a suite of remote during and, especially, after the pandemic. choice of more powerful GPUs up to the According to Chris Ruffo, worldwide Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation, workstation solutions that, to the end user, feel like a powerful local workstation, but segment lead for AEC and product and support for a dedicated Baseboard development in the Lenovo workstations Management Controller (BMC) PCIe card behave like a managed solution.

At its core is a big emphasis on user group, the moment came when firms for out of band management. The Tiny experience, and performance, something realised remote work wasn’t a short term lacks a PCIe slot for that, instead relying that’s incredibly important to architecture, exception but the new baseline. Many on Intel vPro and tools such as Lenovo engineering or construction firms. As Mark customers, he recalls, said they needed “to Device Orchestration.

Hirst, Lenovo’s worldwide workstation deliver a consistent compute experience, IT admins don’t get the same level of solutions manager — remote and hybrid, a consistent BIM / CAD experience, no hardware level control, acknowledges puts it, when you look at typical AECO matter where they work — at home, in the Hirst, but you gain higher density and applications, “It’s all about hitting that turbo office, on the job site, in the boardroom.” lower cost. Many customers, he says, “just

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Up to seven Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF workstations can be housed in a 5U ‘HyperShelf

want the basic functionality” and already “have ways of managing their devices.”

The mechanical design of the HyperShelf itself has evolved too. The original design simply let the external power supplies hang lose to the side, but in the case of maintenance or failure, customers found it too easy to pull out the wrong cable. A new Gen 2 release makes cable management simpler, and each PSU now sits vertically in a cradle and clearly corresponds to a specific workstation.

Given the density — seven Ultras or twelve Tinys per 5U shelf — thermal behaviour is critical. Hirst stresses that Lenovo and RackSolutions “put it through some pretty rigorous tests to make sure that we’re not going to throttle performance” The shelf relies on front to back airflow with an exhaust fan at the rear.

From a purchasing standpoint, customers can still treat this as a standard Lenovo order. The shelf and supporting parts are available through Lenovo, and as an extension of that, through Lenovo partners.

Lenovo Access isn’t limited to the CAD-focused ThinkStation P3 Series — it also extends to Lenovo’s large tower workstations: the Threadripper Pro-based P8 and Intel Xeon-based P7 and PX. This gives customers a choice of multi-core, multi-GPU, high-memory powerhouses capable of handling the most demanding workflows, albeit at a much lower density.

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Access has to be financially competitive: “If it doesn’t come in less expensive than the competition, than the cloud or VDI, then nobody’s going to adopt it.” He argues that the current Access model “checked all those boxes” — strong user experience, manageable administration at scale, and “saving the customer money as well.”

Then there’s the certification angle.

Some software developers, such as Dassault Systèmes and Catia, still certify hardware at the workstation level.

“Where that workstation sits, is not critical,” says Hirst, , meaning Lenovo can draw on the same rigorous testing and certification process it has relied on for its desktops for decades.

Blueprints: modular “cookbooks” Access is not a single appliance or rigid reference design. Lenovo describes it as a set of Blueprints: validated combinations of hardware, remote protocols like Mechdyne TGX or Microsoft RDP, connection brokers like LeoStream, and management tools that partners and customers can adapt.

Specialist partners such as IMSCAD and Creative ITC already have mature stacks of their own. In that context, Lenovo’s job is to evaluate and document what works well on ThinkStation, not dictate a single stack.

Each blueprint comes with a bill of materials and installation guide. For example, the P3 Ultra + TGX + LeoStream

design includes step by step instructions for installing each module. Hirst frames it quite literally as following a recipe.

Collaboration beyond screen sharing Lenovo’s preferred remoting protocol in many Access Blueprints is Mechdyne TGX. It’s chosen partly for efficiency at high resolutions, but perhaps more importantly for how it handles collaboration.

For design teams, high definition, multi monitor setups are becoming standard. Hirst notes that “everyone seems like they’ve got 4K displays on their desks nowadays. The more pixels you send, the harder it is”. TGX, he says, is “very efficient in what it does,” and “very good at matching to whatever your local configuration is” – whether that’s two displays mirrored from the remote workstation while keeping a third display local, or other layouts.

Where it really stands out, though, is multi user sessions. TGX allows multiple collaborators to connect to the same remote workstation, and any user can be handed control. That makes it ideal for design reviews or training: one user can drive Revit or a visualisation tool while a senior architect or engineer “connect[s] to that same session at the same time, sharing keyboard and mouse control.”

Unlike typical meeting tools, Hirst notes that TGX avoids dropping to the “lowest common denominator” connection.

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Instead of carving up shared servers, Lenovo Access centralises one to one physical desktop workstations – the ThinkStation P series – in racks, then layers on management, monitoring, brokering and remoting protocols

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everything down to the lowest network configuration,” giving everyone the worst experience. TGX instead maintains “a separate stream for each collaborator,” so each participant gets a “super high, responsive, interactive experience, full fidelity, full colour.”

Audio and video conference tools still have their place — collaborators typically use it alongside Microsoft Teams, keeping voice and video there while TGX handles the heavy graphics. Under the hood, TGX offloads encoding to Nvidia NVENC on the workstation GPU — “you need to have an Nvidia GPU on the sender at a minimum” for the best experience, notes Hirst — and can decode efficiently on the client using Nvidia or Intel integrated graphics. The Intel decode path, Hirst notes, has improved to the point where “the difference is pretty minimal,” enabling much lighter, cheaper client devices than before.

Proof before commitment To make these concepts tangible, Lenovo has built a Centre of Excellence for Access. Initially set up in Lenovo’s HQ in Raleigh, North Carolina, it now extends via environments hosted by partners such as IMSCAD and Creative ITC in London, with a new deployment underway at Lenovo’s Milan headquarters and plans for Asia Pacific.

The idea is straightforward: customers can test real workloads on real Access Blueprints without touching their own firewall or infrastructure. They can “just come and access our environment” to see how a P3 Ultra plus TGX plus LeoStream behaves with their tools and data.

Hirst notes that this originated as an internal initiative at Lenovo: “We’ve gone from proof of concept to deployment.

And yes, that’s what our customers are trying to do.”

Now that the centre is mature, it doubles as an adoption engine. The conversion rate from VDI/cloud to one to one workstations is striking: he estimates that “eight out of ten” organisations that try the Centre of Excellence and compare it with their existing setups end up “converting,” because “there’s a noticeable difference.”

Hirst points out that for standard resellers, competition “really comes down to price,” with “margins… squeezed” and “no way to differentiate” beyond discounting. Solutions like Access let them “talk about solutions in different ways,” focusing on solving customer problems — remote user experience, manageability, data locality and cost — instead of battling solely on unit price.

Partners and private clouds

New-school

Access is also reshaping Lenovo’s relationships with partners. Some of the companies now building Accessbased offerings were originally VDI specialists. Hirst notes that customers frustrated with VDI performance are starting to look to private cloud and as a service offerings anchored on one to one workstations instead.

Hirst sees strong interest in this route, especially from firms wary of putting IP entirely in public clouds: organisations are “shifting more towards that private environment,” keeping some workflows in the public domain but moving “confidential IP… in a private environment”. For many, the answer is not to run their own datacentre but to work with partners like Creative ITC or IMSCAD “in order to manage that as a service for them.”

At the same time, large generalist resellers such as CDW are looking for ways to move beyond pure box shifting.

As remote and hybrid work starts to become the default, the choice for design centric firms is no longer between “old school” desk side workstations and virtualised cloud desktops. Lenovo Access argues for a third path: keep physical, ISV-certified workstations close to your data, manage them like a shared service, and deliver them securely to any location — with high frequency CPU clocks and dedicated GPUs still working exactly as the applications expect.

■ www.lenovoworkstations.com/ar/lenovoaccess/

Turn to page WS34 for a full review of the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF, plus details about how design and engineering firms are deploying P3 Ultra-based rack solutions

Rendering of RackSolutions HyperShelf for Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF

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Where Desktop Meets Data Center Performance of a dedicated workstation with the features of a data center platform CoreStation HX provides a bare-metal alternative to virtualization, ensuring your power users can access the resources they need from any location. Housing 12 workstations in just 5U, complete with redundant power and out-of-band management, it is engineered with Intel® Core™ Ultra processors and optional NVIDIA® RTX series GPUs to provide the performance you need to ensure the best possible user experience.

Discover the Bare-Metal Advantage at corestation.com/aec

workstation special report

Creative ITC: a hybrid future This London-based firm is now taking a hybrid approach to remote workstations blending virtualisation with 1:1 access, giving AEC firms flexible desktops that balance cost, performance, and global access, writes Greg Corke

C

exact same physical workstations typically reative ITC has earned its repu- Far from it, it simply adds choice.

In a large engineering firm where found on desktops. Creative ITC has tation by focusing deeply on the complex needs of the AEC sector single-threaded bottlenecks aren’t a major chosen the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra — something that many IT pro- concern, “Your use case absolutely would SFF as its current VCDPod workhorse, viders only claim to do. Its founders know be VDI, 100% across the board,” says which speaks to the balancing act between these challenges well, having spent large Dawson. “There would be no real need to performance, density and manageability.

“We can put seven [P3 Ultras] in a 5U parts of their careers at global engineering have any VCD.” At the opposite extreme, for a high-end space in a rack,” says Adamson. “We and design consultancy Arup.

That key sector focus has helped shape architectural practice, “Where you are found with some of the competitors we Creative ITC’s evolution from value battering every application and product, could maybe get six. By the time you scale added reseller into a leading provider you’re probably a pure VCD play,” he adds. that into hundreds across the datacentre Most AEC organisations fall somewhere footprint, that’s [a saving] worth having.” of high-performance Virtual Desktop Equally important is the quality of Infrastructure (VDI) solutions – installed in between. In this “middle ground” for on-premise or delivered as a fully practices such as Populous, WilkinsonEyre, Lenovo’s out of band management. “What managed cloud service through a global or Scott Brownrigg, Dawson envisions Lenovo have done really well is deliver a “a little bit of both,” with an “80/20 rule” desktop form factor PC with almost a kind network of Equinix data centres.

Over the past 18 months in particular, applying in many architectural and of server grade management tool in their the company has doubled down on its construction firms. One 500-seat customer, BMC [card],” says Adamson.

“Essentially, they’ve taken their desktop as a service (DaaS) strategy, he notes, is buying just 20–30 VCDPods Xclarity platform, which is what they refining its established VDIPod platform alongside 470 VDI desktops. use for their server management, and and, crucially in Autumn 2025, adding produced an appropriately cut down VCDPod, a complementary layer of A single portal dedicated one-to-one remote workstations While Creative now offers two distinct version for desktop, which works really for the most challenging workloads. technology platforms, for customers that well in our experience.”

Crucially, though, Creative ITC is VCDPod was born out of the demands straddle both, the user experience remains of high-end practices like Zaha Hadid consistent. “The ability to log into the not committing itself to one chassis or provider in the Architects and long term.

The Foster + Partners, VCDPod platform where huge Creative ITC’s goal is not to position VDI or physical has been architected models, intensive 1:1 remote workstations as inherently “right” or for flexibility, as visualisation, Adamson explains. and increasingly “wrong,” but to align each workload, user group, and we choose complex workflows region with the most appropriate mix at any given time “Should to bring in another exposed the limits of form factor in a purely virtualised the future, be it a workstation strategy.

Creative ITC found that while VDI same system, access data, applications in larger PC, be it a 1U pizza box server type can offer high-performance GPUs for a consistent way, that was a major goal for approach, we’ll just be able to drop it in.” graphics-intensive workloads, the cost us,” says Creative ITC’s Dave Adamson. escalates quickly. “When you breach In practice, that means users continue to Where workstations live the top end of our [vGPU] profiling, it launch via the Omnissa Horizon client. On All of this sits against a backdrop of becomes very expensive,” admits Creative login, “They’ll just see the eligible types of where AEC firms want to locate their ITC’s John Dawson. desktop experience that they can access, workstations. Dawson sees some trends However, delivering better price– which could be one or multiple flavours of emerging. “The middle ground or lower performance on GPUs is not the only appeal. VDI and indeed, VCD,” he says. tier enterprises are quite happy to get out As more customers learned of VCDPod, it A BIM generalist might see only a of their datacentres and move away”, he quickly attracted a second audience: those standard VDI desktop; a senior visualiser says. By contrast, other organisations running single-threaded applications such could see both a VDI desktop for everyday “have made large investments and [are] as Autodesk Revit, where high CPU clock work and a VCDPod for heavy Enscape quite happy on prem.” speeds are critical to performance. sessions or end of project crunch.

A common pattern is hybrid. For UK firms, infrastructure stays on prem, while Finding the right mix Flexibility through choice offices in the Far East, North America or The introduction of VCDPod does not For the launch of VCDPod, Creative ITC elsewhere come into Creative ITC’s hosted signal the end of VDIPod at Creative ITC. has partnered with Lenovo, using the environment.

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workstation special report

From the end user’s point of view, location is irrelevant. A machine could be on prem in London or in an Equinix cage in Amsterdam; the user simply sees a desktop in Horizon and can request or be assigned either on prem or hosted capacity as the business requires.

For multi site deployments across continents, however, fully hosted often wins out. With Panzura backed ‘file as a service’ and virtual desktops co located in Equinix, Creative ITC can better guarantee datacentre to datacentre bandwidth, place data close to users and avoid the challenges that often surround office-to-office links.

Security is another differentiator. Creative ITC holds multiple ISO certifications and a high level Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) accreditation that Dawson says places the company “four tiers above” what most of its customers could realistically achieve internally. That really matters in an industry where IT departments are often under funded and overstretched.

“There are some customers we see that scare the living hell out of me, that do it themselves,” admits Dawson. “They are unfortunately ripe for cyber breaches and cyber attacks.”

From a commercial standpoint, Creative mirrors the reservation based economics of the hyperscalers. Customers can opt for pay as you go or commit to one , three or five year terms. “I would be honest, the majority are three years, because to get the TCO and the value,” Dawson says.

Many mix commitments, reserving a core www.develop3d.com

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of seats on three year terms while placing additional users on one year or pay-asyou-go contracts to cover project peaks.

Creative ITC is still finalising the details for VCDPod, but it expects the platform to be somewhat more rigid at launch. “I think it will start as standard three years, with the option of a fourth year,” notes Dawson, with more flexibility likely as the installed base grows. Underpinning that stance is confidence that the current generation of VCDPod hardware will remain fit for purpose for at least three to four years in most AEC environments.

A hybrid future It is encouraging to see Creative ITC, a long-time proponent of VDI, expand its workstation portfolio in response to evolving AEC workloads. The goal is not to position VDI or physical 1:1 remote workstations as inherently “right” or “wrong,” but to align each workload, user group, and region with the most appropriate mix at any given time, while maintaining a consistent user experience as those balances evolve.

Viewed through that lens, the combination of VDIPod and VCDPod, unified through a single portal, feels like a coherent strategy for the next phase of remote workstations for AEC: continue to virtualise where it makes sense; deploy dedicated GPU and high-frequency CPU capacity where it doesn’t; and abstract that complexity behind a single, clouddelivered, fully managed service.

Hands-on with VDIPod For our testing Creative ITC provisioned a pair of VDIPod virtual machines (VMs), based on a virtualised “Zen 3” AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5965WX CPU and a virtualised “Ada Generation” Nvidia L40 GPU. The systems were accessed via the Omnissa Horizon client using the Horizon Blast protocol, with both the client and datacentre located in the London area.

Each VM was configured with a different vGPU profile. Creative ITC recommends the Nvidia L40 8Q profile for CAD and BIM workflows, and in our testing the viewport was perfectly responsive, delivering a desktop-like experience in Autodesk Revit.

By contrast, the Nvidia L40 24Q profile which is better suited to visualisation, offered a fluid experience in Twinmotion with performance broadly comparable to a desktop Nvidia RTX 5000 or RTX 6000 Ada Generation GPU. Basic lightly threaded CPU tests showed both VMs to be around 42% slower when opening a Revit file and 65% slower when exporting a PDF compared with one of the fastest liquid-cooled desktop workstations we’ve tested, based on a “Zen 5” AMD Ryzen 9950X processor. However, given the two-generation gap between the CPUs and the fact that the Threadripper Pro does not boost into turbo, this is to be expected.

For customers where single-threaded workflows represent a significant bottleneck, Creative ITC recommends VCDPod, where the latest Intel Core processors in the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF boast superior Instructions Per Clock (IPC) and can sustain high turbo clock speeds.

■ www.creative-itc.com

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Sponsored by HP / AMD

www.HP.com/Z / www.amd.com

REDEFINING VIZ SOLIDWORKS 2026

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ith SOLIDWORKS 2026, design visualisation is entering a new era. Both the core CAD platform and its companion rendering tool, SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2026, introduce powerful new capabilities that dramatically streamline visualisation workflows for product designers and engineers.

Tighter integration between SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Visualize enables far more efficient rendering, including direct photorealistic output from SOLIDWORKS itself.

Consistent, physically-based materials and lighting across the broad Dassault Systèmes software portfolio also ensure predictable results as designs progress from early

concepts through to final presentations.

At the same time, advances in workstation hardware are proving just as transformative. Integrated graphics — where the GPU is built into the CPU — were once widely regarded as unsuitable for professional CAD and visualisation, with discrete GPUs considered essential.

That assumption is now being challenged.

Advanced new AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processors feature integrated AMD Radeon™ GPUs with performance levels once reserved for discrete solutions. They also offer addressable memory capacities that exceed most workstation-class GPUs, enabling the handling of massive CAD and viz datasets.

These GPUs are not only powerful

and energy efficient but also optimised for the advanced graphics features in SOLIDWORKS 2026, and are now supported by the 3DS Stellar® rendering engine in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2026.

This convergence of next-generation software and hardware marks a significant turning point. Product designers and engineers using the latest HP Z Workstations — such as the slim 14-inch HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop and the compact HP Z2 Mini G1a desktop — can now access advanced visualisation capabilities without the need for a discrete GPU. The result: lower cost, reduced power consumption, and sleeker, more portable space-saving systems.

Product features and availability may vary.

For complete details & disclaimers, please visit www.hp.com/zbookultra

SOLIDWORKS Visualize image courtesy of Adi DR.PAX

Pandzic

SOLIDWORKS® 2026 is transforming visualisation for product designers and engineers, delivering seamless new workflows between SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Visualize®, enhanced output, and optimised support for AMD silicon, including the powerful new AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor in the latest HP Z Workstations

Produced by

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Product features and availability may vary.

For complete details & disclaimers, please visit www.hp.com/zbookultra

Sponsored by HP / AMD

www.HP.com/Z / www.amd.com

VISUALISE AS ONE SOLIDWORKS 2026 unifies RealView and Visualize through shared DSPBR materials, lighting and workflows, delivering consistent real-time and photorealistic rendering results

SOLIDWORKS CAD image courtesy of Adi DR.PAX Pandzic

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OLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Visualize are no longer loosely coupled companions; with the 2026 release they behave much more like two faces of a single visual workflow, joined by common materials, shared lighting logic and much tighter integration.

At the heart of this shift is the Dassault Systèmes® physically-based rendering (DSPBR) material model, now deployed across the portfolio and standardised as an open specification on GitHub. DSPBR spans everything from high-gloss plastics to effects such as clear coat and metallic flakes to cover a wide range of appearances, using a mathematically defined, parameter-rich PBR model that can be reused consistently in multiple applications.

That same material model is now supported directly in SOLIDWORKS 2026.

RealView®, the realistic real-time viewport rendering mode, gains access to a substantial subset of DSPBR parameters – including roughness, metallic and PBR texture inputs – while Visualize exposes the full set in its dedicated viewport. The result is a continuous visual story: what the user sees in SOLIDWORKS with RealView enabled is now much closer to what appears in Visualize, with the same underlying material definition driving both. Previously, Visualize approximated DSPBR materials when a SOLIDWORKS file was opened in Visualize.

The SOLIDWORKS lighting pipeline has also been upgraded. Where SOLIDWORKS

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previously treated HDR environments mainly as static backdrops, they now contribute true image-based lighting, with scenes affecting the way models are lit and shaded in RealView. That behaviour mirrors Visualize’s approach, helping to close the gap between interactive viewport previews and final ray-traced output. Users still drag and drop appearances inside SOLIDWORKS just as they always have, but now those familiar actions drive a far more capable material and lighting engine under the hood.

OPTIMISED WORKFLOW The other major piece of the puzzle is workflow integration between SOLIDWORKS and Visualize. Historically, users had to treat Visualize as a separate application: save out a SOLIDWORKS model, then open it independently in Visualize or import through a one-way link. In 2026 this has been rethought.

The dedicated Render Tools tab in SOLIDWORKS now provides direct access to Visualize-driven rendering. With Visualize installed and licensed, users can push a button in SOLIDWORKS to either launch a Visualize project or trigger a background photorealistic render without ever opening the Visualize UI. For many day-to-day tasks, this means SOLIDWORKS users can stay entirely inside their primary CAD environment while still benefiting from Visualize’s

higher-fidelity engine. The system spins up a headless instance of Visualize in the background, hands over the scene via a more efficient API-based export, and returns the rendered image once complete.

This echoes the convenience once provided

by PhotoView 360® – render directly from the SOLIDWORKS interface – but with the quality, material system and performance of the modern Visualize pipeline.

For users who need deeper control, the same tools can still launch a full Visualize session with the scene already prepared using the DSPBR materials and environments set up in SOLIDWORKS. CONSISTENT RENDERING These developments give users a spectrum of workflows, from quick, high-quality stills rendered directly from CAD to richer visualisation and animation in Visualize, while preserving material and lighting consistency from RealView through to final output. In short, designers and engineers gain a coherent suite of tools that optimise the SOLIDWORKS visualisation pipeline like never before.

SOLIDWORKS RealView image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS

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Sponsored by HP / AMD

www.HP.com/Z / www.amd.com

STELLAR OPPORTUNITIES The 3DS Stellar engine in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2026 ensures a consistent visual pipeline, while the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor can handle the largest assemblies by tapping into a massive pool of memory

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he evolution of rendering in SOLIDWORKS Visualize has reached a pivotal moment with the rise of the 3DS Stellar rendering engine, a technology that underpins a consistent visual pipeline across Dassault Systèmes’ portfolio of products, including CATIA®, 3DEXCITE® DELTAGEN®, XStudio and other 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS Visualize ‘Stellar Accurate’ rendering applications. This unification courtesy of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS ensures that rendering behaviour, agnostic Vulkan® graphics API, Fast mode materials, and lighting are consistent across design, engineering, and marketing can now harness the power of AMD GPUs workflows, rather than each product (AMD RDNA™ 2 architecture and newer), maintaining an isolated engine. enabling highly efficient ray tracing on Stellar’s journey in the SOLIDWORKS modern hardware such as the AMD RDNA ecosystem began as the successor to 3.5 architecture-based AMD Radeon™ ® ® NVIDIA Iray in SOLIDWORKS 8060S GPU integrated into the AMD Visualize a few years back. Stellar was Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 processor. introduced to take Iray’s place as the One of the processor’s key advantages primary photorealistic rendering engine, is its ability to give the integrated GPU offering comparable or better image direct and fast access to up to 96 GB of quality while giving Dassault Systèmes system memory — far more than the fixed direct control over its future roadmap. on-board memory available on equivalent discrete GPUs. As a result, systems such FAST VS. ACCURATE RENDERING as the HP Z2 Mini G1a and HP ZBook Within SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2026, Ultra G1a can comfortably render massive Stellar offers two distinct render modes: SOLIDWORKS assemblies. By contrast, 3DS Stellar Fast and Accurate. when a discrete GPU’s dedicated memory “Fast” is Stellar’s real-time ray-tracing becomes full, data must be offloaded to engine, built from the ground up for system memory. This process can introduce interactive visualisation, material iteration, latency, reduce interactivity, increase scene setup, client reviews, and live render times, and in some cases cause presentations. Powered by the vendorapplication instability or crashes.

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The engine also taps into the AMD AI-driven upscaling and frame prediction technologies, including AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution. By rendering at lower internal resolutions and reconstructing higher-resolution images, 3DS Stellar Fast maintains responsiveness even with complex models, while still delivering a sharp, detailed viewport.

“Accurate”, based on 3DS Stellar Physically Correct, is the classical photorealistic, path-traced mode designed for final-quality imagery. Prioritising fidelity over interactivity, it ensures every reflection, contact shadow, and fine detail holds up in print or high-resolution marketing output. With the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor, Accurate mode is accelerated by up to 16 powerful “Zen 5” architecture-based CPU cores.

Both modes share the same material and lighting model, so transitioning from “Fast” to “Accurate” is about adding polish rather than switching to a visually different engine. The shared DSPBR material system ensures consistent behaviour for appearances, roughness, metallicity, and other PBR-style controls. Environmentbased lighting — HDRIs and image-based lighting — also feeds both modes in the same way, narrowing the gap between what is seen during interactive work and the final highest quality rendered output.

Product features and availability may vary. For complete details & disclaimers, please visit www.hp.com/zbookultra

SOLIDWORKS Visualize image courtesy of Adi DR.PAX Pandzic

01/02/2026 15:34

Sponsored by HP / AMD

www.HP.com/Z / www.amd.com

INTEGRATED GRAPHICS, REDEFINED

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or 3D CAD workflows, designers and engineers have traditionally relied on workstations with a separate CPU and discrete GPU. Processors with integrated graphics have often fallen short — lacking the 3D performance, application-specific optimisations, and software certifications required for professional use.

But the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor at the heart of the new HP ZBook Ultra G1a mobile and HP Z2 Mini G1a desktop workstations is redefining what’s possible with integrated graphics.

At the top of the range, the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 processor features a powerful AMD Radeon™ 8060S GPU, delivering performance that rivals that of a mid-range discrete GPU. It enables a smooth, responsive viewport in SOLIDWORKS, even when working with very large assemblies with RealView enabled, and can also handle demanding

visualisation workflows in SOLIDWORKS Visualize, bringing complex projects to life.

This leap in capability is powered not only by the AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, but also the ability to allocate large amounts of system memory to the GPU — far more than the fixed on-board memory of most comparable discrete GPUs. In the BIOS, users can choose from 512 MB, 4 GB, 8 GB, all the way up to 96 GB. However, dedicating large amounts of memory to the GPU isn’t always necessary. In some workflows the GPU can dynamically borrow additional memory from the system when needed, without the severe performance penalties that occur when discrete GPUs exceed their onboard memory and must fall back on slower system RAM. The processor’s large memory pool also unlocks new possibilities in AI workloads.

When the system is configured with 128 GB,

the GPU can run colossal 128B parameter Large Language Models (LLMs) – roughly the size of ChatGPT 3.0 – well beyond the limits of most fixed-memory GPUs. For designers and engineers, more memory also unlocks practical creative advantages in other AI-driven workflows.

Text-to-image tools like Stable Diffusion, which are increasingly used for ideation in product development, can benefit directly.

With fast, direct access to a large pool of GPU memory, it becomes feasible to generate high-resolution images — far beyond the practical pixel limits imposed

by GPUs with restricted memory.

Finally, the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 processor also comes with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is designed to handle mainstream AI tasks very efficiently.

It is capable of dishing out 50 TOPS1 of AI performance, meeting Microsoft’s requirements for a Copilot+ PC.

Footnote 1: Trillions of Operations per Second (TOPS) for an AMD Ryzen processor is the maximum number of operations per second that can be executed in an optimal scenario and may not be typical. TOPS may vary based on several factors, including the specific system configuration, AI model, and software version. GD-243.

Integrated graphics just got serious. Powered by the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor, the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and HP Z2 Mini G1a deliver impressive performance for CAD, viz and AI – without the need for a discrete GPU

T

he HP ZBook Ultra G1a with AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor is an extremely powerful 14-inch mobile workstation. It offers noteworthy upgrades over other 14-inch models, including significantly more high-performance cores (up to 16) and substantially improved graphics.

It’s not just about performance. It’s also the thinnest ZBook ever, just 18.5mm in profile and weighing as little as 1.50kg.

The HP Vaporforce thermal system keeps it running cool and there is very little fan noise

even when the processor is running flat out.

The power efficient laptop boasts an ultra long battery life and is charged with a 100 W or 140 W USB Type-C slim adapter.

For video conferencing, there’s a 5 MP IR camera with AutoFrame, Spotlight, Background Blur, and virtual backgrounds all powered by the NPU with 50 TOPS1 of AI performance. Additional highlights include a top-tier 2,880 x 1,800 OLED panel (400 nits), up to 4 TB of NVMe TLC SSD storage, and support for Wi-Fi® 7.

HP Z2 Mini G1a — mini desktop workstation

D

espite its space-saving form factor, the HP Z2 Mini G1a is a very powerful desktop workstation.

Like its laptop sibling, it features the same AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO processor. However, with a 300W internal power supply, the ultra compact desktop workstation can deliver significantly more sustained power to the processor, resulting in optimised performance in multi-threaded CPU and graphicsintensive workflows.

One of the most compelling use cases for the Z2 Mini G1a is in rack-mounted deployments, where multiple units serve as a centralised remote workstation resource managed by HP Anyware. Each designer or engineer connects to their own dedicated workstation via a 1:1 session, ensuring both simplicity in deployment and predictable, high-performance access.

Up to five workstations can be installed side by side in a 4U rack space, offering impressive density and scalability for teams.

Product features and availability may vary. For complete details & disclaimers, please visit www.hp.com/zbookultra

HP ZBook Ultra G1a — 14-inch mobile workstation

© 2026 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD FidelityFX, AMD RDNA, Radeon, Ryzen, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

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workstation special report

Best enterprise-class workstation laptops 2026 Our top picks for enterprise-class mobile workstations — from lightweight 14-inch models to take CAD and BIM on the road to 18-inch powerhouses to power the most demanding, visualisation, simulation, reality modelling and AI workloads

18-inch

HP ZBook Fury G1i HP’s top-end mobile workstation, the 18-inch ZBook Fury G1i, is unapologetically focused on performance. The specs may look familiar — Intel Core Ultra 200HX series processors and Nvidia laptop GPUs up to the RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell (24 GB) — but with a 200W TDP, it extracts more sustained performance from those components than any other major OEM. While that’s a key differentiator, it may still lag behind some gaming-inspired laptops, where combined CPU/GPU power can reach as high as 270W. Yet the ZBook Fury G1i is a true enterpriseclass machine, designed with fleet management in mind and carefully balancing performance, thermals, acoustics, and reliability. HP’s new hybrid turbo-bladed triple-fan cooling system helps maintain that equilibrium.

The 18-inch display is limited to WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600) LED, but delivers 500 nits, 100% DCI-P3, and a superfast 165 Hz refresh rate. The HP Lumen RGB Z Keyboard also takes a professional-focused approach, with per-key LED backlighting that can highlight only the keys relevant to specific tasks, preloaded with default lighting profiles for applications such as Solidworks, AutoCAD, and Photoshop.

Overall, the HP ZBook Fury G1i is unparalleled in performance, but it’s important to remember that it’s not meant for long stretches away from the desk. Its size and power draw make it best suited to designers, engineers, and visualisers who simply need to move work between office and home, while battery life and portability take a back seat.

■ www.hp.com

HP ZBook Ultra G1a

14-inch

The HP ZBook Ultra G1a represents a major breakthrough in mobile workstations, redefining what can be achieved with a 14-inch laptop. Powered by the “Strix Halo” AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 processor with 16 highperformance ‘Zen 5’ cores and a remarkably powerful integrated Radeon 8060S GPU, it delivers performance typically expected only from larger laptops — making it a genuine powerhouse in a truly portable form factor.

A standout feature is the unified memory architecture. Unlike traditional discrete GPUs with fixed VRAM, the ZBook Ultra can allocate up to 96 GB of high-speed system memory to the integrated Radeon GPU, dramatically boosting its ability to handle large datasets. While it can’t match the computational power of a high-end Nvidia GPU, this innovative approach eliminates the memory bottlenecks that can slow or crash lesser machines, in some cases setting a new benchmark for memory-intensive visualisation and AI workflows.

Beyond raw performance, the ZBook Ultra G1a impresses with its slim, lightweight chassis (1.57 kg, 18.1 mm), excellent build quality, and premium display options, including a 2.8K OLED touchscreen.

Meanwhile, its advanced cooling system keeps temperatures in check even under heavy loads.

For architects, engineers, and designers seeking desktop-class capabilities in an ultra-compact laptop, the ZBook Ultra G1a is a stand out example.

Software support is still catching up compared to workstations with Nvidia GPUs, but with viz tools like V-Ray, KeyShot, and Solidworks Visualize recently adding AMD support, this gap is rapidly closing. Read our in-depth review - www.tinyurl.com/UltraG1a ■ www.hp.com

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Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD

14-inch

The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen6 is available in both AMD and Intel variants, but it’s the model powered by the “Strix Point” AMD Ryzen AI processor that really stands out, making this compact 14-inch workstation an excellent choice for CAD and BIM on the go.

In multi-threaded CPU and GPU-intensive operations, the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD might lag behind the “Strix Halo” HP ZBook Ultra G1a. However, for CAD and BIM workloads, the difference is negligible — both machines will handle typical assemblies and models with ease.

The ThinkPad’s “Strix Point” AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor can match the ZBook’s “Strix Halo” Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 processor single-core boost frequencies, while the integrated Radeon 890M GPU delivers more than enough performance to smoothly navigate all but the most demanding CAD and BIM models.

Unlike the Dell Pro Max 14, which uses the same chassis for both AMD and Intel variants, the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 has separate designs. As there is no need to accommodate a discrete Nvidia GPU, this allows the AMD version to be smaller and lighter, starting at just 1.39 kg. The trade-off is a single-fan cooling system, but this is unlikely to impact most CAD and BIM workloads, which rarely push the CPU and GPU to their limits.

Overall, the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD is a compelling, highly portable mobile workstation that also earns a special mention for its serviceability, as the entire device can be disassembled and reassembled with basic tools. Finally, for those seeking a bit more screen space, the 16-inch ThinkPad P16s offers identical specs and starts at 1.71 kg.

■ www.lenovo.com/workstations

Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 3

16-inch

For the latest incarnation of its flagship mobile workstation, Lenovo has completely redesigned the chassis. The ThinkPad P16 Gen 3 is thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient than its Gen 2 predecessor, making it more of a true day-to-day laptop without compromising its workstation capabilities.

It packs the latest ‘Arrow Lake’ Intel Core Ultra 200HX series processors (up to 24 cores and 5.5 GHz), a choice of Nvidia laptop GPUs up to the RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell (24 GB), and supports up to 192 GB of RAM. While these are top-end specs, the smaller 180 W power supply — down from 230 W in the previous generation — suggests that some peak performance may be left on the table. This is particularly relevant when configured with the RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell GPU, which alone can draw up to 175 W. That said, since all processors and GPUs show diminishing returns at higher power levels, the impact on real-world performance might be relatively modest.

Ultimately, the ThinkPad P16 Gen 3 is all about balancing performance and portability. With practical features such as USB-C charging and a compact versatile chassis, it’s an excellent choice for professionals on the move, capable of handling a wide range of workflows — from CAD and BIM to visualisation, simulation, and reality modelling — without being tethered to a desk.

■ www.lenovo.com/workstations

Dell Pro Max Premium 16

16-inch

Last year, Dell retired its long-standing Precision workstation brand in favour of Dell Pro Max. One of the standout models is the Dell Pro Max 16 Premium, which replaces the Precision 5690 as Dell’s thinnest, lightest and most stylish 16-inch mobile workstation.

While the Dell Pro Max 16 Premium gives you faster processors, you get less choice over GPUs. It tops out at Nvidia’s 3000 class, whereas the 5690 offered up to the 5000 class. This could be seen as a step backward, but given the thermal/power constraints of the slender 20mm laptop and its 64 GB memory limit, pairing it with the 12 GB Nvidia RTX Pro 3000 Blackwell feels like a more realistic and balanced choice than trying to shoehorn in the 24 GB RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell. Plus, it’s still one class above rival machines like the HP ZBook X G1i and Lenovo ThinkStation P1 Gen 8.

To get the most from the Pro Max 16 Premium, it should be fully configured: a 45 W Intel Core Ultra 9 285H vPro processor, 64 GB of RAM, and the 12 GB Nvidia RTX Pro 3000 Blackwell. This setup puts it squarely in the category of entry-level design visualisation, where the extra 4 GB over the 8 GB RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell is money well spent. For more demanding workloads, the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus is the far better, but heftier, option — supporting 55W Intel Core Ultra 200HX CPUs, Nvidia RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell GPU, and up to 256 GB of memory.

Overall, the Dell Pro Max 16 Premium is an extremely well built pro laptop that delivers a strong balance of performance and portability. Finally, for those still mourning the death of Precision, Dell has confirmed the brand will return later this year as Dell Pro Precision.

■ www.dell.com

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Can a small workstation really handle big BIM, CAD and viz?

Choosing between a tower and a compact workstation can be confusing, especially when they share the same components. Greg Corke explores where small systems shine, where their limitations lie, and when a traditional tower still makes more sense

C

ompact workstations are big a level playing field. In practice, however, simply cannot dissipate that amount of news right now. And not just the realities of power delivery quickly heat and CPU power will likely peak at because they free up valuable create an imbalance. While the processor around 125W. The result is much lower has a base power of 125W and can boost all-core frequencies and, inevitably, lower desk space.

Machines such as the HP Z2 Mini and up to 250W under Turbo, the P3 Ultra performance in sustained multi-threaded Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF are SFF is constrained by its thermals and a workloads.

Meanwhile, Dell provides much more increasingly finding themselves at the 330W power supply. Meanwhile, the more heart of modern workstation strategies, spacious P3 Tower has bigger fans, better obvious boundaries between its different including centralised rack deployments airflow and can be equipped with a 1,100W Dell Pro Max desktop workstations. where density matters just as much as PSU. All of this can have a profound The super compact “Micro” model only supports 65W CPUs, up to the Intel Core impact on sustained CPU performance. performance.

But there’s no sign of imbalance under Ultra 9 285, but claims to run this up But shrinking down a workstation to the size of a lunchbox does not come single or lightly threaded workloads, to 85W. Meanwhile, it’s only the larger without compromise. When you cram which describes the vast majority of CAD “SFF” and “Tower” models that come with high-performance CPUs, GPUs, memory and BIM tasks. When modelling in Revit or the 125W Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. and storage into a very small chassis, Solidworks the difference between the two you quickly run up against the same machines is negligible. Most workflows GPU: smaller doesn’t mean weak fundamental constraints that mobile within these applications engage one or Graphics is another area where compact workstations have workstations have wrestled with for traditionally been seen years: power delivery, as compromised — Graphics is one area where compact workstations cooling and sustained but that perception is performance. increasingly outdated. have traditionally been seen as compromised — but So the real question In a compact that perception is increasingly outdated is not whether workstation, you compact workstations are usually limited are capable — they to low-profile GPUs clearly are — but where their strengths lie, two CPU cores, allowing the processor to with a max Thermal Design Power (TDP) and where a traditional tower workstation boost to its highest Turbo frequencies. In of around 70W. The latest options include still makes far more sense. Let’s break it this scenario, both the compact P3 Ultra the Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell down by component.

SFF and the P3 Tower will deliver very and RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell. similar performance.

Meanwhile, in a tower — even an entry CPU: peak vs sustained performance The picture changes dramatically level tower — you can step all the way up Arguably the biggest challenge for any when all 24 cores are brought into play. to a 300W GPU, such as the Nvidia RTX modern compact workstation is the CPU, In heavily multi-threaded workflows Pro 5000 or 6000 Blackwell which come which can consume a lot of power. But such as CPU rendering or simulation, with a whopping 48 GB and 96 GB of GPU when you look at the specs things can get sustained power becomes critical. The memory respectively.

A few years ago, the performance and confusing. Lenovo’s ThinkStation P3 Gen 2 P3 Tower has the thermal and electrical range illustrates this perfectly. Both the headroom to feed the CPU closer to its 250 feature gap between a “2000-class” and P3 Ultra SFF (read our review on page WS34) W Turbo limit, keeping all cores running “6000-class” GPU was substantial. and the larger P3 Tower can be configured at significantly higher frequencies for Today, thanks to rapid advances in GPU architecture, and a trickling down of with the same top-end processor, the Intel extended periods.

By contrast, the compact P3 Ultra SFF Nvidia RTX technology with RT cores for Core Ultra 9 285K. On paper, that suggests

‘‘

’’

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Dell Pro Max Micro Desktop workstation

ray tracing and tensor cores for AI, the story is far more nuanced.

Cards like the RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell and RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell are not only more than capable of handling the most demanding CAD and BIM workflows, but can deliver smooth, responsive viewports and fast rendering in design viz tools like KeyShot, Enscape and Twinmotion. Importantly, these cards ship with 16 GB and 20 GB of GPU memory respectively, which is ample for many real-world design datasets.

Integrated graphics has also taken a significant leap forward. The AMD Radeon 8060S GPU built into the HP Z2 Mini G1a’s AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 processor, can comfortably handle CAD, BIM and entry-level visualisation workflows. Furthermore, thanks to fast, direct access to up to 96 GB of system memory, it also has a surprising advantage when working with extremely large datasets that might otherwise exceed the limits of discrete GPU memory.

All considered, there are still clear boundaries between workstation form factors. If your workflows are heavily focused on GPU-accelerated visualisation, simulation, or AI, a tower workstation www.develop3d.com

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remains the obvious choice. The ability to install a high-wattage GPU with massive onboard memory is something most compact systems simply cannot match.

capacity and higher sustained power delivery, they should do a much better job of keeping both CPU and GPU operating at high performance levels simultaneously.

Where limits become visible

Choosing the right tool for the job

Modern design workflows are rarely single-task affairs. It’s increasingly common to use CAD or BIM alongside other tools such as visualisation, simulation or reality modelling.

For CAD-centric hybrid workflows, compact workstations generally cope fairly well. Running a GPU render in the background while continuing to model is usually fine, especially if the CPU load remains relatively light. However, problems arise when both the CPU and GPU are pushed hard at the same time.

If you kick off a heavily multi-threaded CPU task while simultaneously running a GPU-intensive workload, a compact workstation will almost certainly struggle. Limited thermal and power headroom could mean one or both components throttle, leading to noticeable slowdowns across the system.

Tower workstations, by contrast, are designed for exactly this kind of concurrent workload. With far greater cooling

Compact workstations have come a long way. For CAD or BIM professionals focused on 3D modelling and lighter viz workloads, they can deliver outstanding performance in an impressively small footprint. They are energy-efficient, and increasingly powerful, especially when paired with modern GPUs. And, of course, the space-saving design brings huge benefits to desktops and datacentres alike.

But physics still applies. When workflows demand sustained multithreaded CPU performance, top-tier GPU power, or heavy concurrent workloads, the limitations of a small chassis become apparent. In those scenarios, a traditional tower workstation remains the undisputed performance leader.

The good news is that this is no longer a question of “can a compact workstation do the job?” but rather “which job is it best suited for?” Choose wisely, and a small workstation can punch well above its modest weight.

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HP Z2 Mini G1a Workstation With an integrated graphics processor with fast access to more memory than any other GPU in its class, HP is rewriting the rulebook for compact workstations, writes Greg Corke

W

hen the HP Z2 Mini first launched in 2017 it redefined the desktop workstation. By delivering solid performance in an exceedingly compact, monitor-mountable form factor, HP created a new niche — a workstation ideal for space-constrained environments.

Fast forward several generations, and the Z2 Mini has evolved significantly. It’s no longer just a standalone desktop — it’s become a key component of HP’s datacentre workstation ecosystem, providing each worker with remote access to a dedicated workstation over a 1:1 connection.

With the latest model, the Z2 Mini G1a, HP introduces something new: an AMD processor at the heart of the machine, denoted by the ‘a’ suffix in its product name. This is the first time the Z2 Mini has featured AMD silicon, and the results are impressive.

The processor in question is the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro, the same chip found in the impressive HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14-inch mobile workstation, which we reviewed last year (www.tinyurl.com/UltraG1a).

Unlike traditional processors, this groundbreaking chip features an integrated GPU with performance on par with a mid-range discrete graphics card.

Crucially, the GPU can also be configured with up to 96 GB of system memory. This far exceeds the memory ceiling of most discrete GPUs in its class and unlocks new possibilities for memory-intensive workloads, including AI. While the ZBook Ultra G1a mobile workstation runs the Ryzen AI Max Pro within a 70W thermal design power (TDP), the Z2 Mini G1a desktop cranks that up significantly — more than doubling the power budget to 150W.

This allows the chip to maintain higher clock speeds for longer, delivering more performance in both multi-threaded CPU workflows like rendering, simulation and reality modelling, as well as GPUintensive tasks such as realtime visualisation and AI. That said, doubling the power doesn’t double the performance.

As with most processors, the Ryzen AI Max Pro reaches a point of diminishing returns, where additional wattage yields increasingly modest improvements. However, for compute-intensive workflows, that extra headroom can still deliver a meaningful advantage.

The compact workstation

Tech Specs ■ AMD Ryzen AI

Max+ Pro 395 processor (3.0 GHz, 5.1 GHz boost) (16 cores, 32 Threads) ■ Integrated Radeon

8060S Graphics

■ 128 GB LPDDR5X-8533 MT/s ECC memory ■ 2 TB HP Z Turbo

Drive PCIe Gen4 TLC M.2 SSD

■ 300 W internal power adapter, up to 92% efficiency ■ Size (W x D x H) 85.5 x 168 x 200 mm ■ Weight starting

at 2.3 kg

■ Microsoft Windows

11 Pro 64-bit

■ 1 year (1/1/1)

limited warranty includes 1 year of parts, labour and on-site repair

(480Mbps), two USB Type-A (10Gbps), two Mini DisplayPort 2.1, and a 2.5GbE LAN. For easy access on the side, there’s an additional USB Type-C (10Gbps) and USB Type-A (10Gbps).

Serviceability is limited, as the processor and system memory are soldered on to the motherboard, leaving no scope for major upgrades. It’s therefore crucial to select the right specifications at time of purchase (more on this later).

The two M.2 NVMe SSDs and several smaller components, however, are easily replaceable, and two Flex I/O ports allow for additional USB connections or a 10GbE LAN upgrade.

The beating heart

The Z2 Mini G1a debuts with a The AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro brand-new chassis that’s even processor is a powerful all-in■ £2,330 Ex VAT more compact than its Intelone chip that combines a high■ hp.com based sibling, the Z2 Mini G1i. performance multi-core CPU, The smaller footprint is hardly with a remarkably capable surprising, given the AMD-based model integrated GPU and a dedicated Neural doesn’t need to leave space for a discrete Processing Unit (NPU) for AI. GPU — unlike the Intel version, which While the spotlight is understandably currently supports options up to the on the flagship model, the AMD Ryzen AI double-height, low-profile Nvidia RTX Max+ Pro 395, with a considerable 16 CPU 4000 SFF Ada Generation. cores and Radeon 8060S graphics capable But what’s really clever is that HP’s of handling entry-level to mainstream engineers have also squeezed the power visualisation, the other processor options supply inside the machine. That might shouldn’t be overlooked. With fewer cores not seem like a big deal for desktops, and less powerful GPUs, they should still but for datacentre deployments, where offer more than enough performance for external power bricks and excess cabling typical CAD and BIM workflows. can create clutter, interfere with airflow, and complicate rack management, it’s a A massive pool of memory significant improvement. Unfortunately, The standout feature of the AMD Ryzen the HP Remote System Controller, which AI Max Pro is its memory architecture, provides out-of-band management, is and how it gives the GPU direct and fast still external. access to a large, unified pool of system The chassis is divided into two sections, RAM. This is in contrast to discrete GPUs, separated by the system board. The top two- such as Nvidia RTX, which have a fixed thirds house the key components, fans and amount of on-board memory. heatsink, while the bottom third is reserved The integrated Radeon GPU can use mostly for the 300W power supply. up to 75% of the system’s total RAM, Despite its compact form factor, the Z2 allowing for up to 96 GB of GPU memory Mini G1a doesn’t skimp on connectivity. when the Z2 Mini G1a is configured with At the rear you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 its maximum 128 GB. ports (USB-C, 40Gbps), two USB Type-A This means the workstation can handle

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The HP Z2 Mini G1a represents a major step forward for compact workstations, delivering strong performance and enabling new workflows in a datacentre-ready form factor

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certain workloads that simply aren’t possible with other GPUs in its class.

When a discrete GPU runs out of memory, it has to ‘borrow’ from system memory. Because this data transfer occurs over the PCIe bus, it is highly inefficient.

Depending on how much memory is borrowed, performance can drop sharply: renders can take much longer, frame rates can fall from double digits to low single digits, and navigating models or scenes can become nearly impossible. In extreme cases, the software may even crash.

The Z2 Mini G1a allows users to control how much memory is allocated to the GPU. In the BIOS, simply choose a profile – from 512 MB, 4 GB, 8 GB, all the way up to 96 GB (should you have 128 GB of RAM to play with). Of course, the larger the profile, the more it eats into your system memory, so it’s important to strike a balance.

The amazing thing about AMD’s technology is that should the GPU run out of its ringfenced memory, in many cases it can seamlessly borrow more from system memory, if available, temporarily expanding its capacity. Since this memory resides in the same physical location, access remains very fast.

Even with the smallest 512 MB profile, borrowing 10 GB for CAD software Solidworks caused only a slight drop in 3D performance, maintaining that allimportant smooth experience within the viewport. This means that if system memory is in short supply, opting for a smaller GPU memory profile can offer more flexibility by freeing up RAM for other tasks. www.develop3d.com

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Of course, because memory is fixed in the Z2 Mini G1a, and cannot be upgraded, you must choose very wisely at time of purchase. For CAD/BIM workflows, we recommend 64 GB as the entry-point with 128 GB giving more flexibility for the future, especially as AI workflows evolve (more on that later).

Performance testing We put the Z2 Mini G1a to work in a variety of real-world CAD, visualisation, simulation and reality modelling applications. Our test machine was fully loaded with the top-end AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 and 128 GB of system memory, of which 32 GB was allocated to the AMD Radeon 8060S GPU. All testing was done at 4K resolution.

We compared the Z2 Mini G1a with an identically configured HP ZBook Ultra G1a, primarily to assess how its 150W TDP stacks up against the laptop’s more constrained 70W. For broader context, we also benchmarked it against a range of desktop tower workstation CPUs and GPUs.

CPU tests In single threaded workloads, we saw very little difference between the Z2 Mini G1a and ZBook Ultra G1a laptop. That’s because the power draw of a single CPU core remains well below 70W so there is no benefit from a larger TDP. Both machines delivered very similar performance in both single threaded and lightly threaded tasks in Solidworks (CAD), laser scan import in Capturing

Reality and the single core test in rendering benchmark Cinebench.

It was only in multi-threaded tests where we started to see a difference and that’s because the Z2 Mini G1a pushes the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 processor much closer to 150W. When rendering – a highly multi-threaded process that makes full use of all cores – the Z2 Mini G1a was around 16-17% faster in Corona Render 10, V-Ray 6.0, and Cinebench 2024.

Meanwhile, when aligning images and laser scans in Capturing Reality, it was around 11% faster. And in select simulation workflows in both SPECwpc benchmarks, the performance increase was as high as 82%!

But how does the Z2 Mini G1a stack up against larger desktop towers? AMD’s top-tier mainstream desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 9950X, shares the same Zen 5 architecture as the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro, but delivers significantly better performance. It’s 22% faster in Cinebench, 18% faster in Capturing Reality, and 15–33% faster in Solidworks. But that’s hardly surprising, given it draws up to 230W, as tested in a Scan 3XS tower workstation with a liquid cooler and heatsink roughly the size of the entire Z2 Mini G1a!

We saw similar from Intel’s flagship Core Ultra 9 285K in a Scan 3XS tower, which pushes power even further to 253W. While this Intel chip is technically available as an option in the HP Z2 Mini G1a’s Intel-based sibling, the HP Z2 Mini G1i, it would almost certainly perform well February / March 2026

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‘‘

The Ryzen AI Max Pro is no silver bullet. While the 16-core chip delivers impressive computational performance, AMD faces tough competition from Nvidia on the graphics front – both in terms of hardware and software compatibility

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below its full potential due to the power memory demands grow: with 32 GB available, the Radeon 8060S can handle and thermal limits of the compact chassis. larger datasets that overwhelm the RTX GPU tests A1000 (8 GB) and even challenge the The Z2 Mini G1a’s 150W TDP also RTX 2000 Ada Generation (16 GB) in our pushes the Radeon 8060S GPU harder, Twinmotion raster rendering test. Path outperforming the ZBook Ultra G1a in tracing in Twinmotion, however, caused the AMD GPU to crash, highlighting some several demanding graphics workloads.

The Z2 Mini G1a impressed in D5 of the broader software compatibility Render, completing scenes 15% faster challenges faced by AMD, which we and delivering a 39% boost in real-time explore in our ZBook Ultra G1a review viewport frame rates. Twinmotion also (www.tinyurl.com/UltraG1a).

Meanwhile, in our Lumion test, which saw a notable 22% faster raster render time, though in Lumion, performance only needs 11 GB for efficient rendering at FHD resolution, the RTX 2000 Ada remained unchanged.

The biggest leap came in AI image Generation (16 GB) demonstrated a clear generation. In the Procyon AI benchmark, performance advantage.

Of course, while the Radeon 8060S the Z2 Mini G1a was 50% faster than the ZBook Ultra G1a in Stable Diffusion 1.5 allows large models to be loaded into and an impressive 118% faster in Stable memory, it’s still an entry-level GPU in terms of raw performance and complex Diffusion XL. But how does the Radeon 8060S compare viz scenes may stutter to a few frames with discrete desktop GPUs like the low- per second. To designers and architects, profile Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB) and RTX waiting for renders may be acceptable, but 2000 Ada Generation (16 GB), popular laggy viewport navigation is not.

Overall, the Radeon 8060S shines options in the Intel-based Z2 Mini G1i?

In the D5 Render benchmark, which when memory capacity is the limiting only requires 4 GB of GPU memory, the factor, but it cannot match higher-end Radeon 8060S edged ahead of the RTX discrete GPUs in sustained rendering A1000 but lagged behind the RTX 2000 performance. For more on these tradeoffs, see our review of the HP ZBook Ultra Ada Generation.

Its real advantage appears when G1a (www.tinyurl.com/UltraG1a).

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Gently does it Out of the box, the Z2 Mini G1a is impressively quiet when running CAD and BIM software. Fan noise becomes much more noticeable under multithreaded CPU workloads and, to a lesser extent, GPU-intensive tasks.

The good news is that this can be easily managed without significantly impacting performance: in the BIOS, users can select from four performance modes — ‘highperformance,’ ‘performance,’ ‘quiet,’ and ‘rack’ — which operate independently of the standard Windows power settings.

The HP Z2 Mini G1a ships with ‘high performance’ mode enabled by default, allowing the processor to run at its full 150W TDP. In V-Ray rendering, it maintains an impressive all-core frequency of 4.6 GHz, although the fans ramp up noticeably after a minute or so.

Switching to Quiet Mode (after a reboot) prioritises acoustics over raw performance. The CPU automatically downclocks, and fan noise becomes barely audible — even during extended V-Ray renders. For short bursts, such as a oneminute render, the system still delivers 140W with a minimal frequency drop.

Over a one-hour batch render, however, power levels dipped to 120W, and clock speeds averaged around 4.35 GHz.

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firms experimenting with text-to-image AI for early-stage design, AMD also explains that the Ryzen AI Max+ can handle text-to-image models with up to 12 billion parameters, like FLUX Schnell in FP16. This could make it attractive for those wanting more compelling, higher resolution visuals, if they are willing to wait for the results.

Finally, thanks to the Ryzen AI Max Pro’s built-in NPU, there’s also dedicated AI hardware for efficient local inference as well. And at 50 TOPS the NPU is more Local AI powerful than other desktop workstation Most design and engineering firms will NPUs, and the only one we know that use the Z2 Mini G1a for everyday tasks — meets Microsoft’s requirements for a your typical CAD, BIM, and visualisation CoPilot+ PC. workflows. But thanks to the way the GPU has access to a large pool of system The verdict memory, it also opens the door to some The HP Z2 Mini G1a represents a interesting AI possibilities. major step forward for compact With 96 GB to play with the Z2 Mini G1a workstations, delivering strong can take on much bigger AI models than a performance and enabling new workflows typical discrete GPU with fixed memory. in a datacentre-ready form factor.

In fact, AMD recently reported that the At its heart the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro Ryzen AI Max Pro can now support LLMs processor not only delivers a powerful with up to 128 billion parameters — about multi-core CPU and remarkably capable the same size as Chat GPT 3.0. integrated GPU, but an advanced memory This could be a big deal for some design architecture as well that allows the GPU firms. Previously, running models of this to tap directly into a large pool of system scale required cloud infrastructure and memory — up to 96 GB. dedicated datacentre GPUs. Now, they This makes the Z2 Mini G1a stand out could run entirely on local workstation from traditional discrete GPU-based hardware. AMD goes into more detail in workstations — even some with much this blog post (www.tinyurl.com/AI-Max-LLM) larger chassis — by offering an advantage and FAQ (www.tinyurl.com/AMD-LLM). in select memory-intensive workloads, Of course, the AMD Ryzen AI Max from visualisation to advanced AI. Pro won’t even get close to matching the Of course, the Ryzen AI Max Pro is performance of a high-end Nvidia GPU, no silver bullet. While the 16-core chip especially one in the cloud. But in addition delivers impressive computational to cost, the big attraction is that you could performance, AMD faces tough run AI locally, under your full control, competition from Nvidia on the graphics with no data ever leaving your network. front – both in terms of hardware and On a more practical level for design software compatibility.

The good news: this appeared to have negligible impact on performance, with V-Ray benchmark scores falling by just 1% compared to High Performance mode.

In short, Quiet Mode looks to be more than sufficient for most workflows, offering near-peak performance with significantly reduced fan noise.

Finally, Rack Mode prioritises reliability over acoustics. Fans run consistently fast — even at idle — to ensure thermal stability in densely packed datacentre deployments.

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The mobile sibling The HP ZBook Ultra G1a has the exact same core specs as the HP Z2 G1a, but in a mobile workstation form factor.

Read our in-depth review from 2025 to find out more about the capabilities (and limitations) of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ processor.

■ tinyurl.com/UltraG1a

Nvidia’s latest low-profile Blackwell GPUs offer improved performance and more memory (up to 24 GB) (see review on page WS48) and are expected to debut soon in the HP Z2 Mini G1i.

As reviewed, the Z2 Mini G1a with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395, 128 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD is priced at £2,330 + VAT, while a lower-spec model with the Ryzen AI Max Pro 390, 64 GB RAM (our recommended minimum) and 1 TB SSD comes in at £1,650 + VAT. This feels very competitive, especially given the performance and workflow potential on offer and the recent RAM price hikes. More than anything, the HP Z2 Mini G1a shows how far compact workstations have come — delivering desktop and datacentre power in a form factor that was once considered a compromise.

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64 GB (2 × 32 GB) of DDR5-6400 Lenovo RAM, and is priced at £2,980.

Lenovo offers a wide choice ThinkStation of CPUs, with ten different spanning 35 W, 65 W, P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 models and 125 W variants. Our review Lenovo’s compact workstation blends desktop performance with datacentre flexibility, delivering a great all rounder for mainstream CAD and visualisation workflows, writes Greg Corke

T

he Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 occupies an increasingly important space in Lenovo’s workstation lineup.

Sitting between the diminutive P3 Tiny micro workstation and the full-size P3 Tower, this Small Form Factor machine delivers serious professional performance in a chassis compact enough for the desk, yet flexible enough for the datacentre.

On the surface, it resembles a compact desktop workstation, with a 3.9 litre chassis measuring 87 × 223 × 202 mm. However, as we explore in our Lenovo Access feature on page WS14, the P3 Ultra can also be deployed at scale in a dedicated 5U rack enclosure that holds up to seven units. For design and engineering firms looking to centralise compute resources, this versatility is a big plus. This is not just a small workstation – it’s a building block for high-density remote workstation environments.

A familiar, well-engineered chassis The ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 is effectively the third generation of a chassis first introduced in 2022 under the ThinkStation P360 Ultra brand. Its standout feature is the well-thought-out dual-chamber layout. Unlike most desktop workstations, where components are clustered on one side, the P3 Ultra divides the interior into two zones by positioning the motherboard slightly off-centre.

On one side sit the CPU, GPU, and secondary storage; on the other, the primary SSD, system memory, and one additional PCIe card. This separation improves thermals and simplifies servicing. The CPU is cooled by a dedicated shroud and fan that exhausts directly out the rear, keeping it thermally isolated from the GPU – a smart approach in such a confined space.

Core configuration At its heart, the P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 is built around an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processor, paired with a low-profile Nvidia RTX Ada Generation GPU and up to 128 GB of DDR5 memory. Our review machine featured the Intel Core Ultra 9 285, Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada (20 GB), and WS34

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system hit the sweet spot with the 65 W Intel Core Ultra 9 285, featuring 8 Performance Cores and 16 Efficient Cores.

For just £17 more, the 125 W Core Ultra 9 285K retains the same core count but offers slightly higher turbo frequencies.

In theory, this chip could deliver a tiny boost in singlethreaded CAD applications and additional headroom for multi-threaded workloads, though its performance will still be constrained by the chassis’ power and thermal limits.

Tech Specs ■ Intel Core Ultra 9

285 processor (2.5 GHz, 5.6 GHz Turbo) (8 P-cores, 16 E-Cores)

■ Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada (20 GB) GPU ■ 64 GB (2 × 32 GB)

DDR5-6400 memory

■ 1 TB SSD M.2 2280

PCIe Gen5 TLC Opal SSD

■ External 330 W 90% efficiency PSU

some additional headroom, though it would never approach its theoretical 250 W turbo power – especially given the system’s 330 W PSU. Some extra performance might be possible if Lenovo allowed higher sustained power limits. However, in saying that, even the 65W Core Ultra 9 285 doesn’t get close to its theoretical max of 182 W.

Whisper quiet in everyday use

One area where the P3 Ultra SFF truly shines is acoustics.

During single-threaded or lightly ■ Weight 3.6 kg threaded CAD workflows the ■ Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit system was almost silent. Even ■ 3 year Premier when pushed hard with CPU Support Warranty rendering, together with GPU■ £2,980 (Ex VAT) intensive tasks such as AI image ■ lenovo.com generation in Stable Diffusion, fan noise remained remarkably restrained. For users who value a quiet Real-world performance In practice, the test system delivered office environment, this is a major win. excellent performance in typical 3D CAD / BIM tools, including Solidworks Graphics options and Revit, which rely heavily on Lenovo offers a choice of four low-profile single-threaded performance. In these professional GPUs: the single slot 50W applications, the P3 Ultra SFF was Nvidia RTX A400 (4 GB) and RTX only marginally slower than a fully- A1000 (8 GB), and dual slot 70W RTX fledged liquid-cooled tower workstation 2000 Ada Generation (16 GB) and RTX running the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K 4000 SFF Ada Generation (20 GB).

– an impressive result for such a compact Our review machine featured the topmachine, although not unexpected. end RTX 4000 SFF Ada – an excellent However, physics inevitably catches choice for mainstream visualisation. It up when workloads scale across many delivered strong results in Twinmotion, cores. In our V-Ray CPU rendering test, V-Ray, D5 Render, Stable Diffusion and the limitations of the small chassis became other GPU tests, making it a great allmore apparent. Under sustained load, the rounder for architects and designers. liquid-cooled 285K tower was up to 45% However, there are significant savings faster – hardly surprising given it has the to be had. Dropping down to the RTX thermal headroom to draw the full 250W A1000 saves around £1,075, bringing the and maintain all-core frequencies around system cost under £2,000, and is perfectly 4.86 GHz. adequate for most CAD workflows. The By comparison, the P3 Ultra initially ran RTX 2000 Ada provides a capable entry at 125W and 3.8 GHz, but after around point for visualisation at a £758 reduction. five minutes of rendering Two points are worth settled at approximately noting. First, these 80W and 3.35 GHz. are Ada Generation Temperatures GPUs, not the very dropped from an latest Blackwell models initial peak of 97°C to reviewed on page WS48. a comfortable 78°C. We expect Lenovo will This conservative introduce Blackwell tuning makes sense GPUs later this year for acoustics and in any future P3 Ultra longevity, but it SFF revision. does mean you Second, GPU choice can’t extract the full has been dramatically potential of Intel’s streamlined. The Gen top-end CPUs in this 1 model offered up to chassis. ten options, including Testing the 125 W several high-power Ultra 9 285K in this laptop GPUs such as platform could reveal the 125 W Nvidia RTX ■ Size (W x D x H) 87 × 223 × 202 mm

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workstation special report

A5500 (16 GB). This reduction is likely due to a combination of cost (developing custom laptop GPU boards), customer demand, and thermal realities.

Remote control

Deploying the ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF in the datacentre

Changes from Gen 1 Not all updates are forward steps. The most significant regression is maximum memory capacity: the Gen 2 model has just two DIMM slots, limiting maximum RAM to 128 GB, compared with 192 GB (via four SODIMMs) in the previous generation. For most users, this will be sufficient, but those working with extremely large datasets may feel constrained.

Networking has also been trimmed back: standard Ethernet drops from 2.5 GbE to 1 GbE. On the flip side, there’s now an optional 25 GbE upgrade – a big leap from the previous 10 GbE maximum upgrade.

This could be particularly relevant to centralised deployments, as could support for an optional Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) PCIe card, which further underlines Lenovo’s datacentre ambitions for this machine.

Storage also gets a welcome boost. The system now supports up to three on-board M.2 SSDs, including one PCIe Gen 5.

Curiously, Lenovo also offers an option for a 3.5-inch HDD, which sacrifices an M.2 slot. In an era when most workstations are moving entirely to solid-state storage, or at the very least 2.5-inch HDDs, this seems somewhat unusual, likely catering to a niche workflow or specific customer request.

Conclusion The Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 is an impressive piece of engineering, packing strong professional performance into a remarkably small footprint while offering excellent acoustics, smart internal design, and genuine versatility.

For mainstream CAD and visualisation workflows, it hits a near-perfect balance.

However, the compact chassis inevitably imposes limits in sustained multi-threaded CPU workloads, where larger tower workstations retain the advantage.

Compared to the Gen 1 model, there are a few regressions – fewer GPU options, reduced maximum memory, and slower standard networking – but these are likely to affect only a small subset of users.

Most importantly, the P3 Ultra should not be viewed purely as a desktop machine.

Its ability to be deployed densely in racks and used as a 1:1 remote workstation makes it a compelling option for modern, flexible IT infrastructures.

If you need serious workstation performance without the bulk – whether on the desk or in the datacentre – the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 deserves to be high on your shortlist. www.develop3d.com

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IMSCAD is a leading specialist in remote workstation solutions and a pioneer in the use of cloud and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for CAD and 3D applications. In recent years, however, the company has increasingly focused on solutions built around compact desktop workstations in the datacentre.

CEO Adam Jull believes this oneto-one approach — particularly using systems such as the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF — is set to “kill” the heavy mobile workstation for many firms.

For Jull, the core value proposition is simple: put small physical desktop workstations in the datacentre, configure them with high frequency processors and dedicated GPUs to deliver top-end performance, remove the complexities and cost of virtualisation, and access them remotely using mature remoting technologies like Mechdyne TGX or Citrix. That way, users can swap heavy, GPU class laptops for lightweight devices, while improving connectivity to cloud services such as Autodesk Construction Cloud.

IMSCAD’s approach is deliberately flexible. Some firms run the P3 Ultras in their own datacentres, others host everything with IMSCAD in facilities around the world, for a true Workstationas-a-Service (WaaS) solution.

IMSCAD is currently working on deployments with two very different types of design firms — one large US engineering firm and one small London architectural practice.

The US firm has roughly 1,000 employees with around 600 BIM users, which have historically used powerful mobile workstations. IMSCAD is now working on a proof of concept (POC) based around 49 Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultras, hosted as a private cloud in the firm’s own datacentre.

The P3 Ultras are dedicated mainly to Revit and AutoCAD workflows. Each system uses an Nvidia RTX A1000 (8GB) GPU, providing solid 3D performance in a compact, rackable chassis. Following the POC the firm plans to introduce more P3 Ultras with heavier duty GPUs, such as the RTX 2000 Series, to lift certain users up to more demanding

visualisation workflows.

The second deployment is a small London-based architectural practice with around 30 users that need powerful workstations. Here, IMSCAD has implemented a hybrid solution comprising VDI and one-to-one Lenovo P3 Ultra workstations .

“They’ve got 20 Revit users and eight visualisation guys that use Enscape and various other tools,” says Jull. The Revit users are served through VDI using a 4GB vGPU profile, while the viz users are relying on P3 Ultras equipped with 16 GB RTX 2000 class GPUs to give them the performance they need for real time visualisation. “You can’t do that [give users 16 GB of graphics memory] very economically in VDI,” he notes.

All of these systems – VDI and P3 Ultras – are hosted in an Equinix data centre in Wembley, with IMSCAD managing the whole environment, from GPUs and hypervisors through to remoting protocols (Leostream, Mechdyne TGX) and user access.

On pricing, Jull positions hosted P3 Ultras as comparable to VDI at the low end, and cheaper than VDI for higher end GPU needs. “It’s about £150 to £200 a month, depending on the spec,” he says, including hosting and software stack. Contracts can be weekly, monthly or multi year.

Resilience can be built in with spare P3 Ultras following an n+1 model: buy one extra unit for every small pool, or a handful of spares for larger estates.

This, combined with Lenovo Premier support, helps ensure rapid recovery if a node fails, says Jull.

Importantly, many customers now buy the workstations themselves, while IMSCAD provides the service layer – hosting, configuration, monitoring and support. “You can buy them yourself and own them, and we’ll host them for you, with prices starting from as little as £50 per month,” Jull explains. This reassures firms they’re not overpaying for hardware, while still gaining the operational and mobility advantages of a professionally managed, remote P3 Ultra environment. “We even allow customers to ship us their own existing on-premise workstations and servers too,” he adds.

■ www.imscadservices.com

February / March 2026

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CyberPowerPC Intel Core U7WS Workstation With a thoughtful combination of hardware, this tower handles CAD, BIM, and viz tasks efficiently while staying price-conscious, writes Greg Corke

T

he UK arm of CyberPowerPC, a brand long associated with highperformance gaming rigs, is now spreading its wings into the workstation sector. Operating under the name NXPower, the business is now 20 years old, having grown from a startup into a sizeable operation producing around 65,000 systems each year.

Unlike its US counterpart, which is heavily focused on high-volume prebuilt machines and retail channels, CyberPowerPC UK has carved out a business around custom configurations and direct customer relationships.

That background makes a deeper focus on pro workstations a logical next step.

Years of building high-end gaming PCs has given the team deep experience in component selection, thermals and system balance — skills that translate well to CAD, BIM and visualisation workloads.

Sleek, professional aesthetic For its DEVELOP3D debut, CyberPowerPC has deliberately taken one step away from its gaming roots. The familiar glow of neon fans gives way to “dark walnut” accents on the Lian Li Lancool 217 chassis, creating an understated, professionallook. The detailing strips are flushfitted, giving the system a subtle, crafted feel rather than a token eco statement.

However, CyberPowerPC can’t quite let go of its gaming DNA, with RGB-lit memory modules visible through the glass side panel — though, according to the company, this is down to availability (see page WS3). Under normal circumstances, the modules

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would be black. Overall, it’s a well-judged enclosure that suits an office or studio without drifting into blandness.

Well-balanced components

Tech Specs ■ Intel Core Ultra 7

265KF processor (3.9 GHz, 5.5 GHz turbo) (8 P-cores, 12 E-cores, 20 Threads)

inch or 3.5-inch drives.

On the graphics side, many designers now rely heavily on GPU-accelerated rendering and real-time viz tools – such as Enscape and Twinmotion for AEC and KeyShot and Solidworks Visualize for product development. In this context, the RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB) has plenty of punch for its class, as detailed in our review on page WS48. For users who need more grunt, the system is fully configurable and can scale all the way up to an RTX 5000 Pro Blackwell (or higher with a larger PSU).

■ PNY Nvidia RTX Our review system is clearly Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB) GPU aimed at the volume end of the ■ 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) workstation market, targeting DDR5 6400 MHz CAD, BIM and entry-level Corsair Vengeance memory visualisation workflows. At ■ 2 TB Kingston Fury its heart is Intel’s Core Ultra Renegade G5 Gen5 7 265KF processor, paired NVMe SSD with PNY’s Nvidia RTX ■ MSI Pro Z890-P WiFi mainboard Pro 2000 Blackwell GPU. ■ Corsair Nautilus It’s a refreshingly realistic 360 RS AIO CPU configuration. The temptation for cooler system builders is often to spec ■ Corsair RM850X 850W 80Plus PSU the very top-end processors in ■ Lian Li Lancool Cooling and acoustics review machines, but that doesn’t 217 Black case 482mm (L) x 238mm necessarily reflect what design The Lian Li Lancool 217 chassis (W) x 503mm (H) and engineering professionals comes with five pre-installed ■ Microsoft Windows actually buy — or need. fans: two large 170 mm front 11 Home Advanced In practice, the Core Ultra 7 intake fans, a single 140 mm ■ 2 year return to base warranty 265KF delivers very similar rear exhaust, and two 120 mm (upgrades available performance to Intel’s flagship bottom fans drawing cool air for longer periods and on-site) Core Ultra 9 285KF in most in through side perforations — ■ £2,200 (Ex VAT) modelling workflows, despite combined with the three fans ■ cyberpowersystem.co.uk costing around 60% less. It runs on the Corsair AIO, that brings at slightly lower boost clocks (up the total to eight. Acoustics are to 5.5GHz) and has fewer cores (8 P-cores generally good, with a gentle, consistent and 12 E-cores), which means it falls behind hum that only rises slightly under in heavily multi-threaded workloads. In sustained rendering loads, allowing the our testing, it was around 16–22% slower system to blend fairly unobtrusively into a when rendering across V-Ray, Corona and working environment.

Cinebench. However, in everyday CAD, BIM and reality modelling workflows, the Practical design touches difference was negligible.

At 503mm in height, the case is Thermally, the workstation performs arguably larger than necessary for a well. Even during extended rendering system housing a low profile 70 W sessions lasting several hours, the CPU GPU, but the extra space provides airflow maintained a consistent all-core frequency headroom and upgrade flexibility. There of around 4.82 GHz. Thermals are handled are also some thoughtful design touches. by a Corsair Nautilus 360 RS AIO liquid For optimal airflow, there are no USB ports cooler and a Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet on the front or top — just a power button. (instead of standard thermal paste), which Instead, connectivity is tucked away on the means it comfortably handles the CPU that lower front-left side, offering two USB-A rarely exceeds 200W, contributing to stable ports, one USB-C, a microphone jack and a performance and low noise levels. second power button. That second button Memory is sensibly specified at 64 GB of is unusual, but potentially useful if the DDR5, using two 32 GB Corsair Vengeance chassis is placed on a desk.

At the rear, the MSI Pro Z890-P WiFi RGB modules running at 6,400 MHz. 64 GB is a sweet spot for most CAD, BIM motherboard provides four USB 2.0, two and entry-level visualisation workloads USB 5 Gbps Type-A, one USB 10 Gbps without pushing costs unnecessarily high. Type-A, and one USB 10 Gbps Type-C, Storage comes in the form of a 2 TB with 5 Gbps LAN and Intel Wi-Fi 7 Kingston Fury Renegade G5 Gen5 completing the connectivity.

NVMe SSD, which delivers excellent sequential and random performance. For The verdict most designers and engineers, a single Overall, this is a well-balanced and fast primary drive like this provides thoughtfully built workstation tailored a responsive experience across OS, for CAD, BIM and visualisation — and applications and active project data, with at £2,200, it represents excellent value. plenty of capacity before secondary storage It prioritises real-world workflows over becomes necessary — although should that headline specs and that bodes well for be required there plenty of room for 2.5- what comes next from CyberPowerPC UK.

www.develop3d.com

01/02/2026 15:12

Technology for the product lifecycle

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11/06/2024 10:00

workstation special report

Review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series AMD does it again, delivering extreme high-end workstation performance for demanding workloads — including rendering, simulation, and reality modelling — with flexible options for cores, memory, and cost, writes Greg Corke

A

MD Ryzen Threadripper has become the processor of choice for high-end workstations.

Originally a niche product for specialist system builders, Threadripper quickly attracted the attention of major OEMs, including Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

Eight years since it first launched, Threadripper now dominates the highend workstation market. Intel currently has nothing that comes close.

Threadripper processors are all about scale, combining massive core counts with the ability to push a handful of cores to blistering speeds. While peak frequencies don’t quite match mainstream AMD Ryzen or Intel Core chips, they come remarkably close — and when paired with high-bandwidth DDR5 memory and large caches, the new 9000 Series delivers workstation performance that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The 9000 Series Threadrippers build on the previous 7000 Series.

While core counts, base clocks, and the 350W Thermal Design Power (TDP) remain unchanged, AMD has refined nearly every other aspect.

Boost speeds are slightly higher, supported DDR5 memory now runs at 6,400 MT/s, and the new Zen 5 architecture delivers a 16% uplift in Instructions Per Clock (IPC) over Zen 4, along with improved power efficiency.

Zen 5 also brings enhanced AVX-512 support, helping ensure performance improvements in professional simulation applications, such as Altair Radioss, Simulia Abaqus, and Ansys Mechanical extend beyond IPC alone.

Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) continues to allow each core to handle two threads simultaneously.

While this can significantly accelerate heavily threaded tasks like ray-traced rendering, in some workflows — including certain simulation and reality modelling tasks — SMT may actually reduce performance.

The 9000 Series is available in two variants: the high-end desktop (HEDT) Ryzen Threadripper 9000 and the enterprise-focused Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series. The Pro chips push boundaries with up to 96 cores, eight memory channels, support for up to 2 TB

of memory, additional PCIe lanes for multiple GPUs, and enterprise-grade security and manageability. These latter two features are particularly important for OEMs like Dell, Lenovo and HP. Specialist builders often prefer the standard HEDT processors, which offer up to 64 cores. While they have fewer memory channels (four), and lower memory capacity (up to 1 TB), they still deliver exceptional performance at a lower cost. For many workloads, such as rendering, the extra memory bandwidth and capacity of the Pro variants are rarely required.

The Threadripper 9000 Series is broad enough to accommodate nearly any professional workload. HEDT options range from 24 to 64 cores, while the Pro WX-Series spans 12 to 96 cores, offering visualisers, engineers, and simulation specialists the flexibility to match raw computing power to their workflows and budget. The full lineup is shown in the table across the page.

On test To evaluate the new platform, we tested two systems supplied by specialist UK workstation builders, Armari and Scan, each featuring flagship processors from their respective HEDT and Pro lineups.

The Armari system was equipped with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X with 64 cores, while the Scan workstation featured the AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX, with 96 cores.

Threadripper 9000 workstation Armari Magnetar • CPU: Threadripper 9980X (64 cores) • Motherboard: Gigabyte TRX50 Aero D • Memory: 128GB (4 x 32GB) Gskill T5 Neo DDR5-6400 • Cooling: SilverStone XE360-TR5 All-In-One (AIO) liquid cooler.

• Chassis: Antec Flux SE mid Tower

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The Threadripper 9000 HEDT models are extremely well suited to high-end viz workflows in tools like V-Ray

Threadripper Pro 9000 workstation Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192 (see review page WS42) • CPU: Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores) • Motherboard: Asus WRX90E-SAGE • Memory: 256 GB (8 x 32 GB) Micron DDR5 6400 ECC (running at 6,000 MT/sec) • Cooling: ThermalTake AW360 All-In-One (AIO) liquid cooler • Chassis: Fractal North XL: Momentum Edition

Putting power in perspective All AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series processors share a 350W Thermal Design Power (TDP), representing the maximum power the CPU draws regardless of core count. Consequently, higher-core-count chips operate at lower

all-core frequencies to remain within this power envelope.

AMD also allows Threadripper to exceed its standard power limits through Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). Unlike traditional overclocking, which requires manual adjustments of frequencies and voltages, PBO automates the process, supplying the CPU with additional power while maintaining stability. Enabling PBO is as simple as flipping a switch in the motherboard BIOS, assuming the cooling solution can handle the increased load.

In the past we’ve seen some extraordinary examples of PBO in action.

For instance, in 2024 we reviewed a Threadripper Pro 7000 Series workstation from Armari that sustained around 700W under PBO, while in 2025 Comino supplied a fully liquid-cooled system capable of

pushing as high as 900W. Pumping more power into the CPU allows all-core frequencies to stay higher for longer, unlocking significantly more performance from the same silicon — all without thermal throttling. However, it’s important to note there are diminishing returns. A Threadripper processor running at 700W is not going to deliver anywhere near twice the performance of the same processor running at 350W. The greatest gains from PBO occur in heavily threaded workloads, such as rendering, where all cores are engaged simultaneously, with more limited benefits in simulation.

For this review, both of our test machines were evaluated at stock 350W settings. However, as they could both run a very demanding V-Ray render at

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9960X

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9945WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9955WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9965WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9975WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9985WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX

Cores / Threads

24 / 48

32 / 64

64 / 128

12 / 24

16 / 32

24 / 48

32 / 64

64 / 128

96 / 192

Base frequency

4.2 GHz

4.0 GHz

3.2 GHz

4.7 GHz

4.5 GHz

4.2 GHz

4.0 GHz

3.2 GHz

2.5 GHz

Boost frequency

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Up to 5.4 GHz

Memory type

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

DDR5 up to 6400 MT/sec

Memory Configuration

4-Channel, up to 1 TB

4-Channel, up to 1 TB

4-Channel, up to 1 TB

8-Channel, up to 2TB

8-Channel, up to 2 TB

8-Channel, up to 2 TB

8-Channel, up to 2 TB

8-Channel, up to 2TB

8-Channel, up to 2 TB

L3 cache

128 MB

128 MB

256 MB

64 MB

64 MB

128 MB

128 MB

256 MB

384 MB

Thermal Design Power (TDP)

350W

350W

350W

350W

350W

350W

350W

350W

350W

AMD Pro Security & Manageability

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

£1,143

£1,917

£3,850

N/A

£1,241

£2,155

£3,150

£6,025

£8,917

Price (Ex VAT)

Taken from Scan.co.uk 21/1/26

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a cool 60°C, this suggests that their AIO liquid coolers could likely handle more power. However, we didn’t push them beyond stock, and such experimentation may void warranties, so always check with your workstation provider. It’s also worth noting that Tier One OEMs ship workstations with PBO disabled, always relying on the processor’s stock TDP.

SPECWorkstation 3.1 Engineering simulation

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

WPCcfd workset (CFD) AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores)

Rodinia workset (CFD)

5.41

Calculix workset (FEA)

8.80

4.67

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

15.81

15.71

10.39

Armari Magnetar M64T7

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, overclocked 700W)

15.53

17.32

10.73

Benchmark results

Armari Magnetar M64T7

AMD Threadripper Pro 7975WX (32 cores, stock 350W)

18.10

8.32

6.12

HP Z6 G5A

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

22.43

18.23

15.15

Lenovo ThinkStation P8

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, overclocked 900W)

15.20

25.14

18.62

Comino Grando workstation RM

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, SMT off, overclock 900W) 1.23

18.61

21.60

11.46

Comino Grando workstation RM

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

15.22

17.16

11.56

Armari Magnetar

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

28.10

21.72

17.08

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, SMT off, stock 350W)

23.43

23.21

10.59

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores)

6.71

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-C24

11.68

Intel Xeon W9-3495X (56 cores)

14.80

Lenovo ThinkStation P7

2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8490H (60 cores)

13.61

5.47

24.96

Lenovo ThinkStation PX

30.14

V-Ray 6.0 benchmark Ray trace rendering

4.99

6.77

CoronaRender benchmark Ray trace rendering

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores)

5

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores)

47,923

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32

AMD Threadripper Pro 7975WX (32 cores, stock 350W)

AMD Threadripper Pro 7975WX (32 cores, stock 350W)

67,948

HP Z6 G5A

HP Z6 G5A

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

144,988

Lenovo ThinkStation P8

Lenovo ThinkStation P8

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, overclocked 900W)

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, overclocked 900W)

194,226

Comino Grando workstation RM

Comino Grando workstation RM

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

148,908

Armari Magnetar

Armari Magnetar

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

176,598

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores)

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores)

41,067

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-C24

10

15

20

14,896,186 21,743,074 N/A 43,813,572 39,696,824 40,291,312 12,985,497

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-C24

Cinebench 2024 benchmark core) 200000 0 50000 (single 100000 150000

Cinebench 2024 benchmark (multi core) 0 1000000020000000300000004000000050000000

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

Ray trace rendering

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores)

133

Ray trace rendering

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores)

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

114

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

114

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, overclocked 700W)

109

AMD Threadripper Pro 7975WX (32 cores, stock 350W)

107

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

110

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, overclocked 900W)

Armari Magnetar M64T7

2,211 5,557

Armari Magnetar M64T7

AMD Threadripper 7980X (64 cores, overclocked 700W) Armari Magnetar M64T7

6,368

Armari Magnetar M64T7

AMD Threadripper Pro 7975WX (32 cores, stock 350W) HP Z6 G5A

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, stock 350W) Lenovo ThinkStation P8

AMD Threadripper Pro 7995WX (96 cores, overclocked 900W) Comino Grando workstation RM

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

127 123

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

60

90

120

WS38_39_40_41_D3D_FEBMARCH26_Threadripper.indd 40

7,383

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

February / March 2026

30

6,498

Armari Magnetar

144

Scan 3XS GWP-A1-C24

8,061

Comino Grando workstation RM

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores)

0

5,878

Lenovo ThinkStation P8

Armari Magnetar

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 cores, stock 350W)

3,509

HP Z6 G5A

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 cores, stock 350W)

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We have loosely divided our testing into two categories: ray-trace rendering and simulation. For comparison, we have included results from a range of desktop workstations, including the previous-generation Threadripper 7000 Series, as well as the fastest current mainstream Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors. All workstations have different motherboard, memory and Windows configurations, so some variation is to be expected.

Some of the Threadripper 7000 Series workstations were tested with Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) enabled, so it’s important to understand that when looking at the performance charts, it’s not a like-for-like comparison.

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Visualisation - rendering Rendering is an area where Threadripper has always excelled. Performance scales extremely well with core count, and with the ‘Zen 5’ architecture’s superior IPC, the 9000 Series builds directly on the strengths of the ‘Zen 4’ 7000 Series.

In Cinebench 2024, the 64-core Threadripper 9980X delivers a 17% uplift over its 7000 Series predecessor, the 7780X, while the 96-core Threadripper Pro 9995WX posts a 25% gain over its ‘Zen 4’ equivalent, the Pro 7995WX. When the Pro 7995WX is pushed to 900W in the Comino Grando workstation, it retains a commanding lead. However, this is hardly surprising, given it sustains much higher frequencies across all 96 cores thanks to a very advanced custom liquid-cooling system.

Interestingly, despite having 50% more cores, the 96-core Pro 9995WX was only 14% faster than the 64-core 9980X. There are two key reasons for this. First, both processors operate within a 350W TDP, allowing the 64-core chip to sustain much higher all core frequencies. Second, Cinebench — like many renderers — is not particularly memory-intensive, so it does not benefit from the higher memory bandwidth offered by Threadripper Pro’s 8-channel memory architecture.

We observed similar behaviour in V-Ray. Here, the Pro 9995WX showed a 22% lead over the Pro 7995WX, yet the www.develop3d.com

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overclocked 900W Pro 7995WX still topped the charts, maintaining a 10% advantage over the 350W Pro 9995WX. Meanwhile, the Pro 9995WX, running all 96 cores at 3.1 GHz, was only 19% faster than the 64-core 9980X, which sustained 4.0 GHz across all cores.

In CoronaRender, the Pro vs HEDT results were more striking: the 96-core Pro 9995WX was just 1.5% faster than the 64-core 9980X. Unfortunately, we don’t have Threadripper 7000 Series data for a gen-on-gen comparison.

Finally, we ran Cinebench 2024 in single-core mode. While this has little relevance to real-world rendering workflows, it provides a useful indication of single-threaded performance. Here, the 9980X was only 12% slower than the fastest current mainstream desktop processor, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, and just 4% behind AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X. The Pro 9995WX was not far behind.

Simulation - CFD and FEA Simulation workloads are far more difficult to evaluate, as both Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) rely on a wide range of solvers, each of which can also behave differently depending on the dataset. In general, CFD workloads scale very well with more CPU cores and can also benefit significantly from higher memory bandwidth, as data can be fed to each core more quickly. This is an area where the Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series holds a clear advantage over the ‘HEDT’ Threadripper 9000 Series, thanks to support for eight-channel memory versus four-channel.

For testing, we selected three simulation workloads from the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark: two CFD tests — Rodinia (compressible flow) and WPCcfd (combustion and turbulence) — and one FEA test, CalculiX, which models a jet engine turbine’s internal temperature.

The WPCcfd benchmark is particularly sensitive to memory bandwidth. As a result, the 96-core Pro 9995WX, equipped with eight channels of memory running at 6,000 MT/sec delivered an 85% performance advantage over the 64-core

The Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series can be an excellent partner for simulation tools like Ansys Fluent

9980X, which is limited to four channels of 6,400 MT/sec memory. Faster memory also appears to play a role in the advantage the Pro 9995WX has over the Pro 7995WX running at 900 W. While that system also supports eight channels, it was populated with much slower 4,800 MT/sec memory.

It’s also worth highlighting historical data from the 32-core Pro 7975WX. Despite having just one-third the core count of the 96-core Pro 9995WX, and running with eight-channel 5,200 MT/s memory, it was only around 55% slower. With faster 6,400 MT/sec memory, the performance gap between the newer ‘Zen 5’ 32-core Pro 9975WX and the 96-core Pro 9995WX would likely narrow considerably. This could make a compelling case for more costeffective, lower core-count Threadripper Pro processors in simulation workflows where memory bandwidth has a greater impact on performance than core count.

Conversely, memory bandwidth has very little influence on the CalculiX (FEA) benchmark, where performance is driven primarily by core count and IPC. Here, the 96-core Pro 9995WX was 13% faster than its Pro 7995WX predecessor at 350W but was edged out by the same processor running at 900W. That said, PBO has a smaller impact in this workload, as the benchmark does not stress the CPU to anyway near the same extent as ray-trace rendering.

end workstation processors. Deciding between HEDT and Pro models really comes down to workflows, budget and whether your firm only buys workstations from a major OEM. For rendering-heavy tasks, the highercore-count HEDT chips usually give the best value. The lower-core-count models come up against mainstream Ryzen 9 9950X chips, which are much cheaper, though with less memory capacity.

For most visualisation workloads, the extra memory bandwidth from the Pro models doesn’t add much, and the jump from a 64-core HEDT to a 96-core Pro is only 14–19% faster, even though it costs more than twice as much.

On the flip side, for workloads like simulation, where memory bandwidth really matters, the Threadripper Pro with its eight memory channels and up to 2 TB of capacity can handle much more complex datasets faster. And in workflows where memory is a bottleneck, even the lower-core-count Pro chips can be an excellent choice.

If you want to squeeze even more performance out of these chips, Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) is worth considering — especially for heavily threaded workloads like rendering. Just bear in mind, there can be diminishing returns and more power increases running costs and carbon footprint.

In summary, the 9000 Series offers plenty of flexibility to balance cores, memory, and cost with your workload — The verdict all while delivering top-end performance.

The Threadripper 9000 Series is a It’s no wonder Threadripper still sets the solid step forward for AMD’s high- standard for high-end workstations.

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The 9000 Series offers plenty of flexibility to balance cores, memory, and cost with your workload — all while delivering top-end performance. It’s no wonder Threadripper still sets the standard for high-end workstations

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Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192 workstation This super high-end desktop pairs AMD’s 96-core Threadripper Pro chip with a 96 GB Nvidia Blackwell GPU to tackle the most demanding workloads confidently, writes Greg Corke

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igh-end workstations tend to fall into two camps: those tailored to specific tasks, and uncompromising systems built to deliver maximum performance across almost every conceivable workflow. The Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192 sits squarely in the latter category.

This sizeable desktop is aimed at users with the most demanding workloads — from advanced visualisation and engineering simulation to large-scale reality modelling and AI. With a price tag of £23,333 ex VAT, it is very much a premium proposition, but the specification leaves no doubt about its intentions.

Searching for bottlenecks At the heart of the machine is the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX processor (see review on page WS38), paired with 256 GB of Micron DDR5-6400 ECC memory and the 96 GB PNY Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition GPU (see review on page WS48). On paper, it’s about as powerful a desktop configuration as you can currently buy without going down the multi-GPU route.

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3 AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX processor

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This combination means 96 cores under control Tech Specs strong performance regardless Cooling a 96-core, 350W of whether applications processor is no trivial task. Scan ■ AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro rely on multi-threaded CPU uses the ThermalTake AW360 9995WX processor horsepower, GPU acceleration, AIO liquid cooler, an all-in-one (2.5 GHz, 5.4 GHz boost) (96 cores, or a mixture of both. unit with a 360 mm radiator 192 Threads) The memory configuration and three built-in fans that ■ PNY Nvidia RTX is particularly well thought exhaust warm air directly out of Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition out. The 256 GB of DDR5-6400 the top of the chassis.

GPU (96 GB) ECC RAM is spread across In practice, it does an excellent ■ 256 GB (8 x 32 GB) Micron DDR5-6400 eight 32 GB DIMMs, taking job. During extended CPU ECC memory full advantage of Threadripper rendering tests in V-Ray, with ■ 4 TB Samsung Pro’s eight-channel architecture all 96 cores fully taxed for more 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 SSD + 8 TB RAID 0 to maximise bandwidth. than two hours, temperatures (Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe This is especially important never exceeded 55°C – an 5.0 card, with 4 x 2 TB Samsung 9100 in engineering simulation, impressively low figure for Pro SSDs) particularly computational such a high-end chip. We did ■ Asus WRX90Efluid dynamics (CFD). see occasional 69°C spikes SAGE motherboard For stability, Scan runs the during certain stages of our ■ Corsair WS3000 ATX 3.1 PSU memory at 6,000 MHz rather Finite Element Analysis (FEA) ■ Fractal North XL: than its rated maximum of simulation benchmark, as it Momentum Edition chassis (L x W x H) 6,400 MHz — a pragmatic uses fewer CPU cores at higher 503 x 240 x 509 mm decision for a professional frequencies, concentrating heat ■ Microsoft Windows system where reliability into a smaller section of the chip.

11 Pro 64-bit matters more than squeezing But 69°C is still nowhere close ■ 3 Years warranty – 1st Year Onsite, 2nd out the last few percentage to the processor’s rated 95°C and 3rd Year RTB points of performance. maximum, a temperature we’ve (Parts and Labour) Thermals are well considered seen reached with some air■ £23,333 (ex VAT) too. Each bank of four DIMMs cooled Threadripper Pro 7000 ■ scan.co.uk/3xs has its own custom three-fan Series workstations.

Scan 3XS cooling solution to Power draw peaks at the keep temperatures under control during CPU’s stock 350W, exactly as expected, sustained workloads. although it feels like this could be pushed Of course, in today’s market, a large higher, as we’ve seen in the past with amount of high-performance ECC some Threadripper Pro 7000 Series memory doesn’t come cheap. The system workstations.

RAM alone adds around £3,700 ex VAT Acoustically, the machine is also well to the bill – roughly one sixth of the total behaved. There is a gentle, constant fan system cost — but for those working noise at idle, but it’s not intrusive. More with colossal design, engineering or viz notably, that noise level barely changes datasets, it’s an essential investment. under heavy load, and the fans only really ramp up during certain phases of our FEA benchmark. Even when rendering for 1 ThermalTake AW360 AIO liquid cooler long periods in V-Ray, the system remains radiator and fans remarkably consistent and controlled.

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5 Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe 5.0 card, with four 2 TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD

Enter the 600W beast If the Threadripper Pro processor is demanding, the Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition GPU is on another level entirely. With 96 GB of onboard memory and a 600W power rating, it presents serious thermal and power challenges.

Given the size and weight of the card, Scan fits a custom Stealth GPU bracket to keep it level and secure in the chassis – a sensible addition, particularly during delivery.

The cooling design of the Blackwell card is also different from that of traditional workstation GPUs. Instead of a blower-style fan that exhausts hot air directly out of the rear, it draws air from underneath and vents it out of the top of the card. This approach helps keep www.develop3d.com

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the GPU itself cooler under sustained heavy workloads but inevitably increases temperatures inside the chassis.

In testing, the setup proved effective.

During more than an hour of GPU rendering in V-Ray, the card barely reached 70°C, with only a very small increase in fan noise.

To push things further, we ran several tests in combination – on the GPU, rendering in V-Ray and generating images in Stable Diffusion, while on the CPU, rendering in Cinebench and simulating in rodiniaCFD. Under this extreme, if not entirely realistic, multi-tasking workload, the processors drew close to 1,000W, but temperatures peaked at 75°C on the CPU and 72°C on the GPU, while the machine remained responsive and no louder than before.

Performance As you’d expect, performance is first-class. In CPU rendering the Scan 3XS sits at the very top of our charts, surpassed only by the Comino Grando workstation RM we reviewed last year, which pushed the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX to its absolute 800W limits using an extreme custom liquid-cooling system.

In single-threaded workflows, the picture is more nuanced. The system is between 0–17% slower than the fastest Intel Core Ultra 9 285K-based workstation we’ve tested, and 8–13% behind the quickest AMD Ryzen 9 9950X-based machines. However, considering this workstation is built around a 96-core processor optimised for massively parallel workloads, that’s an incredibly impressive result. For a deeper dive, see our full Threadripper 9000 review on page WS38.

On the GPU front, however, the 3XS GWP-B1-TR192 has no real peers.

Compared to the previous-generation RTX 6000 Ada Generation, the new RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition is around 1.5× faster in many ray tracing workflows and up to 2× faster in some AI workloads. See full benchmark details in our dedicated review on page WS48.

Streamlined storage The Scan 3XS doesn’t just rely on immense CPU and GPU power – it’s also engineered to keep those processors fed with data at high speed. Alongside a single 4 TB Samsung 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 SSD for the operating system and applications, Scan includes an ultra-fast RAID 0 striped array for secondary storage. RAID 0 can be particularly beneficial for workflows www.develop3d.com

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that depend on sustained read/write performance, such as simulation, reality modelling, and video editing.

The RAID 0 array is built using an Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe 5.0 add-in card, populated with four 2 TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSDs. At around £70

space on the Asus WRX90E-SAGE motherboard for more GPUs, adding a second Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition would probably present some serious thermal challenges.

A sensible chassis

All of this hardware is housed in the brand new Fractal North XL: Momentum Edition chassis. The case has a sophisticated, understated look, with distinctive brown/ black wooden strips on the front panel – a refreshing contrast to the aggressive styling often seen on highperformance systems.

The front and top I/O includes a single USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port (20 Gbps), two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and separate audio and microphone jacks. There are plenty more USB ports on the rear, along with superfast dual 10Gb Intel Ethernet.

More importantly, the chassis delivers excellent front-to-back airflow thanks to three large low duty Momentum fans, which is essential when cooling components capable of for the card, it’s an extremely costeffective way to achieve multi-drive drawing close to a kilowatt of power.

NVMe performance. However, it lacks the enterprise-class credentials of a dedicated Final thoughts hardware RAID solution from a specialist Few AEC or product development such as HighPoint. professionals genuinely need this level Unlike the Asus card, which relies on of performance, and fewer still will have CPU-based software RAID, HighPoint the budget for it. But for those working controllers feature a built-in hardware with complex simulations, huge reality RAID engine, making them arguably models, high-end visualisation or AI better suited to a workstation at this level. development, training or inferencing, the Even so, the performance of the Asus Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192 provides an setup is impressive. In CrystalDiskMark, enormous amount of compute power in a the RAID array delivered 36,216 MB/sec single, well-engineered box. read and 51,110 MB/sec write, comfortably What’s impressive is not just the raw outpacing the single 4 TB Samsung 9100 specification, but how controlled and Pro, which achieved 14,536 MB/sec read stable it remains under load. Despite the and 13,388 MB/sec write. However, extreme hardware inside, it runs cool, when all 96 CPU cores were fully taxed stays relatively quiet, and never feels during V-Ray rendering, throughput stressed – except in CPU workflows dropped significantly to 9,616 MB/sec when there is no core prioritisation or read and 8,602 MB/sec write. This kind of pinning and applications end up fighting performance reduction is less likely with for resources. a dedicated HighPoint card, thanks to its For organisations and professionals onboard RAID processing that operates that require this level of capability, independently of the CPU. it represents a carefully assembled, The whole system is powered by a thoroughly engineered solution – albeit 3,000W Corsair WS3000 ATX 3.1 PSU, one with a price tag to match. providing stable and reliable power across However, as with all Scan workstations, the high-end components. In theory it’s fully customisable, and depending on this gives plenty of power headroom your workloads there are many ways to for upgrades, but even though there’s bring down the price.

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Why GPU memory matters for CAD, viz and AI Even the fastest GPU can stall if it runs out of memory.

CAD, BIM visualisation, and AI workflows often demand more than you think, and it all adds up when multi-tasking, writes Greg Corke

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hen people talk about GPUs, they usually focus on cores, clock speeds, or ray-tracing performance.

But if you’ve ever watched your 3D model or architectural scene grind to a crawl — or crash mid-render — the real culprit is often GPU memory, or more specifically, running out of it.

GPU memory is where your graphics card stores all the geometry, textures, lighting, and other data it needs to display or compute your 3D model / scene. If it runs out, your workstation must start paging data to system RAM, which is far slower and can turn an otherwise smooth workflow into a frustrating slog.

This is why professional GPUs usually come with more memory than consumer cards. Real-world CAD, BIM, visualisation, and AI workflows demand it. Large

assemblies, high-resolution textures, and complex lighting can quickly fill memory.

Once GPU memory is exhausted, frame rates can collapse, and renders lag. Extra GPU memory ensures everything stays on the card, keeping workflows smooth and responsive.

GPU memory isn’t a luxury — it can make or break a workflow. A fast GPU may crunch geometry or trace light rays quickly, but if it can’t hold everything it needs, that speed is wasted. Even the most powerful GPU can feel practically useless if it’s constantly starved for memory.

CAD and BIM: quiet consumers In CAD software like Solidworks or BIM software such as Autodesk Revit, GPU memory is rarely a major bottleneck. Most 3D models, particularly when viewed in the standard shaded display mode, will

comfortably fit within a modest 8 GB professional GPU, such as the Nvidia RTX A1000. However, it’s still important to understand how CAD and BIM workflows impact overall GPU memory — each application and dataset contributes to the total, and it soon adds up.

Memory demands rise with model complexity and display resolution. The same model viewed on a 4K (3,840 × 2,160) display uses more memory than when viewed on FHD (1,920 × 1,080).

Realism also has an impact: enabling RealView in Solidworks or turning on realistic mode in Revit consumes more memory than a simple shaded view.

Looking ahead, as CAD and BIM software evolves with the addition of modern graphics APIs, and viewport realism goes up with more advanced materials, lighting, and even ray tracing,

Keeping an eye on GPU memory Keeping an eye on GPU memory usage is important as it lets you see exactly how much your applications and active datasets are consuming at any given moment, rather than relying on guesswork or system slowdowns as a warning sign. It also makes it possible to see the immediate impact of closing an application, unloading a large model, or switching projects,

helping you understand which tasks are placing the greatest demands on your hardware.

This insight allows you to plan your workflow more effectively, avoiding situations where memory pressure leads to reduced performance, stuttering viewports, or crashes. It can also inform purchasing and configuration decisions, such as whether you need a higher-end

GPU with more memory, or simply better task management.

Monitoring can be done through a dedicated app like GPU-Z or simply through Windows Task Manager. To access, right click on the Windows taskbar, launch Task Manager, then select the Performance tab at the top.

Finally click GPU in the left-hand column and you’ll see all the important stats at the bottom

1 GPU Utilisation: When rendering or navigating complex viz models, this will often sit close to 100%. In ●

CAD or BIM workflows it is typically much lower, as these applications are less GPU-intensive

2 GPU memory: The total memory available to the GPU (dedicated GPU memory + shared GPU memory) ● 3 Dedicated GPU memory: the amount of memory physically on your graphics card. Ideally, you want to ●

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maintain some headroom here, as once it becomes full, performance can drop sharply

4 Shared GPU memory: a portion of system RAM that Windows makes available to the GPU. A small amount ●

is always reserved, but usage increases when dedicated GPU memory is exhausted. As reliance on shared memory grows, GPU performance degrades and applications may become unstable or crash

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Autodesk Revit 2026: GPU memory utilisation Snowdon Towers sample project (viewport) FHD resolution 1.6 GB (shaded) 4K resolution (shaded)

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Revit is the most widely used BIM tool.

For our tests, we used the small-tomedium sized Snowdon sample model that comes with the software.

Display resolution has a significant impact on GPU memory usage, and enabling realistic mode more than doubles the amount of memory required.

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Revit 2026 also allows models to be displayed using the Accelerated Graphics Tech Preview, a new graphics technology currently in development designed to

improve performance. Interestingly, in shaded view, this tech preview appears to consume less GPU memory than the standard graphics engine.

D5 Render 2.9: GPU memory utilisation Lakeside model Viewport @ FHD resolution

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Viewport @ 4K resolution

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Render image @ 4K resolution

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Render image @ 8K resolution

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0 Render1video @ 4K2 resolution 3 D5 Render is a real-time architectural visualisation tool built on Unreal Engine, capable of producing still images, videos, and 360 panoramas.

For our test scene, we used a colossal lakeside model containing 2,177,739,558 faces. While navigating the model in the viewport, GPU memory usage increased

modestly as display resolution rose.

Final renders placed a heavier load on memory overall, although output resolution itself appeared to have

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little influence. The heaviest memory demands occurred when rendering a final 4K video, requiring a minimum of a 20 GB GPU for best performance

KeyShot Studio 2025: GPU memory utilisation Multi room supermarket model

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Real-time view with denoising @ 2,560 x 1,600 resolution Render @ 1,920 x 1,080 resolution

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scene must fit into GPU memory. If it doesn’t, KeyShot automatically falls back to CPU rendering.

For our testing, we used a very large

supermarket model from Kesseböhmer Ladenbau, containing approximately 447 million triangles. Despite the complexity, GPU memory usage scaled predictably.

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Render @ 7,680 x 4,320 resolution

KeyShot Studio is a powerful 3D rendering and animation tool that can render with either the CPU or GPU. When GPU mode is enabled, the entire

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Increasing viewport resolution, final render resolution, and enabling denoising all raised memory requirements, but none had a dramatic impact.

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memory requirements will increase.

At that point, 8 GB GPUs will probably start to show their limitations, so when considering any purchase it’s prudent to plan for the future.

Visualisation: memory can explode

scales with scene complexity. A small residential building might need 4–6 GB, but a large urban environment with trees, vehicles, and complex lighting can easily consume 20 GB or more.

Exporting final stills and videos pushes memory demands even higher. A scene that loads and navigates smoothly can still exceed the GPU’s capacity once rendering begins. Often there’s no obvious warning — renders may just take much longer as data is offloaded to system RAM. The

slowdowns — which can be more severe than running out of memory in a ray-trace renderer. According to Nvidia, the Flux. dev AI image‑generation model requires over 23 GB to run fully in GPU memory.

Everything adds up

GPU-accelerated visualisation tools like The biggest drain on GPU memory comes Twinmotion, D5 Render, Enscape, KeyShot, when multi-tasking. Few designers work Lumion, and Unreal Engine are where in a single application in isolation — memory demands really spike. Every CAD, BIM, visualisation, and simulation texture, vertex, and light source must reside tools all compete for memory. Even in GPU memory for lighter apps, like optimal performance. browsers or Microsoft High-resolution Teams, contribute.

GPU memory is just as important as cores or clocks materials, dynamic Everything adds up. shadows, reflections, The GPU doesn’t in professional workflows, and unlike CPU memory, and complex vegetation necessarily need it’s unforgiving — there’s no graceful degradation can quickly push to have everything memory usage upward. loaded at once, but As with CAD, display even when it appears resolution also has a significant impact on more memory that’s borrowed, the slower to have a little spare capacity, you can the process becomes, and by the time notice brief slowdowns as data is shuffled GPU memory load.

Running out of GPU memory in you notice, it may already be too late: the in and out of memory. When bringing a real-time visualisation software can software has crashed. new app to the foreground, the viewport be brutal. Frame rates don’t gradually can initially feel laggy, only reaching full decline — they plummet. A smooth 30– AI: memory gets even hotter performance seconds later.

60 frames per second (FPS) viewport AI image generators, such as Stable Modern GPUs handle multi-tasking can drop to 1–2 FPS, making navigation Diffusion and Flux, place a completely better than older cards, but if you’re impossible, and in the worst cases, the new kind of demand on GPU memory. The running a GPU render in the background software may crash entirely. This is models themselves, along with the data while modelling in CAD, you definitely why professional GPUs aimed at design they generate during inferencing, all need need enough memory to handle both. visualisation, such as the RTX Pro 2000 to live on the graphics card. Larger models, Otherwise, frame rates drop, viewports or 4000 Blackwell series, come with higher-resolution outputs, or batch freeze and rendering pipelines choke.

16 GB, 24 GB, or even more memory. processing require even more memory.

Different graphics APIs can complicate Having a cushion of memory allows further.

OpenGL-based If the GPU runs out, AI workloads matters designers to push realism without either crash, or slow dramatically as data CAD programs and DirectX-based worrying about performance cliffs. is paged to system RAM. Even small visualisation tools don’t always share In real-world projects, memory usage amounts of paging can cause significant memory efficiently.

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STABLE DIFFUSION IMAGE COURTESY OF JAMES GRAY

What happens when you run out of memory?

Running out of GPU memory can be catastrophic, and the impact is often far more severe than many users expect. Our testing highlights just how dramatic the consequences can be across two different workflows - AI image generation and realtime visualisation.

In the Procyon AI Image

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Generator benchmark, based on Stable Diffusion XL, we compared an 8 GB Nvidia RTX A1000 with several GPUs offering larger memory capacities. On paper, the RTX A1000 is only around 2 GB short of the 10 GB required for the benchmark’s dataset to reside entirely in GPU memory.

In practice, that small deficit

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Stable Diffusion XL (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT Time per image (secs) (smaller is better) RTX A1000 (8 GB)

Twinmotion 2024 (Snowdon Towers project) Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better) 774

RTX A4000 (16 GB)

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RTX 2000 Ada (16 GB)

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RTX 4000 Ada (20 GB)

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Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8 GB) - with spare GPU memory capacity)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8 GB) - with GPU memory full

caused performance to fall off RAM and delivering consistent a cliff. The RTX A1000 took a performance. staggering 23.5 times longer 0 100 200to300 400 500A similar 600 700 800pattern emerged in generate a single image than Twinmotion. Using an older the RTX A4000 — far beyond Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 with what its relative compute 8 GB, we loaded the Snowdon specifications would suggest.

Tower Sample project, which With 16 GB of memory, the RTX requires around 7.2 GB at 4K A4000 can keep the entire AI resolution. When run in isolation, model resident in GPU memory, the scene fit comfortably in GPU avoiding costly paging to system memory, delivering smooth

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real-time performance at around 20 frames per second (FPS).

However, by simultaneously loading a complex 7 GB CAD model in Solidworks, we forced the GPU into a memoryconstrained state. Twinmotion’s viewport performance collapsed to just 4 FPS, before recovering to 20 FPS once memory was eventually reclaimed.

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Keeping your memory in check You can take several steps to help avoid running out of GPU memory. Close any applications you’re not actively using, and reboot occasionally — memory isn’t always fully freed up when datasets or programs are closed.

Understanding how different workflows and applications impact memory usage helps, too. You can track this in Windows Task Manager (see box out on previous page) or with a dedicated tool like GPU-Z. Practical strategies also help reduce memory load. In visualisation software, avoid high-polygon assets where they add little visual value, use optimised textures appropriate to the resolution of the scene, and take advantage of levelof-detail technologies such as Nanite in Twinmotion and Unreal Engine. Even in CAD and BIM software, limiting unnecessary realism during navigation can help keep memory usage within bounds. And do you really need to model every nut and bolt?

Twinmotion 2024: GPU memory utilisation Snowdon Towers sample project (raster) FHD viewport 6.4 GB 4K viewport 8K render image

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7.7 GB

4K batch render six images

19.0 GB

Snowdon Towers sample project (path trace) FHD viewport

7.9 GB

4K viewport

9.6 GB

4K render image

11.6 GB

8K render image

13.3 GB

8K batch render four images

0

13.8 GB

Snowdon Towers sample project (video)

5

10

FHD video export

15

Twinmotion is a popular GPUaccelerated real-time viz tool. For our testing, we used the medium sized Snowdon Towers dataset.

GPU memory usage increased most significantly 0 when enabling 3 path tracing, exporting video at higher resolutions, and batch-

20

8.4 GB

4K video export

The bottom line GPU memory is just as important as cores or clocks in professional workflows, and unlike CPU memory, it’s unforgiving — there’s no graceful degradation. CAD and BIM may not be massive memory hogs, but they all contribute to the load.

Visualisation demands far more, AI workflows can push requirements even higher, and multi-tasking compounds the problem.

Professional add-in graphics cards with large memory pools give designers, engineers, and visualisation professionals the headroom needed to work without hitting sudden performance cliffs.

Meanwhile, new-generation processors with advanced integrated graphics, offer a different proposition. The AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro for example, gives the GPU fast, direct access to a large pool of system memory — up to 96 GB. This allows very large datasets to be loaded, and renders to be attempted, that would be impossible on a GPU with limited fixed memory.

However, as datasets grow, don’t expect performance to scale in the same way. One must not forget that the GPUs in these new all-in-one processors are still very much entry-level, so renders and AI tasks will take longer and navigating large, complex viz models can quickly become impractical due to low frame rates.

Ultimately, understanding how GPU memory is consumed — and planning for it — will help avoid slowdowns, crashes, and frustration, ensuring workflows stay fast, responsive, predictable, and frustration-free.

7.2 GB

4K render image 7.5 GB

14.4 GB

rendering multiple raster images

6 — but, interestingly, 9 12not when15 batch rendering multiple path traced images.

Lumion 2025: GPU memory utilisation Streetscape sample project (real-time viewport) FHD viewport

7.7 GB

4K viewport

10.5 GB

Streetscape sample project (raster render) 4K render

8.7 GB

8K render

8.7 GB

Streetscape sample project (ray trace render) FHD render

10.0 GB

4K render

Lumion is a real-time visualization tool focused on AEC workflows.

For testing, we used the mediumsized Streetscape scene. GPU

memory usage increased noticeably with higher viewport resolution, but output resolution had little effect on final raster exports. Ray-traced

0

3

16.2 GB

6

rendering had the largest impact, with memory use jumping sharply from FHD to 4K, likely explaining why 8K ray-tracing is disabled.

9

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12

15

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Review: Nvidia RTX Pro Blackwell Series GPUs Nvidia’s new workstation-class GPUs deliver huge gains in AI, ray tracing, and memory, redefining workstation performance, multitasking, and professional visualization workflows for demanding users,, writes Greg Corke

G

iven how much GPUs have evolved over the years, they really need a new name. The term “Graphics Processing Unit” simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

Today’s workstation-class GPUs do far more than display pixels or accelerate 3D viewports — they now handle massive computational workloads, including ray trace rendering, simulation, reality modelling, and, of course AI. These tasks place huge demands on the cards, which require raw compute power, large amounts of superfast memory, and efficient cooling, all while maintaining stability for hours, even days.

Nvidia’s new RTX Pro Blackwell family delivers exactly that. Compared to the previous Ada generation, the new workstation cards promise major gains, particularly in ray tracing and AI workloads, thanks to fourth-generation RT Cores, fifth-generation Tensor Cores, and faster, higher-capacity GDDR7 memory.

They also introduce support for new software technologies, most notably Nvidia DLSS 4.0, which uses AI to boost frame rates in supported real-time applications.

The new ‘Pro’ generation Ever since Nvidia retired the Quadro brand, distinguishing professional workstation GPUs from consumerfocused GeForce cards has become more difficult. With Blackwell, Nvidia aims to address this by adding a clear “Pro” suffix to its workstation lineup.

So far, seven RTX Pro Blackwell desktop workstation boards have been announced, replacing the Ada generation across the range. These span from the super high-end RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition down to the mainstream RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (see table right for the full line up).

Meanwhile, for entry-level CAD and visualisation, Nvidia continues to offer the RTX A1000 and RTX A400, both WS48

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exhaust hot air directly out of the rear of the workstation, the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition adopts a different approach. It draws air in from beneath the card and vents it out of the top. This helps keep the GPU cooler under sustained heavy workloads, but it also raises internal chassis temperatures, making overall thermal management more complex. The issue becomes more pronounced if multiple GPUs are installed close together, as hot air from one card can be pulled straight into the next.

The good news is Nvidia also offers a “Max-Q” version of the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell. This model uses a traditional blower-style fan and has a far more manageable 300W TDP, making it easier to integrate, particularly in multi-GPU workstations. We expect the Max-Q variant will be the default option from the major workstation OEMs. Crucially, half the power does not mean half the performance.

As with all processors, there are diminishing returns as power draw increases, and on paper the Max-Q version delivers only around 12% lower performance across CUDA, AI, and ray-tracing workloads compared with the full Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Bla ckwell 600W model.

Workstation Edition For the rest of the Pro Blackwell prioritise power efficiency, thermals, and lineup, Nvidia has largely followed the blueprint of the Ada generation. In fact, long-term reliability.

The Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell many of the cards are visually identical.

The RTX Pro 5000 (300W) and 4500 Workstation Edition consumes a crazy amount of energy. It draws up to 600W, (200W) are dual-slot, full-length boards, double that of its predecessor, the RTX while the RTX Pro 4000 (140W) is single6000 Ada Generation (300W) and slot. Meanwhile, the RTX Pro 4000 SFF slightly more than the GeForce RTX and 2000 (both 70W) are low-profile, 5090 (575W). While this enables extreme dual-slot cards designed for compact performance, it also limits where the workstations such as the HP Z2 Mini and card can be deployed. Some workstation Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF (see chassis will struggle to accommodate its review on page WS34). With an optional full physical size, thermal output, and power height bracket, both cards will technically requirements. Few will be able to support fit inside a standard tower, but it doesn’t multiple cards, and even if they do, it will make much sense to do that with the 4000 SFF. Despite having the same core probably just be a maximum of two.

Unlike most professional GPUs, specifications as the full-size 4000, its which use blower-style coolers to lower 70W TDP reduces performance,

based on the Ampere architecture, which is now two generations behind Blackwell.

For this review, we got our hands on three of the new cards — the RTX Pro 2000, 4000, and 6000 — and evaluated their performance across several real-world design, visualisation, and AI workflows.

At the top of the range sits the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, which Nvidia bills as the most powerful desktop GPU ever created. On paper, it even edges ahead of the 32 GB GeForce RTX 5090, offering higher single-precision performance along with faster AI and raytracing capabilities. This marks a shift from Nvidia’s traditional approach, where workstation GPUs typically ran at lower clocks than their GeForce counterparts to

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while the price remains the same.

All Blackwell cards feature 4 x DisplayPort 2.1 (or MiniDP 2.1 for SFF models), supporting very high-resolution displays at very high refresh rates — up to 8K (7,680 × 4,320) at 165 Hz. The RTX Pro 4000 and above require a PCIe CEM5 16-pin cable, though adapters are available for power supplies with older 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe connectors.

bandwidth, nearly twice the 960 GB/s of the Ada generation. The RTX Pro 5000 also receives a massive upgrade, now available in 48 GB and 72 GB variants with 1,344 GB/s of bandwidth, up from 32 GB and 576 GB/s. Memory improvements are more modest on the lower-end cards, while the RTX 2000 remains at 16 GB, with no increase over its predecessor.

Memory matters

Performance

Memory is a major focus for RTX Pro Blackwell, both in terms of capacity and bandwidth. Larger VRAM allows massive datasets to stay entirely on the GPU, avoiding slow CPU–GPU transfers, compromises to workflows, or application crashes. We cover this in more detail on page WS44.

Meanwhile, high bandwidth GDDR7 memory helps ensure GPU cores remain fully fed and can operate at peak efficiency. Workloads where this is particularly important include AI training and inferencing (such as image and video generation or large language models), engineering simulation like computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and reality modelling tasks such as rendering 3D Gaussian Splats.

At the top end, both RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs double their VRAM from 48 GB on the previous RTX 6000 Ada generation to 96 GB and deliver an impressive 1,792 GB/s of memory

We tested the RTX Pro 6000, 4000 and 2000 Blackwell GPUs inside two Scan 3XS workstations. The RTX Pro 6000 in the AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WXbased machine (see page WS42 for full review) and the other two cards in the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X-based Scan 3XS GWPA1-R32 workstation, as reviewed in our 2025 Workstation Special Report (www.tinyurl.com/WSR-25) We used a spread of visualisation tools — D5 Render, Lumion, Twinmotion, V-Ray, and KeyShot — as well as the AI image generator Stable Diffusion. These results were compared with Nvidia’s previousgeneration Ada cards, older Nvidia Ampere GPUs, and entry-level professional GPUs from the competition, including the Intel Arc Pro B50 (see review page WS52) and the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro with integrated Radeon 8060S GPU (see page WS28).

Performance gains of Blackwell were most pronounced in ray tracing and AI workflows. In Chaos V-Ray RTX

rendering, the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell was 1.47× faster, the RTX Pro 4000 1.71× faster, and the RTX Pro 2000 1.49× faster than their Ada-generation counterparts.

In Twinmotion Path Tracing, the improvements were even more striking: the RTX 6000 was 1.6× faster, the RTX 4000 2.6× faster, and the RTX 2000 1.9× faster.

To put all of this into perspective, we tested the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell in KeyShot 2025 using an enormous multiroom supermarket model supplied by Kesseböhmer Ladenbau (see figure 2).

Simply loading the scene consumed 18.1 GB of GPU memory. The model contains 447 million triangles, 2,228 physical lights and 237,382 highly detailed parts, from chiller cabinets and cereal boxes to 3D fruit and vegetables.

Remarkably, the GPU rendered the entire scene in just 69 seconds at 4K with 128 samples per pixel. Only a few years ago, tackling a model of this complexity on a single GPU would have been unthinkable.

Of course, AI performance also receives a substantial boost, with the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition delivering the largest gains — not only from its 5th-generation Tensor cores, but also from its ability to feed those cores data more efficiently, thanks to significantly higher memory bandwidth.

In the Procyon AI Image Generation Benchmark, which uses Stable Diffusion 1.5 and XL, and leans heavily on the Tensor cores, it delivered a 1.93–2.03× performance

RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition

RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition

RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell

RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell

RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell

RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell SFF

RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell

GPU memory

96 GB GDDR7 with ECC

96 GB GDDR7 with ECC

48 GB or 72 GB GDDR7 with ECC

32 GB GDDR7 with ECC

24 GB GDDR7 with ECC

24 GB GDDR7 with ECC

16 GB GDDR7 with ECC

Nvidia CUDA cores

24,064

24,064

14,080

10,496

8,960

8,960

4,352

AI TOPS

4,000 AI TOPS

3,511 AI TOPS

2,064 AI TOPS

N/A

1,178 AI TOPS

N/A

545 AI TOPS

Single-precision performance

125 TFLOPS

110 TFLOPS

65 TFLOPS

N/A

37 TFLOPS

N/A

17 TFLOPS

RT Core performance

380 TFLOPS

333 TFLOPS

196 TFLOPS

N/A

112 TFLOPS

N/A

52 TFLOPS

Memory bandwidth

1,792 GB/s

1,792 GB/s

1,344 GB/s

896 GB/s

672 GB/s

432 GB/s

288 GB/s

Display Ports

4x DisplayPort 2.1

4x DisplayPort 2.1

4x DisplayPort 2.1

4x DisplayPort 2.1

4x DisplayPort 2.1

4x Mini DisplayPort 2.1

4x Mini DisplayPort 2.1

Max Power

600W

300W

300W

200W

140W

70W

70W

(power connector)

(1x PCIe CEM5 16-pin)

(1x PCIe CEM5 16-pin)

(1x PCIe CEM5 16-pin)

(1x PCIe CEM5 16-pin)

(1x PCIe CEM5 16-pin)

(no power connector)

(no power connector)

Form Factor (h x l)

137 mm x 305 mm dual slot

112 mm x 267 mm dual slot

112 mm x 267 mm dual slot

112 mm x 267 mm dual slot

112 mm x 241 mm single slot

69 mm x 168 mm dual slot

69 mm x 168 mm dual slot

Price (Ex VAT)

£6,600

£6,600

£3,600 (48 GB) £5,750 (72 GB)

£2,100

£1,250

£1,200

£583

Taken from Scan.co.uk 15/1/26

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1 Large D5 Render interior scene 2 With DLSS 4.0 Multi Frame Generation this huge D5 Render scene rose from 11 to 41 FPS. However, user experience didn’t follow suit

2

3 In KeyShot, this giant supermarket scene with 447m triangles, 2,228 lights and 237k parts rendered at 4K resolution in 69 secs

1 increase over its Ada-gen equivalent, producing an image in SD XL every 5.46 seconds! Meanwhile, the RTX Pro 4000 was 1.42–1.46× faster, and the RTX Pro 2000 was 1.44–1.55× faster.

Pushing the 6000 to its limits With 96 GB of VRAM to play with we wanted to see just how far the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell could be pushed. Rather than focusing on a single massive task — such as fine-tuning an LLM or generating high-resolution AI imagery — we set out to discover how many simultaneous workloads it could handle, before throwing in the towel.

We piled on job after job, eventually consuming 49 GB of GPU memory, yet nothing seemed to phase it. In the background we generated images in Stable Diffusion, ran renders in V-Ray, output videos in KeyShot all at the same time, and were still able to navigate a large scene in Twinmotion smoothly. The whole system remained very responsive.

Naturally, running everything in parallel meant each individual task took longer, but the key point here is that we barely noticed anything happening behind the scenes. For sheer multitasking firepower, it’s genuinely breathtaking.

AI frame generation Blackwell isn’t just about throwing more compute power and memory at problems — it’s also about doing things smarter.

With significantly improved AI Tensor core performance, all new Blackwell GPUs support more advanced neural rendering technologies, delivered through DLSS 4.0.

DLSS 3.0, which launched with the Ada Generation, introduced a technology called Frame Generation, designed to boost real-time performance.

With Frame Generation the GPU renders frames in the traditional way, but AI creates additional “in-between” frames to make motion smoother and increase frames per second (FPS). This gives the impression of much higher performance without the heavy computational cost of fully rendering every frame.

With DLSS 3.0, one AI-generated frame was created for every traditionally rendered frame. With Blackwell and DLSS 4.0, up to three additional AI frames can now be generated.

3 In the world of visualisation software, DLSS 4.0 is currently supported in Twinmotion 2025 and D5 Render 3.0.

In D5 Render, our frame-recording software showed a huge uplift: on the RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell, frame rates in a colossal town scene (see figure 1) jumped from 11 FPS to 41 FPS — a near fourfold increase.

However, user experience was less convincing than the raw numbers suggest.

Multi-frame generation does not appear to reduce latency, as we noticed a similar delay between moving the mouse and the model responding on screen — just like you would expect with a model rendering at 11 FPS. Visual artifacts were also evident: for example, a church steeple in the scene visibly wobbled amid the surrounding vegetation. An interior

Procyon AI Image Generation Benchmark (Stable Diffusion) Stable Diffusion 1.5 (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT Benchmark score (bigger is better) 534

Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB)

11.7 1,410

Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB)

4.43

936

Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Gen (16 GB)

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2

30.03 2,232

0.70

0

10.56

1,248

2.35

2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

15.23 11.80

3,559 4.31

8,874

Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell WE (96 GB)

23.89

3,177

1.43

2,655

0

43.12 1,569 2,462

1,449

Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell (24 GB)

32.67

1.65

4,379

Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB) Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB)

u u u u 774.15

48

2.33

3,795

Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Gen (32 GB)

Stable Diffusion XL (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT Time per image (smaller is better)

869

3.43

2,680

Nvidia RTX 4500 Ada Gen (24 GB)

Stable Diffusion XL (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT Benchmark score (bigger is better)

1,147 6.68

1,821

Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Gen (20 GB)

WS50

Stable Diffusion 1.5 (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT Time per image (smaller is better)

16.80 6,862

4

6

8

10

12

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 0

5.46

20

40

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60

80

100

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workstation special report

scene (see figure 1) fared better visually, but latency remained an issue.

Overall, Frame Generation shows promise, but we’re not convinced of its real-world benefits. When models are large and frame rates are low, don’t expect it to transform a stuttering viewport into one that’s silky smooth.

D5 Render 2.9 D5 Render 2.9 Benchmark Render - secs (smaller is better) 294

Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB)

The RTX Pro Blackwell generation represents a major leap forward for workstation GPUs. Across the board, the new cards deliver substantial gains in ray tracing, AI, and general compute performance, backed by much faster GDDR7 memory and — at the top end — truly vast VRAM capacities.

For demanding professional workflows — from visualisation and simulation to reality modelling and AI — the improvements over the Ada generation are both measurable and meaningful.

The standout is undoubtedly the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition. With 96 GB of memory and unprecedented bandwidth, it enables workloads that simply weren’t practical before, while delivering exceptional performance in rendering and AI tasks.

It is, however, a specialist tool: its 600W power draw and unconventional (for workstations) cooling design mean careful consideration is required around chassis, thermals, and multi-GPU configurations. For many organisations, the more efficient Max-Q variant is likely to be the more practical option – and if Nvidia’s figures are anything to go by it’s probably not that much slower.

Further down the range, the RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell and RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell offer compelling upgrades for mainstream users, bringing tangible performance benefits at more manageable power levels. Meanwhile, new software features such as DLSS 4.0 hint at how AI will increasingly shape real-time workflows — though the jury’s still out.

Ultimately, Blackwell reinforces the reality that modern GPUs are no longer mere graphics accelerators. They are highperformance compute engines capable of driving everything from photorealistic rendering to advanced AI pipelines — and, crucially, handling multiple demanding workloads simultaneously.

The multitasking potential for the 96 GB RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell is simply breathtaking. It’s hard to imagine a CPU coping with the same combination of tasks without careful manual intervention, such as pinning processes to specific cores or managing priorities. But Nvidia’s monster GPU just takes everything in its stride. www.develop3d.com

WS48_49_50_51_D3D_FEBMARCH26_Nvidia.indd 51

38.31

159

Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Gen (16 GB)

30.35

121

Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Gen (20 GB)

47.40

88

Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Gen (32 GB)

68

Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB)

59

60.00 60.00 60.00

108

Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB)

39.8

68

Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell (24 GB)

60.00

48

Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (96 GB)

60.00

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 with Radeon 8060S GPU (96 GB) Intel Arc Pro B50 (16 GB)

0

Lumion Pro 2024

15.86

132

Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB)

Nvidia RTX 4500 Ada Gen (24 GB)

Conclusion

D5 Render 2.9 Benchmark Real time - FPS (bigger is better)

50

225

16.54

239

18.98

100 150 200 250 300

0

10

Raster render (6 images FHD) secs (smaller is better)

20

40

50

60

Ray trace render (5 images FHD) secs (smaller is better)

277

Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB)

849

108

Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB)

284

136

Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Gen (16 GB)

246

74

Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Gen (20 GB)

152

Nvidia RTX 4500 Ada Gen (24 GB)

57

110

Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Gen (32 GB)

43

70

Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB)

36

56 99

Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB)

174

56

Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell (24 GB)

97

26

Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (96 GB)

39 194

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 with Radeon 8060S GPU (96 GB) Intel Arc Pro B50 (16 GB)

30

676

Did not work

0

50

Did not work

100

150

200

250

0

300

200

400

600

800

1000

Chaos V-Ray 6 V-Ray 6 Benchmark (GPU - RTX) (bigger is better) Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB)

1,098

Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB)

3,159

Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Gen (16 GB)

2,546

Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Gen (20 GB)

3,713

Nvidia RTX 4500 Ada Gen (24 GB)

5,196

Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Gen (32 GB)

7,649

Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB)

10,811

2 x Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB)

21,492

Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB)

3,787

Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell (24 GB)

6,352

Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (96 GB)

15,895

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

Twinmotion 2024.1.2 Raster render (6 images 4K) secs (smaller is better) 799

Nvidia RTX A1000 (8 GB)

784

217

Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Gen (16 GB)

1,090

134

Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Gen (20 GB) Nvidia RTX 4500 Ada Gen (24 GB)

89

Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Gen (32 GB)

74

Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen (48 GB)

69

831 595 342 284

214

Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell (16 GB) Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell (24 GB)

82

Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (96 GB)

52

Intel Arc Pro B50 (16 GB)

2,124

167

Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB)

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 with Radeon 8060S GPU (96 GB)

Path trace render (5 images 4K) secs (smaller is better)

575 320 177

143

Crashes 494

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

1,363

0

February / March 2026

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

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workstation special report

Review: Intel Arc Pro B50 With 16 GB of onboard memory — double that of comparable discrete GPUs — this entry-level professional graphics card makes a strong first impression, but lingering software compatibility issues temper its appeal, writes Greg Corke

I

ntel’s move into discrete profession- Built for small workstations al graphics has been a slow burner. The Arc Pro B50 is a low-profile, dual-slot After launching the Alchemist- graphics card with a total board power based Intel Arc Pro A40 (6 GB) and of 70W, so draws all of its power from A50 (6 GB) graphics cards in 2022, it’s the:PCIe slot. This makes it compatible taken the company three years to deliver with small form factor (SFF) and micro its second generation. workstations such as the HP Z2 Mini, That next step arrived last summer Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF and with the Arc Pro B50 (16 GB) and Dell Pro Max Micro, although at Arc Pro B60 (24 GB), both built time of writing none of on Intel’s Xe2 ‘Battlemage’ these major architecture. While the new cards bring an expected uplift in performance and a move from PCIe 4.0 to PCIe 5.0, what makes them really stand out is the amount of on-board memory.

With 16 GB and 24 GB respectively the B50 and B60 go beyond the realms of CAD - the natural stomping ground of the Arc Pro A40 and A50 - and firmly enter design viz and AI territory.

The Arc Pro B50, which is the focus of this review, makes a particularly big workstation OEMs offered impression, sporting card as a stock option.

On the hardware theBut double the amount of the B50 is not side, the B50’s memory as its Nvidia limited to super compact counterpart, the RTX workstations. It also comes generous 16 GB A1000 (8 GB). Available with a full height I/O of GPU memory for around £300 + VAT, bracket, so can be fitted to gives it a clear the B50 holds a slight standard towers as well. advantage over pricing advantage, Connectivity is handled although with a little via four Mini DisplayPort the Nvidia RTX shopping around the RTX enabling support A1000, pushing outputs, A1000 can be found at a for multiple highit beyond similar cost. resolution displays.

The Arc Pro B50 also traditional CAD The memory advantage faces competition from and firmly into AMD — but not from strengths of the visualisation and The where you might expect.

Arc Pro B50 are most AI-adjacent Rather than a discrete evident in workflows that GPU, it comes in the demand large amounts workflows form of the AMD Ryzen of GPU memory, such AI Max+ Pro processor, as visualisation and AI. whose integrated Radeon GPU delivers In design viz software Twinmotion, for strong performance and, crucially, direct, instance, our Snowdon Tower Sample high-bandwidth access to up to 96 GB of Project scene consumes 18 GB or more system memory. In that context, the B50’s when producing final 4K renders.

16 GB of onboard memory begins to look On test, this meant the Arc Pro B50 was modest by comparison. able to outperform the Nvidia RTX A1000

‘‘

’’

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WS52_53_D3D_FEBMARCH26_intel.indd 52

by 62% in raster rendering and 56% in path-traced rendering. This is because the A1000 is forced to offload large amounts of data to system memory — a far slower process — giving the B50 a clear advantage in memory-hungry workloads.

Amazingly, AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 trumps this. In our testing with the HP Z2 Mini G1a (see our review on page WS28), it comfortably outpaced the B50 by keeping the entire 18 GB dataset resident in memory during raster rendering, eliminating the need for any swapping altogether. When path tracing in Twinmotion, however, the AMD GPU caused the software to crash.

Elsewhere, the Arc Pro B50 potentially offers significant benefits for AI image generators like Stable Diffusion. As we found with the Nvidia RTX A1000 performance can fall off a cliff when GPU memory gets maxed out (learn more www.tinyurl.com/SD-RTX).

While direct comparisons between the Nvidia RTX A1000 and Arc Pro B50 aren’t possible, as running Stable Diffusion on Intel requires an entirely different software stack, it stands to reason that having double the amount of memory could deliver a significant performance boost.

But the benefits of the Arc Pro B50 go beyond memory. The GPU also shows an advantage over the RTX A1000 in workflows where memory isn’t a limiting factor. In the D5 Render 2.9 benchmark, for example, the scene uses less than 8 GB of GPU memory — well within the capacity of both the B50 and A1000 — yet the Intel GPU still outpaced the Nvidia card by around 20 to 23%. Meanwhile the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 was around 6% faster than the B50.

Software hurdles The Arc Pro B50 is not without its challenges. In a market dominated by Nvidia, Intel faces many of the same hurdles that AMD has encountered around professional graphics software compatibility. While AMD has made www.develop3d.com

01/02/2026 15:24

workstation special report

The verdict (Above) 16 GB of memory gives significant strides in recent the Arc Pro B50 an advantage in times — with several We have mixed feelings viz tools like Twinmotion major visualisation tools, about the Intel Arc Pro (Below right) The Arc Pro B50 including V-Ray, KeyShot, B50. On the hardware side, struggles in Solidworks when and Solidworks Visualize, its generous 16 GB of GPU viewing large CAD models, such as this 8,000 part Maunakea now well on the way to fully memory gives it a clear Explorer assembly, supporting AMD GPUs Spectroscopic advantage over the Nvidia in shaded with edges mode — Intel has yet to build RTX A1000, pushing it comparable momentum. beyond traditional CAD and firmly into Even in applications where one visualisation and AI-adjacent workflows. would expect broad compatibility, In practice, that memory advantage should we encountered issues. With arch viz deliver tangible benefits in applications software Lumion for example, the 2024 such as Twinmotion and D5 Render. release would not even launch while in the However, software compatibility remains 2025 version, some scenes did not render a key concern. While the B50 performs correctly. Meanwhile, in Solidworks CAD, well in some tools, it struggles in others we experienced 3D performance issues — including Lumion and certain display when viewing models in the popular modes in Solidworks — making it essential “shaded with edges” display mode. While to check support for your preferred viewport performance was acceptable applications before committing. for smaller assemblies, it soon became a Where the B50 does work well, the extra memory translates into a clear problem as model complexity increased.

For instance, the Maunakea performance uplift, particularly producing final highSpectroscopic Explorer model — a massive when telescope assembly with over 8,000 resolution renders. That said, it is best components and 59 million triangles regarded as a GPU for entry-level — it dropped to 1.57 frames per second visualisation. As scene complexity (FPS), making it essentially unusable. By increases, real-time performance contrast, with the Nvidia RTX A1000, begins to tail off, at which point more model navigation was perfectly smooth powerful options such as the Nvidia and seamless, with 8 GB being plenty for RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell come almost all CAD and BIM workflows. into play (see review on page However, issues like the one we WS48). Priced at £580 + VAT, encountered in Solidworks shouldn’t it offers the same 16 GB memory be assumed across all CAD and BIM capacity but delivers significantly overall performance, software. In our tests with Autodesk higher Revit, for example, the Arc Pro B50 with faster render times and much performed flawlessly. higher frame rates. www.develop3d.com

WS52_53_D3D_FEBMARCH26_intel.indd 53

There is also competition from an unexpected direction. AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395, with its integrated Radeon GPU and access to vast pools of system memory, presents a compelling alternative — albeit one that requires an entirely new system, such as the HP Z2 Mini G1a.

In short, the Arc Pro B50 is an intriguing option for memory-heavy workflows, but its appeal is tempered by lingering software compatibility concerns and strong alternatives elsewhere in the market.

■ www.intel.com

February / March 2026

WS53

01/02/2026 15:24

workstation special report

HP Z2 Mini G1a (page WS28)

Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2

CyberPowerPC Intel Core U7WS

Armari Magnetar workstation

Scan 3XS GWP-B1-TR192

(page WS34)

(page WS36)

(page WS38)

(page WS42)

Specifications CPU

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 (16 core)

Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (8P, 16E cores)

Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF (8P, 12E cores)

AMD Threadripper 9980X (64 core)

AMD Threadripper Pro 9995WX (96 core)

GPU

Integrated Radeon 8060S Graphics

Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada

PNY Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell

PNY Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada

PNY Nvidia RTX 6000 Blackwell Workstation

Memory

128 GB LPDDR5X-8533 MT/s ECC

64 GB (2 × 32 GB) DDR5-6400

64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5 6400 MHz

128GB (4 x 32GB) DDR5-6400

256 GB (8x32 GB) DDR5 6400 ECC

Price (Ex VAT)

£2,330

£2,980

£2,200

N/A

£23,333

N/A

Benchmark score (bigger is better) Solidworks 2022 (SPECapc) CPU rebuild

1.76

1.94

N/A

2.04

CPU convert

2.12

2.22

N/A

2.28

N/A

CPU simulate

2.30

2.53

N/A

2.54

N/A

CPU mass properties

6.61

11.38

N/A

20.16

N/A

CPU Boolean

2.22

2.55

N/A

2.45

N/A

Graphics (AA, shaded, edges) (4K)

2.15

2.43

N/A

2.26

N/A

Graphics (AA, shaded, edges, RealView) (4K)

1.61

1.95

N/A

1.91

N/A

CPU test

39,044

28,244

33,719

148,908

176,598

GPU - RTX test

Not compatible

3,260

3,716

N/A

15,895

11,651,127

7,751,509

11,149,371

39,696,824

40,291,312

V-Ray 6.0 benchmark

CoronaRender 10 benchmark CPU test

Cinebench 2024 Single-core CPU test

107

130

140

127

123

Multi-core CPU test

1,856

1,297

2,001

6,498

7,383

Stable Diffusion 1.5 (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT

N/A

1,389

2,645

N/A

8,874

Stable Diffusion XL (FP16) Nvidia TensorRT

N/A

1,107

1,231

N/A

6,862

Procyon - AI image generation

Benchmark time (seconds) (smaller is better) Autodesk Revit 2025 RFO 3.1 benchmark - Model Creation

N/A

61.75

59.07

N/A

63.77

RFO 3.1 benchmark - Export

N/A

372.87

356.61

N/A

374.20

RFO 3.1 benchmark - Rendering

N/A

24.40

22.09

N/A

11.67

RFO 3.1 benchmark - Graphics

N/A

18.26

17.80

N/A

18.81

100.44

99.08

95.97

121.43

133.50

28.10

Capturing Reality 1.5 Align images (small dataset)

SPECworkstation 3.1 WPCcfd (CFD simulation)

9.23

6.14

5.70

15.22

rodiniaCFD (CFD simulation)

7.43

6.20

10.14

17.16

21.72

CalculiX (FEA simulation)

2.91

3.77

2.50

11.56

17.08

11.25

4.34

6.80

24.57

38.70

SPECworkstation 4.0 Openfoam (CFD simulation)

GPU render time (seconds) (smaller is better) Twinmotion 2024.1.2 Revit Sample Project - Real Time (4K x 6)

143

185

214

N/A

52

Revit Sample Project - Path Tracer (4K x 5)

Crashes

932

579

N/A

177

Lumion 2024 “Streetscape” raster (FHD x 6)

194

97

100

N/A

26

“Streetscape” ray trace (FHD x 4)

676

201

178

N/A

39

225

135

107

N/A

48

D5 Render 2.9 benchmark Render time

WS54

February / March 2026

WS54_D3D_FEBMARCH26_WSchart.indd 54

www.develop3d.com

01/02/2026 15:25

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