Power Bi Desktop - What are the real spec requirements?

[fiza]

Our Data Lead is looking to get Power BI Desktop but there are differing thoughts on hardware requirements to run this.

MS say;

4GB or more recommended

At least 1440x900 or 1600x900 (16:9) required

1 gigahertz (GHz) 64-bit (x64) processor or better recommended.

 

On other sites I have seen 16GB & Chris Webb's BI Blog suggests that ideally you want 32GB

 

 

 

Does anyone use Power BI Desktop and can provide real life specs for a 12 School MAT?

[Ditto]

I've used Power BI desktop. My laptop has 8.00GB and an i5-8265U @ base 1.6GHz (turbo up to 3.9). I can use PBI desktop successfully, but when the laptop is loaded with other stuff (Word, Excel, lots of Browser windows) it can become extremely slow. I would agree with at least 16GB and as much processing power as possible. I'd also suggest you fully understand the licensing arrangement. For example, is your data lead going to develop reports/dashboards purely for individual use, or is the expectation to share reports and data for others to consume?

[Marci]

Screen resolution is... irrelevant - personal preference. I work at 1080p everywhere. Multi-monitors: exceedingly useful.

To run PowerBI Desktop takes very little. But it's down to the amount of data you're bringing in and how you're then transforming it.

 

For a 5 school MAT (2x secondaries, one of which has sixth form, and 3x primaries) I use a 12th gen i7-12700 with 32Gb Ram, and my most complex dataset (all data domains across all schools across past 5 academic years) takes 20 minutes to refresh, maxes CPU, and still swaps to SSD as it maxes ram.

 

The same report refreshes absolutely fine on my i5-1335U with 8Gb Ram, but takes better part of an hour, and renders the laptop pretty unusable. I therefore have a VPN back to my desktop in case I need to do anything remotely. I have both laptop and desktop as if the desktop is maxed out doing a refresh, I can at least still do other less cumbersome tasks via the laptop else a good few hours of my day would be completely wasted time watching "loading" dialogues.

 

The higher their hourly rate, the higher the spec of PC, as the more their wasted time ultimately costs you.

Edited September 16, 2024 by Marci

[PotNoodleTech]

I wonder how multithreaded it is - a good budget option could be an older refurbished Xeon like a Hp Z4 G4 with 64 or 128GB of ram and a 20 core CPU for not much $$

[Marci]

I wonder how multithreaded it is - a good budget option could be an older refurbished Xeon like a Hp Z4 G4 with 64 or 128GB of ram and a 20 core CPU for not much $$

 

Very. It creates multiple MashupContainer instances that do the work in parallel so it can be distributed across cores. DAX formula engine & the page renderer are each single threaded, but PowerQuery Mashup / Storage engine is multithreaded (and that's what's doing the grunt work for refreshes, where the desktop developer runs into headaches).

Ultimately, throw cash at ram more than anything else. That has the biggest impact, followed by CPU cores.

[PotNoodleTech]

In that case DDR4 ECC ram pretty cheap so go for a xeon wth 128GB RAM

[Oaktech]

After 6 months of whinging that his repurposed 6th gen Xeon server with 32gb ram was slow, my Data manager finally persuaded central finance to cough for a more modern device. He now has a Dell Precision Workstation with a 10th gen Xeon W in it, 64GB RAM and 512gb NVME in the optional PCI adapter and an 8GB Nvidia Quadro.

 

At the moment he has no complaints.

[fiza]

I've used Power BI desktop. My laptop has 8.00GB and an i5-8265U @ base 1.6GHz (turbo up to 3.9). I can use PBI desktop successfully, but when the laptop is loaded with other stuff (Word, Excel, lots of Browser windows) it can become extremely slow. I would agree with at least 16GB and as much processing power as possible. I'd also suggest you fully understand the licensing arrangement. For example, is your data lead going to develop reports/dashboards purely for individual use, or is the expectation to share reports and data for others to consume?

 

For others to view. I believe viewers need Pro licences?

[Marci]

Licensing is less (well, completely un-)related to BIDesktop resource consumption.

Yes, to share with other PowerBI Users within O365 ecosphere, all PowerBI Users involved must hold Pro licenses. But if working with (for instance) Bromcom's shared viewer, then users do NOT need Pro licenses as everyone views as the account used to configure the shared viewer, and reports are uploaded to that account. However, everyone with Bromcom access will see the same list of reports with no access-controls etc (altho you can restrict access to the shared viewer via Roles & Permissions within BC iirc).

Edited September 16, 2024 by Marci