System Requirements for Running Altium Designer

Ensure that your computer meets the system requirements detailed below, prior to installing Altium Designer. Below are the recommended and minimum system requirements to install and run Altium Designer.

Recommended System Requirements

• Windows 11 (64-bit only) or Windows 10 (64-bit only)

  Windows 8.1 (64-bit only) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit only) are still supported, although not recommended.

• Intel® Core™ i7 (or later) processor or equivalent

• 16 GB RAM

• 10 GB hard disk space (Install + User Files)

• SSD

• High-performance graphics card (supporting DirectX 10 or better), such as GeForce GTX 1060/Radeon RX 470

• Dual monitors with 2560x1440 (or better) screen resolution

• 3D mouse for 3D PCB design, such as the SpaceMouse^®

• Adobe® Reader® (version XI or later for 3D PDF viewing)

• Internet Connection

• Up to date Web browser

• Microsoft Office 32-bit or 64-bit (Microsoft Excel required for BOM, Microsoft Access required for DbLibs). 64-bit Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 (required for DbLibs) – this is included in Microsoft Office 64-bit, but not included in Microsoft Office 32-bit.

Minimum System Requirements

• Windows 10 (64-bit only)

  Windows 8.1 (64-bit only) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit only) are still supported, although not recommended.

• Intel® Core™ i5 processor or equivalent

• 4 GB RAM

• 10 GB hard disk space (Install + User Files)

• Graphics card (supporting DirectX 10 or better), such as GeForce 200 series/Radeon HD 5000 series/Intel HD 4600

• Monitor with at least 1680x1050 (widescreen) or 1600x1200 (4:3) screen resolution

• Adobe® Reader® (version XI or later for 3D PDF viewing)

• Up to date Web browser

• Microsoft Office 32-bit or 64-bit (Microsoft Excel required for BOM, Microsoft Access required for DbLibs). 64-bit Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 (required for DbLibs) – this is included in Microsoft Office 64-bit, but not included in Microsoft Office 32-bit.

Connection to Altium 365

Following industry best practices for security and data integrity, Altium 365 supports TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.2. As such, to be able to connect to an Altium 365 Workspace from your design software, you must be using Altium Designer 20.1.14 or later, which includes support for TLS 1.2.

In addition, your version of Windows OS must have TLS1.2 support enabled. Windows 10 (64-bit only) and Windows 8.1 (64-bit only) natively support TLS1.2. If you are using Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit only) you will need to enable TLS1.2 manually. See How to enable TLS1.2 on clients for more information.

DPI Scaling Support

The following table shows the maximum DPI Scaling supported, based on the vertical resolution of the monitor being used.

Other Considerations

The Importance of a Good Graphics Card

Graphics cards are a critical hardware element that can have a large impact on both the performance and stability of systems. Choose the right hardware requirements necessary to achieve stunning results, make the whole system more responsive and ‘feel’ better, and remove distractions to design caused by lags in the GUI. This version of Altium Designer has been optimized for use with DirectX 10 and requires a graphics card that supports this. Altium has chosen DirectX rather than OpenGL for its graphics engine, which has become the preferred standard for gaming graphics cards. An advantage of this choice is the fact that gaming cards are often significantly less expensive than workstation cards of equivalent performance. We therefore strongly recommend the use of a gaming card instead of a workstation card.

The need for a high-performance graphics card is directly related to the amount of use of the 3D PCB capabilities. For example, a Core i7 processor with on-chip integrated HD4000 graphics will be more than adequate if you only require occasional use of the 3D PCB capabilities. If you intend to make extensive use of the 3D PCB features, for computationally intensive tasks such as 3D video or interactive presentations, then it is recommended to use a high-performance gaming graphics card in combination with a 3D mouse, such as the SpaceMouse^®.

Altium Design File Storage

Due to some issues related to file systems for Linux, it is not recommended to use Linux as a file server to store Altium design files.

Altium Designer on Virtual Machines and Emulators

Note that running Altium Designer on virtual machines and emulators is not supported. When running Altium Designer on a virtual machine or emulator, you may experience unexpected performance issues.