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Pylot99
Frequent Visitor

Does anyone know the recommended hardware requirements for Power BI Desktop?

Does anyone know the recommended hardware requirements for Power BI Desktop?

9 REPLIES 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Power BI Desktop 32 bit or 64 bit will work on latest Windows operating system with 8GB RAM and 8 core processor without any issue,

Even minimum system requirements for PBI Desktop is given in Microsoft documentation, but higher configuration is better if you have import mode and other softwares also eating up your systems memory. 

 

As per my suggestion 16GB of RAM is good to have so you will less encounter hang problem of PBI desktop during data refresh or during other work in the environment and you do not have scarcity of resources between other softwares.

 

I hope this will be helpful.

waqar
Helper I
Helper I

is Mac book suitable for power BI ?

andre
Memorable Member
Memorable Member

only if you run windows on it

elliotdixon
Responsive Resident
Responsive Resident

good to see the responses.

I am runing an HP Elitebook i5 with only 4gig ram - and I think this is the problem.

 

Power BI keeps crashing. Uses up about 2.5 - 3 gig of the ram so little left.

I think really the CPU should be fine but I am going to see if I can buy more ram. Upgrade to at least 8 I think.

 

ED

Added another 8gig ram (just to be sure) and all fine. Seems 4gig is just not enough.

 

ED

Same happened to me. Form normal use 8BG RAM is a must. 

Greg_Deckler
Super User
Super User

Supported Operating System

Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

      Microsoft Power BI Desktop requires Internet Explorer 10 or greater.

Microsoft Power BI Desktop is available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms.

 

 

I have it working on Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3, i5, 8 GB of RAM works like a champ.

 


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I am running it on an HP laptop i7, 8GB RAM and Windows 7 64 bit with no issues.

 

I have a client getting ready to move to this for their production reporting and BI tool and they are asking about recommendations for VM/hardware specs. I cannot find much in the way of recommendations to pass along.

andre
Memorable Member
Memorable Member

@Pylot99 much depends on how and who will be using the Desktop, but generally speaking, for content creators I would recommend i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a solid state disk and a 64 bit operating system.

 

The CPU, RAM and OS requirements are self explanatory, the SSD requirement is not as intuitive, but I have found that for larger models, SSD helps a lot when it comes to saving and opening.. After the model is loaded, SSD does not seem to matter as much.

 

As for the CPU, I would recommend a desktop version vs an ultra low power version of i7.  Surface Pro 3 works great with smaller models, but if you need to be working with 100M+ rows, you will see a big difference in performance with a desktop CPU vs an ultrabook CPU.

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