Best Laptop for Engineering?

yoshimonster · Sep 6, 2013

I'm looking for a laptop to take to university. It'll need to run programs like AutoCAD well, and I was hoping to do some light gaming on it.
First of all, I know I should be building my own PC but it needs to be vaguely portable so that isn't an option sadly!

Some of the things I've thought about:
CPU - Probably looking for i5/i7, maybe quad core but I'm not sure if that's necessary?

SSD/Hard Drive - Can't decide on this one. I think I could need around 500GB of space but as I said I'm not 100% sure, so I don't know which to go for. Can you get both in a laptop?

GPU - Don't really mind, primarily this is for the modelling software. Any extra for gaming is a plus. I've mostly looked at Nvidia stuff so far.

RAM - Absolute min. 6GB, although 8GB definitely preferred!

Budget - No idea. I guess I'll look at suggestions and see if they're worth it or not?

Also I'm hoping to dual boot with Ubuntu/Windows 7. Windows 8 is a definite no, unless it offers big improvements in performance.

So yeah that's it. Any help/suggestions massively appreciated! And are there any brands to stay clear of?

Fixed typo. - G

JackNaylorPE · Sep 6, 2013

This is a complicated question ......

For 2D CAD, 3D CAD and 3DS Max, GeForce cards outperform nVidia workstation cards, AMD Radeon cards and AMD workstation cards

For Maya Rendering, workstation cards outperform the gaming cards

For Solidworks, ONLY workstation cards work
http

/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-3.html

I run an engineering consulting business, we use:

i7 - HT helps
RAM - 16 GB
SSD / HD - We were using SSDs and HDs on our laptops....we switched to SSHDs (7200 rpm Momentus XT) as there is no observable performance difference

We use these:
http

/www.lpc-digital.com/sager-np8270-features.html

Find a Clevo distributor here:
http

/forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/91510-clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-reseller-info.html

yoshimonster · Sep 6, 2013

Hmm, interesting to note about Solidworks. I'm 99% sure that we won't be using that; so I'll probably go with GeForce.
And thanks for the info on SSHD, I couldn't decide what was best!

JackNaylorPE · Sep 6, 2013

Yes i as quite surprised.... we cant tell the difference between lappies with SSD and HD and the ones w/ SSHD... boot time is like 0.6 secs slower

g-unit1111 · Sep 6, 2013

JackNaylorPE :

Really? Do you have any benchmarks or tests or something else that proves this? I haven't heard this before.

JackNaylorPE · Sep 6, 2013

Definition: ob·serv·a·ble: adj.

1. Possible to observe:

Two laptops side by side.... one has SSD + HD / one has SSHD. As a human being, I am not capable of discerning the difference between one laptop booting up and another booting up 0.6 seconds slower.

I have measured it with a stop watch and the difference was about 0.6 seconds.

If y want something published....here they measured 1 second

http

/archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=806&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=7

g-unit1111 · Sep 6, 2013

JackNaylorPE :

Well I'm not at your firm so I can't really observe your systems. :lol:

The bad thing about that chart is that it seems quite a bit outdated. I'd like to see how SSHDs compare with modern SSDs like the Samsung 840 Pro, OCZ Vector, and Sandisk Ultra II.

JackNaylorPE · Sep 6, 2013

I have the Chronos Deluxe and OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS to compare it with ..... both are in the same THG Tier 1 category.

http

/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-6.html

But I think the laptop bottlenecks the SSD more than the SSHD

This work for ya ....the Momentus is now in Gen3
http

/reviews.cnet.com/hard-drives/samsung-840-pro-64gb/4505-3186_7-35457831-2.html#!

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Best Laptop for Engineering?

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