Powerful thin laptop

cleanmedia

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Jun 7, 2009
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Hi Everyone, looking to replace my Macbook Pro now with a new machine. I love my 15" 2013 Retina MBP, but I am not liking the fact I cannot add more RAM than 8GB. When I got it I didn't really have much need for more, in fact 90% of the time I don't need more but I am in the middle of studying to get my vmware vexpert certificate and need more than this on the go. So what I am looking for is a 15" notebook (could go 13" but no smaller) with a core i7 with 8 threads, 16GB RAM and the ability for 256gb minimum of SSD. I can run VMs on an external SSD USB drive and when I am home I have a huge server cluster which can run everything I need.

Can anyone suggest anything to suit? I don't absolutely need a graphics card, the MBP has Intel IRIS and can run 3 external monitors with USB 3 DVI adapters with no lag. I am flexible with brand I don't prefer one over the other but I don't want to stay with apple, I always use bootcamp on it and windows 8.1 doesnt scale right and its horrible.
 

Dblkk

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Oct 30, 2013
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Solution

Dblkk

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Oct 30, 2013
323
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11,010


Yes, the 16gb stock is soldered onto the motherboard, and leaves you two additional slots. Only bad thing this way is you cant compeletly replace ram with better faster, not that you'd notice a difference especially at $80 a 8gb stick.
 

Dblkk

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Oct 30, 2013
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I heavily researched it. It was between msi gt70 dominator pro with i7 4810 and gtx 880m, or ghost pro. Each same price, I went dominator. I still go back and forth on whether I should've gotten the ghost. Theyre both great. But I do 3d rendering and 4k video editing on my rig, so figured the extra power and the 3x msata slot vs the 2x would help me out as well. I bought 3x 1tb Samsung evo msatas and a 1tb Samsung evo 2.5". I don't use raid, I use them as individual hard drives.
 

cleanmedia

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Jun 7, 2009
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18,510
yeah I need slim, love the MBP for its size and the retina screen but when it gets too hot to touch and I wasnt even going 100% then we have a problem. Looking at the 3K one now and hmmm very tempting