Starting college soon and not sure where to start on laptops.

Rafl · Jul 27, 2014

I am starting college in a little under a month and really need a new laptop. I am going for engineering so it needs to be capable of using modeling programs such as Autodesk. I am also a PC gamer and sadly am not taking my Desktop with me to college, at least for a little while, so I would like it to be able to play mid range games. More specifically Smite.

The MINIMUM specs suggested by my college are as follows:

2.8gHz processor (Equivalent processor speeds may vary by manufacturer and chipset)
4GB RAM or higher
250GB Hard drive
1GB Video card memory
DVD Writable drive
USB 2.0/3.0 External storage
100/1000 Ethernet connection
802.11 b/g/n WiFi Network interface card
Current version of Windows

As for a budget, I am not sure how much it would cost for these specs but hopefully under 1900

g-unit1111 · Jul 27, 2014

You seriously don't want to use a laptop for 3-D rendering. The CPUs are slow and the GPUs even slower because they're made for low power requirements. You're far better off getting a desktop. I totally understand wanting the portability factor, but there's no laptop out there that can match X79 / X99 in terms of power and performance. Plus with laptops the more expensive you go, the faster they depreciate in value and when you go to sell it, you won't get back 1/2 of what you paid for it.

hans_pcguy · Jul 27, 2014

Do not, I repeat Do not buy a laptop with an AMD processor. Get an intel i5 or an i7. Also a laptop with a discreet video gpu will set you back quite a bit. You can get an i5 laptop with 4GB ram and a 500gb hard drive and integrated graphics for under $600. Now Intel i5 and i7 cpu's are in their 4th generation already. Make sure you know what you are getting.

someguynamedmatt · Jul 27, 2014

I'm heading back for another semester in a month too, so I know where you're coming from. I had an Asus G75VW that was purchased one year ago - its motherboard power circuitry completely failed a couple weeks back; I did a lot of 3D rendering work and video editing in Blender and Adobe CS5, and I'd say I literally just wore it out.

I decided the best thing to do was drop my money in a desktop and pick up a cheap (actually, refurbished) laptop just to take to class if needed, and there is software out there that will give you a remove connection back to your desktop provided you have a fast enough internet connection. The desktop I built is a mini-ITX system in a Rosewill W1, so it's relatively compact, and I still can't even fathom how many orders of magnitude faster it is than the good old G75 ever was.

In your case, you can build one helluva desktop for $1300, then drop whatever you want on an entry-level ultrabook. That's what I'd do... just something to consider. No matter how much money you dump into a laptop, it will never be able to compete with a relatively proportional desktop system, and $1500 is a LOT to dump into a mobile workstation with so many single points of failure.

Just my opinion. Take it for what it's worth. By the way, hello from a fellow Smite player!

g-unit1111 · Jul 27, 2014

someguynamedmatt :

I'm heading back for another semester in a month too, so I know where you're coming from. I had an Asus G75VW that was purchased one year ago - its motherboard power circuitry completely failed a couple weeks back... I did a lot of 3D rendering work and video editing in Blender and Adobe CS5, and I'd say I literally just wore it out.

I decided the best thing to do was drop my money in a desktop and pick up a cheap (actually, refurbished) laptop just to take to class if needed, and there is software out there that will give you a remove connection back to your desktop provided you have a fast enough internet connection. The desktop I built is a mini-ITX system in a Rosewill W1, so it's relatively compact, and I still can't even fathom how many orders of magnitude faster it is than the good old G75 ever was.

In your case, you can build one helluva desktop for $1300, then drop whatever you want on an entry-level ultrabook. That's what I'd do... just something to consider. No matter how much money you dump into a laptop, it will never be able to compete with a relatively proportional desktop system, and $1500 is a LOT to dump into a mobile workstation with so many single points of failure.

Just my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

Yeah that's a good way to go about doing it - if you've got a $2K budget you could buy a strong $1300 desktop and a $600 laptop to use for remote access or VM, then you only need to buy one software license for everything,

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Starting college soon and not sure where to start on laptops.

Rafl

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g-unit1111

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