moby59
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 Which kind of laptop for intensive use? | |
Hi
I have to switch from a (tower) PC (i8700K/64GB of RAM/fast NVME drives/RTX206Super) to a laptop because I won't have a dedicated space anymore in my house to work and personal personal work. I'm self employed, part time photographer, part time developer, I also make from time to time some video editings...
I will have to mainly work on a desk in our (wife and I) bedroom, but sometimes on the kitchen table or sofa when my significant other is sleeping but I still want to work.
So I'm looking for a new computer that can handle those jobs at least as well as before, and even a bit better (I'm not keen on spending a lot of money to replace a 5 year old computer by something without any improvement).
I will probably use the laptop 90% of the time connected to a dock or hub, to have an external screen (I have a great 38 inches 3840x1600@75Hz LG one), keyboard, mouse, probably 2.5GB/s LAN adapter to connect to a NAS where I store my RAW and video rushes files,... and some other peripherals (scanner, sound-card for headphones...).
I was hoping to have only one cable between the dock and the laptop, but it seems that powerful laptops are using their proprietary DC plug and not USB type C one.
I also discovered that there are still many laptops without thunderbolt 4 plugs, which in my opinion is something required if I want to use both the "4K" screen and the 2.5G LAN adapter and still have bandwidth remaining for the other). Many AMD laptops don't have thunderbolt 4 plugs (all of them ?)
USB 4 is still not a thing on many 2024 - still not available - laptops 
I also discovered that a lot of things occur in the name of power consumption and heat management, which makes specs very difficult to compare. You can have a i9+RTX4090 laptop performing bad in comparison of an i7+RTX4070... because of its cooling system and power limitations.
It seems that the most powerful laptops are the gaming ones, because with the same specs, they often have a better thermal management that allow them to use the whole performance of the CPU/GPU without throttling every time a load takes more that 30 seconds to complete!
The price is also most of the time more competitive than laptops on the "creators" segment. It seems that laptop makers consider that creators have lots of money (people in their late thirties, already having a creative job) than gamers (students with no money).
So I'm looking for something, around 16 inches (it seems the sweet spot to have a good thermal solution and space for a spare ssd, dual sodim slots...), an i9 13900HX or 14900HX, a RTX 4060-4080, 2 sodimm slots with as few GB of ram as possible as I will replace them day one by 2x32 or 2x48GB of "normally priced" ram. Same for the SSD, I already have a 4TB drive ready to be put in the laptop. I also don't really care about the screen as I won't do critical color work on the laptop screen itself. As long as it is IPS and 16/10. Same for battery life, as long as I can do 2 hours of web browsing away from the plug (and still do it in 3 years) I'm okay with it.
The question is to find a good chassis, not too heavy, with a good and silent cooling, and a solution to handle all those plugged things with the least amount of cable to remove so I can take the laptop with me easily. I would like something easy to move. For example I'm repairing a 17" old Asus laptop at the moment (for a member of my family), it is 3.4kg (7.5lbs), it is so heavy and bulby (41.5x28x3.5cm / 16.3x11x1.3 inches) that I don't imagine myself lugging this beast around the house, event if there is only 10 meters between the two places I would use it. For example you can't take it by a corner with one hand without thinking you'll break it! So the old "desktop replacement" is not something I have in mind.
Apple is out of consideration because of the specs I need (ram/storage) even if a Macbook Pro could have been the perfect laptop (powerful, silent, one cable docking system...) But a 16 inches / 64GB / 4 TB is more than 6,000€ where I live, that's not an option.
My budget is more around 2500 €.
For now I'm waiting for the 2024 Lenovo Legion 7i and Pro 7i to become available to have an idea of the price. The 2023 edition of Pro 7i is around 2500€ for the i9/RTX4070 version. That's a tad expensive (because 32GB of ram, the 16GB was discounted under 2000€ a few weeks ago but I was not ready) and I can't find lower spec'd ones available now.
My questions are :
- can you relate your experiences with powerful laptops as your single computer, how do you like it ? (noise, power)
- do these laptops can really handle very long CPU intensive tasks, during many years? For example each month I "compile" OpenStreetMap maps, on my current tower, it takes around 8 hours, with all the CPU cores at 1000% (but with a low priority), and I'm still working normally (web development, photo culling...) without any problem (and with a still quite silent computer), is it possible on a laptop? Doesn't it mean that it will reduce the life of the computer because of too many veeery long cpu intensive tasks ? I only had one laptop in my life (a tiny 10" Fujitsu P7010), 15 years ago, and a RAM stick died just after a long RAW to Jpeg export...
- is it easy to switch to a "dock connected" state to the undocked state (back and forth) easily, without loosing a lot of context (windows placement, explorer windows on a samba drive...)
- do you think it's a stupid idea and should keep a powerful fixed computer and add a lighter laptop? If yes, how to handle things as basic as firefox opened tabs, lightroom catalog, things that you only have on one computer and not the other... ?
- and of course, do you have laptop brands/models suggestions?
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