New Laptop comp to my Core i7-4810MQ equipped model

[afturglow]

Hi all, I do music production. I prioritize quiet operation. Some decent battery life would be nice so i dont feel i have to leave it constantly plugged in. I have enjoyed having a 2nd SSD on my current laptop one for OS one for Audio Recording. I dont do gaming so anything to reduce heat and have quiet operation. Even going for an external 2nd SSD if it make too much heat being inside. Dont need DVD or CD.
My current laptop is a Sager NP8268s with the "4th Generation Intel Core i7-4810MQ Processor". It is pretty adequate to my needs. The lappy is quite loud i hate that. The speed is fine.
I am considering buying a 1 or 2 year old machine . The "4th Generation Intel Core i7-4810MQ Processor" is from 2014 what is a comparable processor in 2018-2020?


1. What is your budget? Flexible

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 14/15inch

3. What screen resolution do you want? 1080 is fine

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? desktop-ish

5. How much battery life do you need? moderate would be nice

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? No, i prefer to minimize heat and fan noise

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) music production and video editing

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? i like a 120 OS drive and another drive for samples and recording

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? a couple years at least

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? do not need. do need 2nd SSD

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. I live in Costa Rica so it seems the brands that are common and have parts are HP and Dell. Asus, Acer, Toshiba also have some products in that order of popularity. HP or Dell are probably smarter to buy.

13. What country do you live in? Costa Rica

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. See top. Also i have consider a mid 2015 Macbook Pro 15" retina. From what i can understand it should be adequate and quite. It should have the ports. Decent keyboard and speed.

 

[Eximo]

Well, any 9th or 10th gen i5 is going to be roughly equivalent performance wise. 7th and 8th gen laptops you will want to stick with i7.

If you want to match the features of the i7-MQ line then you would want to stick with laptops that have processors ending in H or HQ. These will be the higher power CPUs with higher sustained boost clocks and get you your desktop replacement type systems rather than ultrabooks.

As for what to pick out in Costa Rica, that is a bit tough. No idea what the used market is like there.

Sager laptops are pretty high end desktop replacements, designed for performance, so that would explain the noise levels.

Dell and HP both make decent mobile workstations, so I can't say these would be a bad choice. Just be careful with used models, battery life may be quite a bit less then expectations. Replacement parts are plentiful though.

Dell's M series comes in a 15" version. HP Zbook would be the equivalent pick.

If you want I can go through some used machines available in the US and you can see if there are matching models in Costa Rica?

Also, don't worry too much about the drive layout. A modern NVMe drive will have enough performance for the OS and your recording, and you can always add another one if desired.

 

[afturglow]

Wow great! yes please tell me what would be some models that fit the bill! Please 🙏

 

[afturglow]

But, lets look at new pc notebooks. i am seeing that i will be much better off importing a new machine. The markup here is insane. Machines literally cost double.
My budget at this point is a 1000usd. I need this machine for the meantime in a year or so i will prolly upgrade

 

[afturglow]

I just am geeting abreast of the m.2 NVMe thing, interesting. Its that much faster? Seems like most companies if they dont have it it they dont mention it lol

 

[hang-the-9]

I just am geeting abreast of the m.2 NVMe thing, interesting. Its that much faster? Seems like most companies if they dont have it it they dont mention it lol

It's faster but in normal use there is no practical difference.

What you can get really depends on what is available in your country. I like Lenovo, they tend to have the least issues of the bigger brands. MSI is good but they mostly make gaming system that will end up noisier than standard laptops, of course at the benefit of good speed.

 

[Eximo]

Late model gaming PCs are on a bit of a fire sale. Lots of GTX 16 series and RTX 20 series models out there. These tend to have larger heatsinks which may lead to better noise performance. Typically i5 H class CPUs.

https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-0NY09

Here is a more practical pick, no discrete GPU, but Intel's higher end. Should be suitable, though some video rendering applications can use GPUs in editing and encoding.

https://www.newegg.com/black-dell-inspiron-3593-mainstream/p/1TS-000A-0C7H6

Used mobile workstations will be a little more than your budget. And some nicer gaming machines at around $1100, though they are usually sold out quickly.