[SOLVED] Workstation + light gaming laptop

[JimmyJeeb]

Hello everyone. I'm searching for a workstation laptop for my girlfriend who is an interior designer and mostly uses 3ds Max, Sketchup, AutoCAD etc. for both modelling and rendering. I understand it is a CPU intensive workload and could benefit from multiple threads but I'm really not familiar with mobile CPUs. I don't know how important the graphics card for these tasks either. I'm looking for general pointers to what to look for in general and if you could suggest some mid range laptops as reference it'd be great.

 

[Baqir Abbas]

Hi Jimmy,

I myself use Sketchup and AutoCAD and they can be very demanding depending on the intensity of your work. My laptop cannot support these tasks on its own but luckily my laptop (gifted to me) happened to have a Thunderbolt 3 port through which I connect an eGPU and can run these software easily. However when using for long hours I encounter bottleneck issues (mainly because get too hot and efficiency reduces) and overheating issues. In simple words Bottleneck is when your GPU is doing more work and sending it to the processor but the processor isn't strong enough to process that much data. My core was a dual core U series processor.

The story was to give you context for what to look in workstation laptop.

1) A strong processor. (Intel H series) and 6th Gen+ because lower than that uses DDR3 with is only upgradable up to max 16GB. (might become a problem later) & also because 6th Gen+ allows you to use latest USB protocols. (Type-C , HDMI 2.0,etc.....)
/ I'm sorry but I don't know much about AMD mobile processors so can't guide you on that.
If you want to find out more about Intel Core naming schemes you can look here :- Intel® Processor Names, Numbers and Generation List
2) A GPU obviously. Intel H series always come with a discrete GPU onboard so you just need to look for a H series processor.
3) A good cooling system. (Dual fan most probably) An H series again usually come with good cooling system because of its high performance.

I hope that helps. Cheers! ✌✌