Monstrous Laptops

[ArsE92]

I started this thread last week but for some reason it posted as a Wiki

Whilst speccing up a new X1 Carbon for myself recently, I was having a play with the Lenovo configurator and managed to build a Thinkpad P70 to a cost of £6000!

Intel Xeon E3-1575M v5 MB
Windows 10 Pro 64
17.3 4K(3840x2160) IPS Non-Touch
64GB(16x4) DDR4 2133MHz ECC SoDIMM
NVIDIA Quadro M5000M 8GB
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Backlit Keyboard with Number Pad - English UK
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
1TB SSD PCIe-NVMe
500GB HD 7200RPM
9.5mm Fixed DVD Recordable
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC(2x2) 8260, Bluetooth Version 4.1 vPro
Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A (Sierra Wireless EM7455)

£6060.79

A beast of a machine and surely a delight to work on.



Do any PH'ers run anything similar? If so, what do you use it for?

[Insanity Magnet]

Dell Precision M6800. Can't remember how much exactly but was somewhere IRO £2.5k. Now stuffed full of memory and SSDs, added later to prevent a fleecing by Dell.

I use it for SolidWorks, Rhino, modo and whatever Adobe package a job requires... Needed a portable rather than a desktop monster and I thought this gave the best bang for the buck (OK £) at the time.

I've always upgraded my Precisions roughly every 3 years. The M6800 is 2.5 years old and powerful enough for me not to need to change for a few years more.

[ArsE92]

Insanity Magnet said:

Dell Precision M6800. Can't remember how much exactly but was somewhere IRO £2.5k. Now stuffed full of memory and SSDs, added later to prevent a fleecing by Dell.

I use it for SolidWorks, Rhino, modo and whatever Adobe package a job requires... Needed a portable rather than a desktop monster and I thought this gave the best bang for the buck (OK £) at the time.

I've always upgraded my Precisions roughly every 3 years. The M6800 is 2.5 years old and powerful enough for me not to need to change for a few years more.

Nice.

I've got an old Thinkpad X230 that I don't really want to get rid of as it served me so well. i7, 16GB RAM, 256SSD + 2TB Hard disk, IPS screen etc. Lovely little thing. The only thing that lets it down for me is the 1366x768 screen.

[Jinx]

Got the OH an Alienware R4 a few years ago (i7, 12 GB Ram, nVidia GPU, full HD) - Whilst not a beast in comparison with the above is pretty much overkill for Facebook and Farmville

[K50 DEL]

I went the other way a few years ago and bought the Z series Sony Vaio special anniversary edition.

It cost me the thick end of £2k at the time because it came with

Core i7 processor
128Gb SSD
8Gb RAM

all of which looks a little poor now but was cutting edge then.

Like the poster above, I used to change my machines every 2 years, 3.5yrs in with this one and I've no need to change it, just thinking about upsizing the SSD and installing Win 10 to modernise a little and I reckon another 3 years is more than possible.

[Ynox]

Had a Lenovo W530 in my last role.

Was actually a pretty nice machine. That said, my back prefers my 15" Macbook Pro (i7, 16gb RAM, 512GB SSD).

Some guys I work with run HP Z books. i7, 32 GB RAM, 1TB RAID'ed SSDs. Little bit overkill for web development at times!

[Jimmy Recard]

ArsE92 said:

Nice.

I've got an old Thinkpad X230 that I don't really want to get rid of as it served me so well. i7, 16GB RAM, 256SSD + 2TB Hard disk, IPS screen etc. Lovely little thing. The only thing that lets it down for me is the 1366x768 screen.

If you do think of selling it, would you let me know?

Sounds an ideal spec for me and mine probably doesn't have very long to go. I'm not a power user now, but Thinkpads are just so nice to use.

[Zod]

ArsE92 said:

I started this thread last week but for some reason it posted as a Wiki

Whilst speccing up a new X1 Carbon for myself recently, I was having a play with the Lenovo configurator and managed to build a Thinkpad P70 to a cost of £6000!

Intel Xeon E3-1575M v5 MB
Windows 10 Pro 64
17.3 4K(3840x2160) IPS Non-Touch
64GB(16x4) DDR4 2133MHz ECC SoDIMM
NVIDIA Quadro M5000M 8GB
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Backlit Keyboard with Number Pad - English UK
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
1TB SSD PCIe-NVMe
500GB HD 7200RPM
9.5mm Fixed DVD Recordable
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC(2x2) 8260, Bluetooth Version 4.1 vPro
Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A (Sierra Wireless EM7455)

£6060.79

A beast of a machine and surely a delight to work on.



Do any PH'ers run anything similar? If so, what do you use it for?

I'd never buy such a thing. I'd buy a desktop instead. It's not portable in any real sense.

[Arklight]

I use a Gigabyte P35X at the moment, great piece of kit.

Light enough to lump to and from work at the start and end of the week and has the oomph to keep me amused at lunch.

[cptsideways]

I'm still an a Panasonic CF-29 Toughbook that even I can't break! Still works well for what I need. It is fairly monstrous in terms of weight but tbh plenty of big laptops are just as heavy.

[Alex]

I've got an Alienware R18 with I7, twin NVidia GT680 in SLI, SSD plus HD, 16GB RAM.

It is HUGE. Cost around £3.5k 3 or 4 years ago. Still going strong.

[plasticpig]

Zod said:

'd never buy such a thing. I'd buy a desktop instead. It's not portable in any real sense.

Sold a few HP Z books to client's. Mainly to clients who need to run AutoCad and the like at their clients sites,

[Basil Brush]

plasticpig said:

Sold a few HP Z books to client's. Mainly to clients who need to run AutoCad and the like at their clients sites,

I have a 15" i7 32gb ZBook as I work as a TM1 consultant so need to be able to build decent size models at client sites where they haven't got their own IT sorted yet. I had a 17" EliteBook before which makes my ZBook seem light. The power brick alone weighed more than my Samsung Series 9.

Edited by Basil Brush on Tuesday 28th June 18:48

[ArsE92]

Jimmy Recard said:

ArsE92 said:

Nice.

I've got an old Thinkpad X230 that I don't really want to get rid of as it served me so well. i7, 16GB RAM, 256SSD + 2TB Hard disk, IPS screen etc. Lovely little thing. The only thing that lets it down for me is the 1366x768 screen.

If you do think of selling it, would you let me know?

Sounds an ideal spec for me and mine probably doesn't have very long to go. I'm not a power user now, but Thinkpads are just so nice to use.

I will definitely be selling it. You can have the Ultradock too. In fact, you can have two Ultradocks!

If you're interested then drop me a PM. I'd happily let it go for Ebay price - 10-15% or something to a PHer.

Zod said:

'd never buy such a thing. I'd buy a desktop instead. It's not portable in any real sense.

I'd say with a decent bag it wouldn't be too difficult to lug around. I already carry an X1 Carbon, external Asus 14" USB screen, power packs etc.

[Insanity Magnet]

Zod said:

'd never buy such a thing. I'd buy a desktop instead. It's not portable in any real sense.

No they aren't light but lugging a desktop about isn't particularly sensible. Also, if you really need the grunt then even smaller 'power' laptops such as Dell's m3800 are a bit compromised.

Anyway, anyone played with configurations for these?

http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure(2,233,0)

[rxe]

I had a fecking huge Lenovo a few years ago, the one with the additional slide out screen. Used to run a medical imaging system (PACS) client on the main screen, server ran in a VM, and the scheduling system ran in another VM and displayed on the pull out screen.

Great for demos, utterly useless for anything else as the screen was a long way from diagnostic quality....

[The Beaver King]

We put in a request at work for a laptop capable of running an Oculus Rift and high end 3D modelling; we're in construction but we do a lot of rendering etc.

We ended up with this:

– Dell Alienware 17 laptop, running Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) English
– Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-4980HQ Processor (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 4.0GHz w/ Intel® Turbo Boost)
– Memory - 16Gb Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz
– Video - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 4Gb GDDR5
– Display - 17.3 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS-Panel Anti-Glare 300-nits Display (Standard)
– HDD - 512GB m.2 SSD + 1Tb 7.2k
– Dell Alienware Graphic Amplifier, with NVIDIA GeForce GTX980 4GB GDDR5


The GPU Amplifier is an absolute beast; I believe the whole lot was nearly £4k.

[ArsE92]

The Beaver King said:

We put in a request at work for a laptop capable of running an Oculus Rift and high end 3D modelling; we're in construction but we do a lot of rendering etc.

We ended up with this:

– Dell Alienware 17 laptop, running Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) English
– Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-4980HQ Processor (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 4.0GHz w/ Intel® Turbo Boost)
– Memory - 16Gb Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz
– Video - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 4Gb GDDR5
– Display - 17.3 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS-Panel Anti-Glare 300-nits Display (Standard)
– HDD - 512GB m.2 SSD + 1Tb 7.2k
– Dell Alienware Graphic Amplifier, with NVIDIA GeForce GTX980 4GB GDDR5


The GPU Amplifier is an absolute beast; I believe the whole lot was nearly £4k.

1080p - how quaint.

[Guvernator]

ArsE92 said:

I started this thread last week but for some reason it posted as a Wiki

Whilst speccing up a new X1 Carbon for myself recently, I was having a play with the Lenovo configurator and managed to build a Thinkpad P70 to a cost of £6000!

Intel Xeon E3-1575M v5 MB
Windows 10 Pro 64
17.3 4K(3840x2160) IPS Non-Touch
64GB(16x4) DDR4 2133MHz ECC SoDIMM
NVIDIA Quadro M5000M 8GB
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Backlit Keyboard with Number Pad - English UK
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
1TB SSD PCIe-NVMe
500GB HD 7200RPM
9.5mm Fixed DVD Recordable
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC(2x2) 8260, Bluetooth Version 4.1 vPro
Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A (Sierra Wireless EM7455)

£6060.79

A beast of a machine and surely a delight to work on.



Do any PH'ers run anything similar? If so, what do you use it for?

I know the Quadro cards cost a fair packet and a 1TB SSD isn't going to be cheap but is it only me who thinks that machine "isn't all that" for £6k?

[Frik]

Insanity Magnet said:

Dell Precision M6800. Can't remember how much exactly but was somewhere IRO £2.5k. Now stuffed full of memory and SSDs, added later to prevent a fleecing by Dell.

I use it for SolidWorks, Rhino, modo and whatever Adobe package a job requires... Needed a portable rather than a desktop monster and I thought this gave the best bang for the buck (OK £) at the time.

I've always upgraded my Precisions roughly every 3 years. The M6800 is 2.5 years old and powerful enough for me not to need to change for a few years more.

Likewise. I'm up to 3 HDD now. Still capable though the battery is starting to show its age. My back would certainly prefer something lighter though!