New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

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lukefowler
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New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by lukefowler »

Hi All,

We are a small laser scanning business who are looking for a new mobile workstation to handle the excessive amounts of data we are processing and could really help with some advice.

The programs we mainly use are:
Cyclone
Recap 360 PRO (2019)
AutoCad, Revit, 3DS Max, NavisWorks (2019)
Cloud Compare
Premiere Pro

The current machine is just not up to the job and I have been at a few potential candidates for the role.

Currently I have whittled it down to the Dell Precision 7730 and the HP ZBook 17 G5 - both with 8th gen i7 processors and 32GB RAM (that can be upgraded if needs be). However on the high end of the configs they are silly amounts of money.

Whereas looking at some Gaming laptops with just as good specs like Alien-ware M15. To me it looks as though we could use one for a lesser price but just as good an output?

Is that a fair comment or am I missing something?

Has anyone got any of the above workstations or experience with any of them as any advice is more than welcome!

Thanks in advance

Luke
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by YaqubMughal »

Hi,

If you configure a laptop with desktop processor and dual or Triple M.2 SSDs and good ram please go to:

http://www.eurocom.com/ec/main()ec
http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure(2,452,0)TornadoF7W

You may put :

Intel 9900K processor or 8086K processor
M.2 NVMe SSD for Windows may be 500GB
M.2 NVMe SSD one or two TB for data processing
RAM as you required.

This will cover all your need on mobility.

I just know about these laptops .... not a employ or promoter.
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steves01x
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by steves01x »

best laptop i have ever had is from this lot and you can get 64gb work station one!

https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs


Alienware - my sister got one and had nothing but problems with it/Dell when trying to fix the motherboard under warranty and your paying a high price for the "brand".
lukefowler
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by lukefowler »

Thank you for the responses guys!

I have been researching and as we will be requiring VR capabilities to showcase some of the point cloud models to our clients it is looking like the gaming laptops are better suited?

I was trying to decide between the Alienware M17 and Alienware Area 51m, but from the sounds of it you don't think they are very good pieces of kit?
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by steves01x »

The MSI gaming laptops do VR - got one of them as well, i just dont like some of the crap it came installed with or the connection on the charger, already broke one and its impossible to buy another from them, had to go to some random chargers website! Its a good bit of kit though, well built and works.

Gaming laptops are good value compared to a work station laptop - best combo/value is gaming laptop and a decent work station tower at the desk.
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by lukefowler »

Yeah I had a look at MSI but I am not too confident about the support and additional pieces of kit you need from them (as you have just mentioned)

I have taken a look at the link you sent through for 3XS and I am building a workstation with the base of "3XS LW15 Evolve RTX 2080" that comes with a "8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080, 2944 Cores, GDDR6" graphic card - I would think that this could handle VR?

When you say that gaming are better value - what do you mean by this? The 3XS laptops look great value for money!

Thanks for your help by the way - its greatly appreciated
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by steves01x »

Value - i was meaning that the general gaming laptop is far better value over the Dell/HP laptop work station!

Just make sure the graphics card does what you need it to for VR ( i have never bothered with it, i know others use it on show stands etc) and find some extra ££ for bigger SSD on the machine!
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by lukefowler »

Yes I agree with them being better value.

I have increase the RAM to 64GB and the hard drive is primary 2TB SSD, secondary 1TB SSD.

The graphics card is an RTX 2080 which seems to be the best out there right now.

Thanks for your help!
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by MajorDomo »

Just my 2 cents:
If working in Linux check to see if the drivers work properly, especially that you actally get to use the GPU when working withouth beng plugged in.

Dell support is amazing, that is my experience, years ago I had issues with a Precision M6500, and I even got same-day service. And this was on a refurb unit i had bought . If service is important, pay for the top tier support a manufacturer offers.

Workstation processors and GPU's are great, and you can get a pretty powerful mobile workstation, but don't expect battery life to be amazing, and be prepared for some thermal throttling, especially when using VR.

If budget is low, consider Gigabyte. Somewhat lower quality plastics that all the others, but they have some keenly priced products!
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Re: New Mobile Workstation Specs - Dell or HP - PLEASE HELP

Post by BrettH »

Luke

I bought the new Razer Pro 15" laptop with the RTX2070 graphics card in it, I upgraded the RAM to 64Gb and to say I'm impressed is an understatement. Graphics are amazing the speed it is importing/processing/registering is very impressive.
I had a previous laptop with them too that had 1 issue and it was shipped and retified within 3 days which was also nice to know.

Cheers
Brett
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