RichardsD

Yeah. I was not able to find many people comparing the two at 4K, mostly just 1440p. If it continues to widen (its about 6% better at 1080p, 12% at 1440p) then I will likely go for that.

Hey guys, Just got my first 4K display, primarily for productivity. I do game a bit however, and my current GTX 970 is not sufficient. I tried even medium settings, it can only get ~22 FPS in most games, not very playable. I am really out of the loop on GPUs nowadays, the names have just become too confusing. As far as I understand, for 4K, at medium/high settings, I want either a AMD 5700 XT or a Nvidia 2070 Super. I'm in Ontario, and the pricing is a BIG difference. The 5700 is about ~$600CAD, the 2070S is $700CAD - 780CAD. I only buy one of these things every 6 years, so I'm not worried about the $100-200 difference, if the jump in performance is worth it. Rest of the system specs are i7 6700K @ 4.0, a 650W Corsair PSU, 16GB of RAM. Current monitor setup is 1x ASUS 2560x1440 PB 278Q, and 1x 4K ASUS VG289Q. Both are 60Hz, and I don't plan to exceed that any time soon. (I am also open to other suggestions ofc, this is from my research what seemed more suitable)

Quick Specs: Price: $~2000CAD as configured CPU: Intel Xeon E3-2176M w/ VPro GPU: Nvidia Quadro P2000 4GB RAM: 8GB DDR4 2400Mhz non-ECC Storage: 500GB 5400RPM factory, currently fitted with 1x 1TB ADATA SU-800 SATA and 1x Kingston 256GB NVME Display: 1920x1080 IPS Keyboard: Backlit w/ Numberpad Weight: ~6LBs 1. Build and Connectivity The P52 being classed as a mobile workstation has a good assortment of ports overall. It has 3x USB 3.1 (Type A), 2x USB 3.1 Type C/Thunderbolt, a multi-card reader, Mini-DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, a combo 3.5mm speaker/microphone jack, and an optional smart card reader. For wireless connectivity AC WiFi, and Bluetooth are provided as standard. An optional SIM Card slot can be fitted to use for mobile browsing via LTE. As for build quality, it is about as good as it gets. The chassis and outer case are metal and feel heavy (seriously heavy!) when held. The lid is primarily carbon fibre according to Lenovo, and is lightweight compared to the chassis. However, the screen has minimal flex, and the hinge action is tremendously smooth. While the P52 doesn't incorporate a latch mechanism like other Thinkpads to close the display, the hinge is perfectly capable of keeping the lid closed. The hinge allows very fine adjustment of the screen angle as well. As for weight, this is a seriously heavy machine. The all-metal exterior case and chassis means the laptop is rock solid, but not exactly light. Combined with the AC adapter, this laptop weighs almost 8lbs. Without the massive 170w power brick, the laptop is about 6lbs as configured. While I've never been bothered by laptop weight, even I was surprised when holding the device for the first time. While Lenovo does offer a slim version of their mobile workstation, this P52 is specifically designed for cooling, and upgradability. The Thinkpad P52 has a 90Wh battery, a massive unit and the maximum allowed to be safe for air travel. This can give a respectable 8-9 hours of moderate usage without intensive GPU workloads. If you want to keep the machine long-term, upgrading is a snap. 8 Screws hold a metal plate on the underside of the machine, revealing most of your upgrade options. 2x NVME slots and 1x 2.5" bay are provided. Also, an amazing four so-dim memory slots are provided, allowing a maximum of 128gb non-ecc or 64gb of ecc DDR4 RAM. If you want to access all of the ports of this laptop, be prepared to reach behind. 2. Display, Keyboard and Audio The P52 comes with two choices of Display, a 1920 x 1080 IPS, 60Hz anti-glare display, or a 3840 x 2160 IPS, Touchscreen display. Although the 4K display would be impressive, in a 15.6" device it's not usable without the awful Windows scaling, and according to other reviews, drains the battery life to a mere 4 hours. So, I opted for the more reasonable, if a little underwhelming 1080p display. Colours are deep and vibrant as is expected with all IPS panels. Despite the 60hz refresh rate, the display feels fast and responsive. Brightness is claimed as 300nits, being bright enough, but certainly not best in class. The keyboard is the new style Lenovo keyboard, which although not godly like the last generation provides great feeling, key depth and sharp response in a modern laptop. The layout is mostly traditional, except for the placement of delete and arrow keys, which some may find odd compared to a desktop keyboard. However, the full numpad and long backspace and shift keys is more than welcome. A backlight is standard, and no, Lenovo doesn't appear to be hopping on the RGB train anytime soon, which is unsurprising, given the utilitarian and professional nature of this device. The white backlight has 3 brightness levels.Also, num lock and caps lock are indicated with a small white LED on the key. The function keys also incorporate a wide range of secondary functions toggled with the function key, such as brightness, backlight, mic/speaker mute and a projector mode. A fingerprint reader is included as standard and is extremely fast and easy to use as a log-in method. Audio is provided by a set of top firing speakers. Volume is not deafening, but can easily fill a living room. Quality is good even at high volume, with clear vocals, and good ability to differentiate between supporting instruments during classic rock music tracks. Listening to classical music had similarly good ability to hear a range of orchestral instruments. Bass leaves something to be desired, and most tracks felt a bit empty in this respect, with chorus dominating the sound. mmm Porche 997.2 C4S, if I stopped buying tech, i could afford one! (jk, they're mad expensive) 3. Performance Where the P52 really shines is performance in all aspects, especially CPU intensive workloads. The 6 core Xeon E3-2176M fires at 2.70Ghz and 4.40Ghz in turbo-boost mode. Compared to most gaming laptops with the i7-8750H, this is a major advantage for this machine. This CPU has obtained an average score of 13,772 on PassMark, putting it slightly ahead of the i7-8750H. The Quadro P2000 GPU is no slouch either, and while this isn't designed for gaming, the Quadro has no issues playing games at the P52's native 1080p resolution. With power roughly equivalent to a desktop GTX 1060, I was able to obtain an average 50 FPS in Arma 3 playing single-player. Using it for it's intended purpose in 3ds max I had very smooth panning and manipulation of the viewport windows. In substance painter, effects could be applied quickly without major loading times. As far as cooling is concerned, the Xeon idled at about 37c with an ambient air temperature of 22c, without any fan usage. With maximum fan speed, the P52 was moderately loud, but not high pitched or uncomfortable. The 1920x1080p screen provides reasonable screen real estate to do 3d modelling, although you'll still likely want an external 1440p or 4K monitor. 4. Software Lenovo pre-loads Windows 10 Professional For Workstations on the P52, which brings some interesting features and complications. Firstly, remote desktop and a few other enterprise applications come as standard. Secondly, you'll need to use the enterprise signed drivers (such as for the Quadro), which means you won't always be on the curve of updates and fixes, since the enterprise drivers undergo more rigorous testing before deployment. But otherwise the Win10Pro WS functions the same as any edition of Win10 and incorporates all the features like Cortana, and fingerprint recognition and so forth. Unfortunately, Lenovo enjoys Bloatware (money), and therefore it comes in a healthy quantity with this machine. Office 365 trial, Skype, card games, and a ton of useless social and VR applications are included. While there's nothing too egregious like an anti-virus, a professional machine should come bone-clean. Lenovo also includes some complications for re-installing the OS. The serial key for your copy of Windows 10 is not printed on the bottom like the good ole' days, but rather is stored in the Bios. This means any reinstall must be accomplished by downloading the Lenovo Recovery tool. Because I switched to 2x SSDs instead of the mechanical storage, I had to make use of this option. While the tool does work properly, it is not user-friendly or simple. Firstly, downloading the recovery tool and making a bootable USB requires a minimum 16Gb USB stick, which the tool fails to mention. Plugging in anything less simply gives an unknown error. And secondly, the USB stick must be un-formatted or it will fail with a generic error. Once these hurdles are overcome, the recovery tool is a standard enterprise image tool which is glacially slow (taking about an hour to re-install Windows on my new drive), but otherwise worked without error. 5. Conclusion Although $2000CAD is a huge amount of money to spend on a laptop, the Thinkpad P52 could be seen as the budget option. Dell's Precision line and HP both are significantly more expensive, and the specifications of this machine are impressive for the price. Apple, for example doesn't offer any Xeon Options on their Macbook Pro, and the highest specc'ed version is $3700CAD with a weak Radeon RX card and an i7 8750H. So, the killer app of this machine is certainly the Xeon 6 Core and Quadro combination. However, the machine isn't without faults. Lenovo shipping a 500GB, 5400RPM Drive is absolutely laughable in 2019. What's more is there are few cost effective upgrades on their site. A 1TB Drive is a ridiculous $370 CAD. If you're springing for this machine, I strongly suggest you do as I did and buy your own SSDs. Still, adding the extra $165CAD I paid for 2x SSDs, the machine is still a great value. It offers excellent performance for 3d modelling, video/photo editing, and even rendering. And yes, it can game, despite that not being the primary purpose. In a world of thin-and light machines with terrible cooling and upgradability, this P52 hearkens back to the good old days, for better and for worse. Good cooling, great performance build quality all make this a good option for those looking at a mid-tier mobile workstation.

Hey everyone, don't want to bump but I am looking at picking one of these monitors up within the next 2 weeks, but there's not many reviews, especially the AOC one. Anyone know if AOC uses rejected panels, or do they only use the "A" panels like other big brands?

https://www.amazon.ca/AOC-U2790VQ-3840x2160-Frameless-DisplayPort/dp/B07LBM2DCC/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=AOC+4K+IPS&qid=1555900201&s=electronics&sr=1-1-fkmrnull So, I bought a Thinkpad mobile workstation for 3d modelling and a little bit of gaming, but definitely want to run it with a 4k monitor as it's only a 15.6" machine. I need IPS, which really has limited my options to the mega expensive $1200CAD Asus 4K IPS high refresh monitors, and the BenQ $700 IPS 4K 60hz monitor. However, I found this $330 CAD AOC 4K IPS monitor. Are these crap, or worth checking out? For half the price of the BenQ, it seems like a good option. I don't care about high refresh, as I don't do that much gaming, and definitely not competitive games. And I'm not willing to shell $1200 CAD for a single monitor, as I plan to buy 2 to eventually run on my desktop. There's also this LG Monitor, which is $430, which seems like a good option as well. Thoughts?

Ok, thanks for all the input and help everyone, I'm going to wait until the Dell G5 is on sale and pick one up. Cheers!

Doesn't matter, will run it plugged in. I'll bring my Thinkpad for actual remote usage. Yes and yes. I'll def wait for a sale before getting anything. Yeah :(, gaming laptops are insanely expensive Lol.

Ok, I've been browsing. The Acer Nitro 5 series seems to fit the price, and specs I am looking for, and the cooling looks great. https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/series-features/nitro5 Anyone have any experience with these and would recommend or not?

Interesting. I don't really have any need for that, but I've heard about some of the cool stuff you can do with that. I was looking at the Dell CA site however, and it seems that the G5 is the only one that comes close to $1200CAD, but it was still way over. The Asus one seems alright, I'm definitely going to keep looking, however.

Yeah, I've now searched MSI, Asus, Lenovo, Dell, etc, and they are indeed basically all like that. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I'll just check some reviews I guess and see what gets better temps. Definitely a different world.

Cooling looks pretty legit, but it's still pretty thin, and it only has an i5, or at least the one available did. I might take a look at Dell or Asus or MSI or whoever's work laptops that have good GPUs and see if any of them are a bit thicker. Update: The laptop I was referring to was the Asus G55VW, as the ideal thick with legit cooling. Anything along those lines still on the market? Seems they don't sell that anymore..

Hey everyone, It's been a long time since I've even had a performance laptop. I've run my Lenovo Thinkpad with i3 + no GPU and SSD for like 5 years, and it's awesome! The 10hr battery life is insane. However, I'm probably going to do some training for work away from home for like.. eight months. And there's no way I'm bringing my 65lb tower + all the crap ton of peripherals it has with it. I want to spend no more than $1200CAD, and the specs are pretty easy (most machines I found were all the same at that price point, some kind of i7, and a GTX 1060). I don't care about what storage it has, if it's a crap HDD, I'll just replace it. Dual storage would be nice, however, even if one bay is empty and I can add something. RAM.. meh 8gb to 16 or anything in between is fine. The only main requirement I want is a big, and really good cooling equipped machine. Screen wise 15.6" is fine. I literally do not care about weight. I carry my current thinkpad in a Pelican case which adds a solid 6-8lbs already. I know back in the day Asus had a sweet, very thick but awesomely cooled gaming laptop, but I've been checking their site and there doesn't seem to be anything like that. So in conclusion, those specs or around those specs. And no thin and light nonsense, I want cooling for max performance over all. I won't really be moving this one frequently like my Thinkpad, it's more of a desktop supplment while I'm away, and before I move again to my new permanent workplace. Thanks!

Honestly, since it worked before the update I didn't, let me do that.

Hey everyone, My friend has a 32" Samsumg 1366X768 monitor he uses as a secondary display, and after a recent Win 10 update it stopped working properly. The colors are super low resolution, and he can't figure out why. I've tried display calibration, playing with the TV settings, updating my GFX card drivers and all. However, no luck. Otherwise, it works fine. Any help is appreciated!

I shall do that and report back!