Looking for laptop for CAD work

[klh2000]

I've been out of the loop when it comes to hardware for a few years now, so I'm not sure what is considered good these days. I'll soon be a mechanical engineering student, so I will need a laptop for college. I'm in the US.

 

- Budget is $700 ish

- I will be running Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks, as well as editing video occasionally. I will not really be gaming on the laptop very much as I have a desktop for that.

- Dedicated GPU would be nice, and at least 8gb of ram.

- SSD only or SSD + HDD would be ideal

-  minimum 15" 1080P screen. It doesn't need to be color accurate, touchscreen or anything.

- I'd like at least 5 hours of battery life as well, but not sure what to expect out of laptops these days, I've never expected more than 2 hours before.

 

The best thing specs-wise I think I have found is the Asus K570ZD, but many reviews seem to mention build quality issues and networking issues. Any input on that?

[EarthWormJM2]

For your budget, you're not going to find anything spectacular for CAD. We use Autodesk Inventor here at my job and just spent $2k+ on their new laptops. I would say that one is a decent start. But the biggest factor is make sure you have an SSD. That will be night and day loading wise, especially if you will be working with large CAD files or large video files. Personally, I would stick to Intel for laptops as AMD still hasn't quite figured out their mobile chips yet. (they tend to run hot, take more power, and not perform as well). But, worst case you can always upgrade the HDD to an SSD later on. Asus has been hit or miss lately in the laptop game, but as long as it comes with a warranty, I wouldn't worry too much. That 1050 is key though for your budget as integrated and mobile (MXseries) gpus suckkkk for workstation tasks.

[genexis_x]

12 hours ago, klh2000 said:

Budget is $700 ish

You won't find a decent performance/gaming laptop with that budget

12 hours ago, EarthWormJM2 said:

Personally, I would stick to Intel for laptops as AMD still hasn't quite figured out their mobile chips yet. (they tend to run hot, take more power, and not perform as well)

Actually I like AMD Ryzen chips better especially 3500U/3700U. Comparable efficiency actually compared to Intel, but Ryzen mobile chips usually comes with higher power limit unlike Intel which in most cases has typical 15W PL1

[klh2000]

11 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

You won't find a decent performance/gaming laptop with that budget

Actually I like AMD Ryzen chips better especially 3500U/3700U. Comparable efficiency actually compared to Intel, but Ryzen mobile chips usually comes with higher power limit unlike Intel which in most cases has typical 15W PL1

So I found an Asus laptop for $750, has SSD, HDD, Ryzen 3550H. I just can't seem to find all that much info about it? seems like it's just released or something. 

https://www.newegg.com/black-asus-tuf-gaming-fx505dd-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-000N-00GH5

 

[genexis_x]

8 hours ago, klh2000 said:

https://www.newegg.com/black-asus-tuf-gaming-fx505dd-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-000N-00GH5

FX505 is very mediocre

 

Like I said, you won't find a decent performance/gaming laptop with that budget. Suggest sticking with regular laptops

[klh2000]

14 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

FX505 is very mediocre

 

Like I said, you won't find a decent performance/gaming laptop with that budget. Suggest sticking with regular laptops

what would you suggest then for something to do the cad/3d modeling? I'm not going to be playing games with it. I can go a little higher on the budget if need be, but i'd really like to stay under $700

[EarthWormJM2]

23 hours ago, klh2000 said:

what would you suggest then for something to do the cad/3d modeling? I'm not going to be playing games with it. I can go a little higher on the budget if need be, but i'd really like to stay under $700

Either one that you have posted will work fine for your use case as a student. It's not going to be blazing fast and you may have a small hiccup or 2 if you are working with large files, but for school, it should be a good starting point. The last one you posted has everything you need (https://www.newegg.com/black-asus-tuf-gaming-fx505dd-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-000N-00GH5), and I think will work for you until you get out of school or start working with some seriously heavy files. You may want to look into upgrading the RAM eventually to 16GB, but other than that, I think it will work just fine.

[genexis_x]

On 8/15/2019 at 12:36 AM, klh2000 said:

what would you suggest then for something to do the cad/3d modeling? I'm not going to be playing games with it. I can go a little higher on the budget if need be, but i'd really like to stay under $700

The problem rn is, performance aka gaming laptops are more suitable for your workload imo, but no gaming laptop below $700 is decent (Asus FX sucks in many ways). Maybe NH58RHQ barebone but you need to add RAM and storage