Help me find a top of the line laptop for my Dad

[Eric904P]

So my dad is wanting to get himself a new laptop, and he has a few fussy points that need to be met:

- 4k TOUCH screen

- highest end card possible, prefer 1070 or 1080 (1050, 1050ti, or 1060 or similar arent what he wants)

- keyboard with numpad

 

He does want to game on this, specifically 4k flight simulators at the highest frames possible.  He wants it to be as future-proof as possible, and money isnt much of an issue.  It will be hard to justify 10k on a machine, but a couple thousand isnt out of the question at all.

 

Ive found a number of laptops with 2/3 of these points met, but not all.  Either the graphics card is a 1050ti (but everything else is met) or its a kickass 4k laptop, just no touchscreen. 

 

So far my best finds are:

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 line - has 1050ti however
Dell XPS 15 line - also has 1050ti

HP Spectre x360 15t - has RX Vega M, little weaker than 1050

 

So is there any laptops Im missing that yall are aware of? Something that meets those needs that is coming out soon with i9 processor?

 

The other option is an external GPU with one of those laptops mentioned in the list above, but will the thunderbolt 3 handle 4k gaming at 60-90fps? Is there a way to custom build one of those enclosures with custom parts? Whats the best one on the market, or one that I could just buy with a weaker card at a cheaper price and slap a 1080ti in?  Let me know what solutions yall think would work best for this.

[Nogghan]

1 minute ago, Eric904P said:

So my dad is wanting to get himself a new laptop, and he has a few fussy points that need to be met:

- 4k TOUCH screen

- highest end card possible, prefer 1070 or 1080 (1050, 1050ti, or 1060 or similar arent what he wants)

- keyboard with numpad

 

He does want to game on this, specifically 4k flight simulators at the highest frames possible.  He wants it to be as future-proof as possible, and money isnt much of an issue.  It will be hard to justify 10k on a machine, but a couple thousand isnt out of the question at all.

 

Ive found a number of laptops with 2/3 of these points met, but not all.  Either the graphics card is a 1050ti (but everything else is met) or its a kickass 4k laptop, just no touchscreen. 

 

So far my best finds are:

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 line - has 1050ti however
Dell XPS 15 line - also has 1050ti

HP Spectre x360 15t - has RX Vega M, little weaker than 1050

 

So is there any laptops Im missing that yall are aware of? Something that meets those needs that is coming out soon with i9 processor?

 

The other option is an external GPU with one of those laptops mentioned in the list above, but will the thunderbolt 3 handle 4k gaming at 60-90fps? Is there a way to custom build one of those enclosures with custom parts? Whats the best one on the market, or one that I could just buy with a weaker card at a cheaper price and slap a 1080ti in?  Let me know what solutions yall think would work best for this.

im confused he doesnt want a 1050-1060 but your best finds are all 1050tis?

[PopsicleHustler]

If you have 4k, then 1050 isn't enough, hell even 1070 will struggle.

[Eric904P]

2 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

If you have 4k, then 1050 isn't enough, hell even 1070 will struggle.

Yeah I know,  hence why the solution Im thinking is eGPU unless there is something Im not aware of.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Nogghan said:

im confused he doesnt want a 1050-1060 but your best finds are all 1050tis?

yeah thats the closest I can find to what he wants.  I could find a more powerful laptop sure, but the touchscreen is a big deal-breaker for him.

[Opencircuit74]

14 minutes ago, Eric904P said:

Yeah I know,  hence why the solution Im thinking is eGPU unless there is something Im not aware of.

 

 

yeah thats the closest I can find to what he wants.  I could find a more powerful laptop sure, but the touchscreen is a big deal-breaker for him.

So, he wants a touchscreen 4k laptop with a very powerful card? I would just get a laptop with the screen and a good processor (8th Gen i7) and grab a GPU box, slap in a used 1080 TI from ebay (around $500-$550) and you should be good. This all will be bottlenecked of course, with the 4x connection over thunderbolt (make sure it has that) and high latencies to/from the video card.

[genexis_x]

Where are you from? Budget? Preferred max weight and minimum battery life?

[Eric904P]

12 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

Where are you from? Budget? Preferred max weight and minimum battery life?

Im in Florida, USA but long as it can ship here its fine. 

 

Weight and size shouldnt be an issue, hes not gonna be using it on his lap almost ever.  Any time he would use it would be at a desk or on a table of some kind. 

 

Battery life just needs to be like 5 minutes, again given his use he really just wants a desktop that is easier to move between places, without carting a monitor and keyboard.  All places I can think of would be stationary with a power source right next by.

[genexis_x]

You forgot to mention your budget

[Eric904P]

15 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

You forgot to mention your budget

Like 5,000 USD probs? Its nothing hard set, my dad is a retired PhD holder so hes got money to blow if he sees the need. That being said, I doubt he would see a need in a 10,000$ machine, but 2-3k would be quite doable, or even 5,000 if its brand new top of the line that fits everything I mentioned.

[markr54632]

The razerblade pro has the you're looking for and is under 5k. 

 

I didn't think it would be that hard to find something with those requirements, but it really is.

[genexis_x]

4 hours ago, markr54632 said:

razerblade pro

Trash model

On 10/13/2018 at 8:45 AM, Eric904P said:

- 4k TOUCH screen

- highest end card possible, prefer 1070 or 1080 (1050, 1050ti, or 1060 or similar arent what he wants)

- keyboard with numpad

Mobile workstations with UHD touchscreen:

HP ZBook 17 G5 with P5200 (slightly behind 1080)

Lenovo Thinkpad P52 with P3200 (slightly behind 1060)

HP ZBook 15 G5 with P2000 (slightly behind 1050TI)

 

Sadly, Thinkpad P72 isn't available and Dell Precision 7530/7730 don't have UHD touchscreen option

On 10/12/2018 at 7:14 AM, Eric904P said:

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 line - has 1050ti however
Dell XPS 15 line - also has 1050ti

HP Spectre x360 15t - has RX Vega M, little weaker than 1050

 

an external GPU

Zenbook Pro and XPS 15 have severe cooling issue (more affecting GPU). So expect 1050 or lower performance even with the 1050TI MQ GPU due to thermal throttling (caused by low temp limit). Spectre x360 1 with KBL-G is decent but the cooling isn't the best (not terrible). Can also consider Lenovo Ideapad 720s 15 with 1050TI MQ (be aware of undersized charger and OKish cooling).

 

Vega M is actually between 1050 and 1050TI.

 

eGPU via TB3 will bottleneck GPU performance. Max performance you can get is around a 1060 even with 1080TI.

 

If you have the budget for eGPU, why don't just build a desktop and buy a cheaper laptop.

[markr54632]

6 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

11 hours ago, markr54632 said:

razerblade pro

Trash model

That's a tad harsh for a laptop that in general has pretty favorable reviews and meets a certain use case. Definitely not a laptop I would be interested in.

 

Btw I went through several lists of mobile workstations and could not find the uhd touchscreen available anywhere.

 

OP this is an extremely unusual and impractical use case. With a 5k budget you could get a quality 4k monitor, a sff gaming pc, keyboard, mouse, an ultrabook for laptop use cases, and still have money left over for an beginner set of sticks.

[genexis_x]

10 hours ago, markr54632 said:

pretty favorable reviews

Reviews on Razer laptops are also trash

[Eric904P]

On 10/14/2018 at 7:19 AM, GeneXiS_X said:

Trash model

Mobile workstations with UHD touchscreen:

HP ZBook 17 G5 with P5200 (slightly behind 1080)

Lenovo Thinkpad P52 with P3200 (slightly behind 1060)

HP ZBook 15 G5 with P2000 (slightly behind 1050TI)

 

Sadly, Thinkpad P72 isn't available and Dell Precision 7530/7730 don't have UHD touchscreen option

Zenbook Pro and XPS 15 have severe cooling issue (more affecting GPU). So expect 1050 or lower performance even with the 1050TI MQ GPU due to thermal throttling (caused by low temp limit). Spectre x360 1 with KBL-G is decent but the cooling isn't the best (not terrible). Can also consider Lenovo Ideapad 720s 15 with 1050TI MQ (be aware of undersized charger and OKish cooling).

 

Vega M is actually between 1050 and 1050TI.

 

eGPU via TB3 will bottleneck GPU performance. Max performance you can get is around a 1060 even with 1080TI.

 

If you have the budget for eGPU, why don't just build a desktop and buy a cheaper laptop.

I have suggested the build a desktop thing to him as well, but he really wants an AIO system.  He's hoping something will come out around the holidays that meets his needs, or one of the ones that are close but not quite go on sale and he can find another solution for the really high end gaming.  Thanks for those recommendations, Ill definitely check them out!  Huge thank you for finding those, I think that's exactly what he wants.

 

Ill pass along the rest of that info as well, the heating issues are definitely a big deal.  I think the TB3 bottlenecking may just be a sacrifice made, he'd look into the performance of that in-depth before a purchase... if you get max of 1060 level performance 4k games wont run like he wants however. I still think 2 systems solve his needs the best (gaming rig + decent laptop).