New laptop workstation for technical artist

Makal · February 3, 2019

My current workstation is from 2012 so the time has come for me to change it.

Use case

I work in 3D graphics field, currently I split my time coding (80-90%) and in content creation software (most notably Autodesk Maya, Arnold Renderer, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator). Even though this content creation part currently is not taking that much time I still want to have quite powerful machine to handle mid-size projects. From time to time I may even want to do some FX simulations in SideFX Houdini and maybe do some stuff in Adobe After Effects.

My vision for workstation

What I want is to have quite powerful laptop to which I can connect external graphics card to which I can connect up to 3 monitors (either in configuration 3x1080p or 2x1080p + 1x4K). I want laptop instead a regular workstation because sometimes I just want to work on a couch or in bed and because of that battery is not a concern - it should be connected to power source (most of the). Size of a laptop should be 15,6" or 17,3". When it comes to external monitors I probably pick something with IPS from Dell, like Dell P2219HC.

Budget

~ $3200 (including 3 monitors + external graphics card)

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Any advice will help!

Bajantechnician · February 3, 2019

If this is the setup youre planning to get, do keep in mind that the laptop MUST support thunderbolt. Although a laptop has type c, it does not mean that it is a thunderbolt enabled input/output.

Thunderbolt is essentially external PCI-E.