Alienware as a workstation Laptop

[Jtakla12]

Hello, guys what do you think about the alienware  

Dell Alienware 17R5 

Core  i9-8950HK 2.9GHz

32GB

17.3" UHD (3840 x 2160) 4K  BT WIN10 Tobii Eye Traker

NVIDIA® GTX 1080 8192MB 

Will it do a good work as a workstarion for rendering work and 3d modeling? 

Ps: and how long is it s lifespam

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to Laptops and Pre-Built Systems =-

[roarkitect]

What kind of rendering and 3D modeling? I'm looking at getting the M17 for Archicad / Revit + Lumion myself.

[Theguywhobea]

It'd probably be fine but why not the new Area 51M?

[bellabichon]

Hmm. Putting an i9 in a laptop always makes me nervous. What do the reviews say about cooling performance? That's gonna be super important. 

[roarkitect]

6 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

It'd probably be fine but why not the new Area 51M?

For me it's the lack of UHD. Plus I already have a desktop. But a machine that can do a project from start to finish is nice... even if it's not as good as my desktop.

[CharminUltraStrong]

7 minutes ago, roarkitect said:

For me it's the lack of UHD. Plus I already have a desktop. But a machine that can do a project from start to finish is nice... even if it's not as good as my desktop.

Well, how are you going to be using it? As a desktop replacement in a work environment? If so, perhaps you ought to get one with a less expensive GPU in the laptop and purchase an Alienware External GPU enclosure + an RTX 2070/GTX 1080. The beauty of those external enclosures is that they're directly connected as PCI on a mobo so there is no performance drop whereas, a 1080 that comes inside the laptop might be down-clocked a bit for thermal management making it more comparable to a 1070ti.

[roarkitect]

For me, it's for my freelance architecture work that I do on nights and weekends with the occasional Destiny 2. I don't like to let my extra work keep me from doing things during my free time, so the flexibility to take the machine to a different location is crucial. I've looked at ePGUs a lot, but haven't found any that aren't enormous. I owned a Core 2 briefly and just built a desktop instead. For my Lumion software (a real-time rendering engine), VRAM is pretty important. I think a max-q 2080 or 2070 is good enough for my mobile work.

 

I'm using a 1060 laptop with a FHD screen right now and it's okay. It's very doable, but I wouldn't mind speeding things up and having a better screen to look at (so many menus makes the screen real estate very important...especially when I'm used to it on my desktop).

[genexis_x]

It's an outdated model with potential cooling issue

[Jtakla12]

9 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

It's an outdated model with potential cooling issue

What do you recommend? 

[roarkitect]

What kind of rendering and modeling?

[Jtakla12]

Well mainly architectural rendering i work on 3dsmax and render on vray

I m still a student thought but i take on some freelance  renderings  soo need a good laptop. As weel as i m interrested in vfx and video making so i. Guess i l get into that soon... Any recomendation 

3 hours ago, roarkitect said:

3 hours ago, roarkitect said:

What kind of rendering and modeling?

 

 

[roarkitect]

1 minute ago, Jtakla12 said:

Well mainly architectural rendering i work on 3dsmax and render on vray

I m still a student thought but i take on some freelance  renderings  soo need a good laptop. As weel as i m interrested in vfx and video making so i. Guess i l get into that soon... Any recomendation 

 

Excellent to hear. I'm an architect and I also do freelance rendering. I recently moved to Lumion instead of Vray for most things, but I still have my Vray Next license. Vray is still CPU-dependent for the most part. I'd definitely go with the beefiest cooling you can as Vray is kinda slow and you will likely be rendering for long periods of time at hot temps. If you intend to render via GPU in Vray, you should make sure you get the most VRAM possible otherwise you risk your scenes not fitting.

We have several Razer Blade Pros around my main office job and those have a full GTX1080 in them. We take them to client meetings for VR or let folks take them home to render after hours. They work pretty well, although old at this point.

 

If you're a student, I also suggest you take advantage of the student versions of Twin Motion, Lumion, and Enscape for your projects. They all use real-time video game engines to render rather than the path tracing that Vray does. You can get pretty amazing results almost instantly. I can get 4k resolution images from Lumion in 3 minutes compared to literal hours in Vray. I think there's still a place for Vray in the profession, but I think it's shrinking. More limited to close up images of martini glasses at a boutique NY bar and not the best for 15 images taken around the site of a building.

 

Just my thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm also in the market for a new laptop... but haven't found the right one yet.

[genexis_x]

13 hours ago, Jtakla12 said:

What do you recommend? 

Where are you from? Budget? Usage? Any preference on weight and battery life?