Budget mobile Workstation

[ChrisCross]

I'm in need for an upgrade of a mobile workstation. I currently have a Thinkpad L450 with an i5-5200u and a 72wh battery. I did me good service but its 4 years old and not fast enough for my workloads.

Budget: 500-1000€ in germany (i can get student discounts). If there is a really good reason i can go to 1200€

Usecase: 50% office (powerpoint, excel and pdf's, also outdoor use), 40% Design engineering (Solidworks assembly of 500+ parts, matlab, Ansys Workbench, Altair Inspire, rarely 3dsmax, Programming), 10% photo editing in lightroom

Mobility and IO: My laptop is still good for office use and i have a place in my university where i can leave stuff safely. My idea was to use a itx machine or a intel nuc with this: Nexdock. I know its a bit weird but it would be usefull for like raspberry pi projects too so its something. I do need sd card support and a decent keyboard and trackpad combo. Also thunderbolt is a nice bonus for future eGPU upgrades.

RAM/ROM: everything will be upgraded to 16gb ram. I need at least 500gb of space but i have a 500gb 2,5" ssd on hand so if supported i would just use that, no need to upgrade the NVMe drive.

 

This is what i have considered so far. I honestly can't decide what to do.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L1MTAjGc1m-psDUdSkTZLTBB2W4Gju5az60NM_p-Kpg/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

I have heard that AMD consumer GPU's are better than consumer Nvidia ones but i'm not really sure if that makes a big difference.

Also are Intel 15W Cpu's even a good idea for this kind of workload? I feel like i should go straight for the 45W one and get a gaming laptop.

What about AMD integrated graphics, is that halfway acceptable?