Under $400 Laptop Recommendations

[COD_Glitcher64]

I am searching for an under $400 laptop to use as a daily driver for school, browsing, and C.A.D. I am not going to be modeling a whole wind turbine or anything with 100 or so parts so it doesn’t have to be the best of the best but it needs to be able to run Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, and maybe some other things at a decent speed. I will probably not be gaming on it, but I will be using it to 3D print using Cura.

 

• Preferably 8GB RAM

• At least 200GB memory

• Must be on Windows 10

 

So far I have found the HP 2019 15.6 inch HD Laptop AMD A6-9225 Dual-Core 2.6 GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, AMD RadeonR4 just by searching on amazon.

 

I thank you in advanced as this will help me greatly.

 

Edit: I am in the U.S. so that would be 400 USD.

 

Edit 2: I do have a great Windows 10 desktop PC that runs C.A.D. like a monster so I could use AMD Link or something to stream it to the laptop if need be. I would prefer not to do that but it is entirely a possibility.

[Spakes]

I think with these requests you're better looking at used stuff... Those specs won't allow you to go far (and you will want to go further, you can bet on that). It doesn't have to be powerful in terms of GPU, but almost any dGPU with GDDR5 is better than iGPU (because there will be more RAM available to software because it won't be taken by iGPU).

[COD_Glitcher64]

35 minutes ago, Spakes said:

I think with these requests you're better looking at used stuff... Those specs won't allow you to go far (and you will want to go further, you can bet on that). It doesn't have to be powerful in terms of GPU, but almost any dGPU with GDDR5 is better than iGPU (because there will be more RAM available to software because it won't be taken by iGPU).

So what would be a price point for a new laptop that would match what I am looking to do? It doesn’t have to do much like I said, but it needs to run Fusion 360 for simple small parts and assemblies.

[Spakes]

2 hours ago, COD_Glitcher64 said:

So what would be a price point for a new laptop that would match what I am looking to do? It doesn’t have to do much like I said, but it needs to run Fusion 360 for simple small parts and assemblies.

If new - around 1500$US like Dell XPS 15 9370 or Razer Blade 14. That is for both really portable AND powerful laptop.

General rule of thumb for your case: Use 8300H/8750H CPU or better (no U series, those will be slower), find something with any dGPU with GDDR5 like 940MX/MX150/MX250, cause on iGPU you'll face a lot of out-of-VRAM issues. SSD is optional, you'd better find a deal on Optane SSD (as it has the lowest latency of all, which will benefit you the most in terms of storage). RAM you already mentioned, portability is subjective, so I'll leave it to you.

If used: Core i5-6300HQ/i7-6700HQ or better and any dGPU with GDDR5 like GTX 860M/940MX/MX150/GTX 1050.

[COD_Glitcher64]

12 hours ago, Spakes said:

If new - around 1500$US like Dell XPS 15 9370 or Razer Blade 14. That is for both really portable AND powerful laptop.

General rule of thumb for your case: Use 8300H/8750H CPU or better (no U series, those will be slower), find something with any dGPU with GDDR5 like 940MX/MX150/MX250, cause on iGPU you'll face a lot of out-of-VRAM issues. SSD is optional, you'd better find a deal on Optane SSD (as it has the lowest latency of all, which will benefit you the most in terms of storage). RAM you already mentioned, portability is subjective, so I'll leave it to you.

If used: Core i5-6300HQ/i7-6700HQ or better and any dGPU with GDDR5 like GTX 860M/940MX/MX150/GTX 1050.

Thanks for the help, but I just don’t have that kind of money. I would only do 3D models I could 3D print so they would be small and I only use drafting software so it wouldn’t be a complex high detailed artsy model either. I thought it would be a little cheaper that that. Do you have any recommendations for Under $400 USD that doesn’t do C.A.D. modeling? I would mainly be watching YouTube, doing internet schoolwork using Google Classroom and Drive, and also just messing around with an Arduino. I might occasionally play Minecraft but I could use AMD Link to connect to and control my PC for any heavy workload activities.

Edit: I just found out that AMD Link is only for streaming PC to Smartphones so I guess that isn’t an option.

[Spakes]

Well, I at leasl laid out some things for you to look out for when choosing used laptop: i5/i7 Quad-Core, 8 GB of RAM, any dGPU with GDDR5 (in perfect world) and/or 2 GB of VRAM, SSD.