Explain This To Me - Desktop Replacement Laptops

[HC_writes]

These new Intel 13th gen mobile CPUs are FAST! More cores, more L3 cache, higher boost frequencies… wait, the last generation of CPUs in this caliber of laptop were already plenty fast… why does anyone need this level of performance in a mobile device?

 

 

Buy a MSI Titan GT77 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/oxBkFrz

Buy an ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/Msgfa

Buy a Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 Workstation: https://geni.us/4h9Rbf0

Buy a Dell Precision 7670 Workstation: https://geni.us/5rOMUS

Buy a Logitech MX Master 3S Wireless Mouse: https://geni.us/Lnwmw7

Buy an ASUS ProArt 14 Portable Display: https://geni.us/FmRD

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

[Tflipflop9]

it depends on budget and performance here

[Uttamattamakin]

This was a great video.  Before watching LTT for years made me fall in love with the idea of building my own PC again, and then I actually did it, this type of laptop (almost) was my bag.  I tended to go for larger convertible tablets.  Some were as big as 17 or 15 inches.  One other thing is this kind of laptop is just great for a small workspace and it's a one item solution. 

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

This was a great video.  Before watching LTT for years made me fall in love with the idea of building my own PC again, and then I actually did it, this type of laptop (almost) was my bag.  I tended to go for larger convertible tablets.  Some were as big as 17 or 15 inches.  One other thing is this kind of laptop is just great for a small workspace and it's a one item solution. 

You need to build ones of these

https://bsicomputer.com/products/fieldgo-m3-1739

 

[da na]

I've got a few desktop replacements and they're utterly ridiculous, my favorite is the XPS M1710. Its GPU, in today's terms, would basically be a 4090 TI shoved in a laptop. 

[SorryBella]

14 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

You need to build ones of these

https://bsicomputer.com/products/fieldgo-m3-1739

 

That is so dorky i fell in love with it. I wish it came with better display and less borders though.

[f222]

I've used gaming laptop as a professional. And honestly it wasn't the best experience for us. 

Our goal was to run a simulator (both gpu and cpu intensive) and go to different clients to do demonstrations and sell the product. 

The choice of using a gaming laptop was especially because on some professional gpus the graphical part of the simulator was running absolutely bad (less than 30 fps), at the time the code wasn't optimized and fixing software issue by buying other hardware was made... 

But when you're going to clients with a gaming laptops, some people (especially higher - ups) consider that you are not serious and don't want to make business with you. 

On top of that the laptops we used (they were msi) had a plastic chassis that, even when handled with care ended cracking everywhere. 

 

For the professional laptops I believe it's not just a certification tax you pay but also a better build quality and a much more positive image in front of your clients. 

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

That is so dorky i fell in love with it. I wish it came with better display and less borders though.

There are ore than one out there, search for "lunchbox pc"

But they are aimed at industrial use, rather than sexy gaming, but I'll bet they could be improved upon with a little knowhow.

[BakaPetra]

To answer Linus's quection in the video, we are getting to the point that some midrange phones are faster than my i7-2600K + TITAN X build 

 

I remember back in the day when I got my hands on my Thinkpad W530, it felt like nothing else when it comes to performance, I'd say theese machines are for everyone, regular GPUs, no weird Quadro drivers, you can get the job done with it and then game. The only thing I don't like is the flashy overdone exterior, I still prefer the looks of old IBM machines with the rigid magnesium frame, but it depends on the person I guess.

[papajo]

3 hours ago, HC_writes said:

These new Intel 13th gen mobile CPUs are FAST! More cores, more L3 cache, higher boost frequencies… wait, the last generation of CPUs in this caliber of laptop were already plenty fast… why does anyone need this level of performance in a mobile device?

 

 

Buy a MSI Titan GT77 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/oxBkFrz

Buy an ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/Msgfa

Buy a Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 Workstation: https://geni.us/4h9Rbf0

Buy a Dell Precision 7670 Workstation: https://geni.us/5rOMUS

Buy a Logitech MX Master 3S Wireless Mouse: https://geni.us/Lnwmw7

Buy an ASUS ProArt 14 Portable Display: https://geni.us/FmRD

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

Who are the people who pay $4K for what practically is a semi portable pc (because without the brick you cant do anything that needs fast hardware for more than 30 minutes-ish + it is heavy gets hot and loud so its not even that convenient to have it on your lap which defeats the purpose of the name lol -laptop- ) and get what practically is a (at best because you can pay the same $$$ but get less performance) a 4070 ti in graphics and 12700 in cpu and have a small screen  that is fixed with the (fixed aswell and usually terrible) keyboard and chassis at fixed angles and also has limited or very limited I/O?

Three kinds imho:

The guy on the left



This guy (the extra super rich guy who doesnt even know exactly how many tenths of thousand employees he has and the one who literally can have full golden toilets in all his manors and apartments and dont even sweat about it aka drug lords CEOs/owners of big international companies, bankers, and royalty, but mostly druglords cause the other categories wouldnt care about rgb gaming keyboards that are loud heavy and hot.. maybe their children but I put their children in the same group as the last category since they dont have money on their own  ) 



And this fellow over here. 



And that's why you dont see them around so much cause these people either are at home or do not frequent the same places as normal people

And also are like a minority. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, HC_writes said:

These new Intel 13th gen mobile CPUs are FAST! More cores, more L3 cache, higher boost frequencies… wait, the last generation of CPUs in this caliber of laptop were already plenty fast… why does anyone need this level of performance in a mobile device?

 

 

Buy a MSI Titan GT77 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/oxBkFrz

Buy an ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 Gaming Laptop: https://geni.us/Msgfa

Buy a Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 Workstation: https://geni.us/4h9Rbf0

Buy a Dell Precision 7670 Workstation: https://geni.us/5rOMUS

Buy a Logitech MX Master 3S Wireless Mouse: https://geni.us/Lnwmw7

Buy an ASUS ProArt 14 Portable Display: https://geni.us/FmRD

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

I would try to explane but I am way to stupid

[poochyena]

Kinda surprised there was no mention of using a low powered laptop for remote work using the power of your desktop PC.

[xnamkcor]

When I went to college my 500 dollar Sony(A10-5745) laptop was way more useful than a tower.
I could finish assignments wherever I was. Library, Classroom, Taco Bell, etc.

[papajo]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

Kinda surprised there was no mention of using a low powered laptop for remote work using the power of your desktop PC.

I wonder why that's not a thing in places with cheap high speed internet, I live in Greece in a village the fastest internet I can get here is VDSL FTTC 50Mpbs down 30 up (its actually more like 45ish down 25ish up) but like I also have a house in the city and relatives in other regions of Greece that I visit frequently and sometimes stay there for a month or so (e.g for summer or for Christmas etc) 

I would LOVE to make a high end gaming/media server and proxmox/parsec/moonlight/steamlink* everything not just to thin clients such as laptops but e.g to android boxes hooked in TVs etc and create a VPN between the places and have just one big and expensive machine do all the work for me and my close relatives/friends but the bandwidth isnt there...  a 1080p 60 FPS session (compressed ) needs like 20+ Mbit per second every second (meaning there shouldn't be any e.g 19Mbps hiccups) and when your server's upload is 25ish mbps and your client's download -in some places- is like 20 cause its an ADSL or even 45ish its an issue especially for 1440p and above. 

Yea ther is also a latency issue but ok a) I am not an gamer "athlete" b) if I need to be competitive (although I am too old for this last time I played csgo which I was very good at is like 4 years ago) I could always play directly on the physical location where i would have the server (so my home) for anything else the latency especially in Greece (since the distances aint that big even if you go from one corner of Greece to the other) is a non issue like 50ms max. 

The irony is that in the village I get better upload speeds compared to some places e.g some neighborhoods in some cities which have FTTH they may have bigger download speeds up to 200Mbps but the upload is like 10 or 20 mbps lol (the advertise 1gbps** speeds as well but I think those are rare unicorns aka 0.1-1% or something llike that in terms of coverage and the FTTH 200mpbs has a small coverage to begin with) 


*Actually steam should expand steamlink to work in general like moonlight I mean in comparison steamlink is much better quality and performance wise (and much easier to setup even for streaming over the internet ) there are some bugs e.g if a game crashes you sometimes still are remoting and can see the windows desktop and I happened to had such an incident and run Diablo that way and it run flawlessly as if it was a steam game (which for some reason I can not do anymore cause if I try to add them as 3rd party games in my steal library steamlink only opens the battlenet launcher and yes I have edited the directory accordingly it must be a recent patch or whatnot) lol 

** e.g https://www.cosmote.gr/eshop/go/Fixed-Plans/Double-Play-Plans/Double-Play-Fiberspeed-up-to-1-Gbps/rateplan/COSMOTE+Fiber+1+Gbps+Unlimited

[dontstandinfire]

I use an Alienware X17 R2 for work in the audio visual industry where such power is needed to drive video content these days. We have already started pushing 4K LED Walls and TV’s for business conferences, etc.

 

I have also split a 4K video signal using a QuadHead2Go down to four 1080p signals for video mapping purposes in conjunction with Resolume Arena. 
 

I also render 3D venues and Ballrooms in Vectorworks Spotlight. Fantastic cad program with an incredible AV assets library. It can take a while to render nice shaded models, which are presentable to clients. 

 

Without such a powerful laptop with me as I travel to different states, I’d have to rely on whatever rental laptop companies have available at that time I am traveling. Inconsistencies in whatever is available can make or break large scale AV. 

[papajo]

1 hour ago, dontstandinfire said:

I use an Alienware X17 R2 for work in the audio visual industry where such power is needed to drive video content these days. We have already started pushing 4K LED Walls and TV’s for business conferences, etc.

 

I have also split a 4K video signal using a QuadHead2Go down to four 1080p signals for video mapping purposes in conjunction with Resolume Arena. 
 

I also render 3D venues and Ballrooms in Vectorworks Spotlight. Fantastic cad program with an incredible AV assets library. It can take a while to render nice shaded models, which are presentable to clients. 

 

Without such a powerful laptop with me as I travel to different states, I’d have to rely on whatever rental laptop companies have available at that time I am traveling. Inconsistencies in whatever is available can make or break large scale AV. 

 Yea but your job sounds to be comprised of like a two or three digit number of people US wide

But even for a guy like you I doubt that you need the "top of the line" desktop replacement e.g the alienware x17 r2 comes in a lot of varieties  that cost more than 3000 (with previous gen components namely 12000 series intels and 3000 series Nvidia GPUs) so I mean I doubt you need to spent money on those specs 

You would be probably better (in terms of buck for bang in what you do ) with a laptop like this for example https://geizhals.eu/fujitsu-celsius-h780-vfy-h7800m17cmde-a2687823.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

Or something more expensive and extravagant https://geizhals.eu/msi-creatorpro-m16-a12ujs-423-core-black-001584-423-a2741657.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

or this one which even has a touchscreen which could be handy for last minutes touches or selections etc https://geizhals.eu/acer-conceptd-7-ezel-pro-cc715-72p-79qb-nx-c6weg-002-a2630463.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

And of course there are others too this was just a quick 2 minute search I did given your job description and all of them are lighter and slickier than the alienwear well... the Fujitsu is hideous ok but it has interesting I/O on the other hand (and is a lot cheaper) 

[dontstandinfire]

16 minutes ago, papajo said:

 Yea but your job sounds to be comprised of like a two or three digit number of people US wide

But even for a guy like you I doubt that you need the "top of the line" desktop replacement e.g the alienware x17 r2 comes in a lot of varieties  that cost more than 3000 (with previous gen components namely 12000 series intels and 3000 series Nvidia GPUs) so I mean I doubt you need to spent money on those specs 

You would be probably better (in terms of buck for bang in what you do ) with a laptop like this for example https://geizhals.eu/fujitsu-celsius-h780-vfy-h7800m17cmde-a2687823.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

Or something more expensive and extravagant https://geizhals.eu/msi-creatorpro-m16-a12ujs-423-core-black-001584-423-a2741657.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

or this one which even has a touchscreen which could be handy for last minutes touches or selections etc https://geizhals.eu/acer-conceptd-7-ezel-pro-cc715-72p-79qb-nx-c6weg-002-a2630463.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

And of course there are others too this was just a quick 2 minute search I did given your job description and all of them are lighter and slickier than the alienwear well... the Fujitsu is hideous ok but it has interesting I/O on the other hand (and is a lot cheaper) 

Wasn't my first choice of a laptop, but it's what my company gave me. They maxed out the hardware.

i9 12900HK

32GB RAM

3080 Ti

 

I push this thing to it's breaking point enough to want more power eventually. Resolume Arena is where I get the most crashes. I can be layering 10+ 4K 60FPS videos on each other, while pushing all that content across a 7k+ x 2160p range. 

 

I'm glad I do not have to lug around a tower everywhere I go. I just wish I had MORE power.

[Progressor]

As a recent buyer of an Alienware M17 here is my take. I'm an immigrant and often move between countries/jobs. This makes my PC very impractical if not impossible to take with me so until recently it just sat in my parents home not being used while I'm abroad for most of the year. I'm also a person who hates using mobile devices, my phone is only used for emergencies and when I need something but don't have access to a PC. For me there is nothing like sitting comfortably on a chair, in front of a decently sized monitor with a full size keyboard and a proper mouse. So I needed something that gets me as close as possible to that experience while it also being able to fit in a backpack. I'm not going to use it while in the process of traveling but at the destination I'm staying at itself, so size and weight doesn't matter as long as it fits in a backpack. That would mean a laptop with the largest screen possible, nice keyboard and a thick chassis that can keep everything nice and cool. The Alienware M17 seemed like the closest thing to what I want - nice 17" 4K IPS display with HDR and 120hz refresh rate, one of the very few laptops available with a mechanical keyboard, nice choice of customization options(besides the screen and keyboard, I also went with the AMD 6800H, 32GB ram and a 3070ti) and a decently sized chassis that also looks pretty clean and minimalistic(especially with the rgb off) compared to the ugly monstrosities offered from other vendors. Managed to snag it during a sale and using a coupon to get even more off the price, so it ended up not being expensive too. Been pretty happy so far with my choice, good for movies, good for games, should be be able to even do some creative stuff like 3D rendering/animation. 

[BakaPetra]

7 hours ago, papajo said:

Who are the people who pay $4K for what practically is a semi portable pc

People who need power that is portable to an office, back home, to a client's place etc, for example my top spec ThinkPad W530 was around that price back in the day if you calculate with inflation. The thing still works, only needed a replacement battery trough the years. Theese new high-end machines will probably work for at least 5 years if not more, it's a better choice to buy a better more expensive machine for the long run than buy a mid-low range machine every 1-2 years, you actually save money in the long run.

[papajo]

2 hours ago, dontstandinfire said:

I can be layering 10+ 4K 60FPS videos 

Oh I see my previous suggesting for reference were mostly aiming at cad work/rendering stuff  well your problem is that you probably use all of your vram or vram bandwidth or in other words you could cheap out on other stuff and have the exact same experience since we are talking about video, there are many 2Kish laptops that have 16gb of vram 

but to be honest I am surprised that even your current laptop does that I mean 10* 4K 60FPS  that's what? 12K 60 fps or something? Those are lot of pixels 

Arent there professional devices that handle video walls etc from matrox or whatnot why do you use the laptop and actually how do you use it? I mean how many HDMI cables do you plug in? and how ?  and what version are they? 

 

[papajo]

1 hour ago, BakaPetra said:

People who need power that is portable to an office, back home, to a client's place etc, for example my top spec ThinkPad W530 was around that price back in the day if you calculate with inflation. The thing still works, only needed a replacement battery trough the years. Theese new high-end machines will probably work for at least 5 years if not more, it's a better choice to buy a better more expensive machine for the long run than buy a mid-low range machine every 1-2 years, you actually save money in the long run.

Those people are unicorns and usually do not need a GPU on their laptop if they need graphics power they have a rendering farm which they access via a VM or whatnot times have changed since 2006 today even a cheap notebook can run windows and office for example and play videos and display presentations and what not just fine and as I mentioned there are other ways to tackle graphically demanding stuff also anything from work now can be transferred anywhere in the world via the internet either real time (e.g vm) or just on demand (VPN/FTP etc) 

people want laptops for portability or at least to be able to have them on their lap while on the sofa etc without burning their feet.. 

Also back then laptops like the W530 had the peak battery life (for laptops of the time) and performed equally good as their desktop counterparts today the desktop replacements have virtually 0 battery life (at least if you want to use their specs and not handicap the brightness refresh rate power consumption and dont play games or play less demanding games etc) and they are much slower than their counterparts while being much more expensive e.g a laptop 3080 is slower than a desktop 3070 or at best about the same (and there is the faster 3070 ti as well) the same goes for the CPU 

Oh and back then they had decent keyboards aswell

 

[wiisporter]

Yes. yes it is faster

[Symyr]

Since the current title is: Explain This To Me... WHO is Buying Giant Laptops??. I figured i would throw in another opinion that's more based on size instead of performance of these laptops. My parents for example use a 19"laptop. Why? Because they like the larger screen to read their emails, browse the web, watch youtube or make their own picture album of a trip. I've told them plenty of times i would gladly put together a small pc that can do the same for them but they don't want to have a desk with a computer anywhere in the living room or kitchen and instead prefer to put the laptop away to the side or in a drawer untill they need it again.

 

I got an aunt who has a similar mindset and even worse, she keeps the damn 19" laptop on a desk in her living room and never moves it!

 

So neither of them needs a gaming machine like we see in the video but they definitely want a 19" laptop if for no other reason then having a big screen that they can easily put away. Sadly that market share shrinks every year so i hope i keep finding them such devices.

[kuro68k]

I was looking at these kinds of machines. Maybe not the full battleship ones, just big enough for 2x NVMe drives, socketed RAM, and of course decent CPU performance.

 

It might be more expensive than a desktop, but if I can have one machine instead of a desktop and laptop, I save overall.

[kuro68k]

Lenovo hobble the gaming machines with things like not fully supporting their docks, to force you to buy their workstations.