Laptop for Livestreaming and University

[Mario-]

Hey

 

I'm currently looking for a laptop that has enough power to livestream with 2 external USB3/Thunderbolt3 SDI capture cards (Epiphan AV.io / Blackmagic UltraStudio mini recorder).

I would stream with vMix at 720p or 1080p 30fps so it should have an i7 quad core and a somewhat decent GPU.

Streaming alone should be possible but do you think having slowmo replays (recording one camera with 60fps and then playing it back at 50% speed) is possible?

 

I'll also be using the laptop for university (Computer Science), so portability would be a plus.

 

The new XPS 15 looks pretty good to me, but I'm wondering if there are better/cheaper alternatives.

[Pendragon]

@D2ultima livestreaming. I'm pretty sure the 6700HQ is not enough but I'm not entirely sure. 

[D2ultima]

8 hours ago, Mario- said:

Hey

 

I'm currently looking for a laptop that has enough power to livestream with 2 external USB3/Thunderbolt3 SDI capture cards (Epiphan AV.io / Blackmagic UltraStudio mini recorder).

I would stream with vMix at 720p or 1080p 30fps so it should have an i7 quad core and a somewhat decent GPU.

Streaming alone should be possible but do you think having slowmo replays (recording one camera with 60fps and then playing it back at 50% speed) is possible?

 

I'll also be using the laptop for university (Computer Science), so portability would be a plus.

 

The new XPS 15 looks pretty good to me, but I'm wondering if there are better/cheaper alternatives.

Budget? You're asking a lot from shitty mobile CPUs, to be honest with you. Are you streaming video games? Are you capturing a desktop running high graphics or a console? Are you aiming for good quality?

[Mario-]

10 hours ago, D2ultima said:

Are you streaming video games? Are you capturing a desktop running high graphics or a console? Are you aiming for good quality?

I'm capturing cameras, not games. This laptop will be used for streaming local sports events.

So 2 Panasonic AG-HPX250EJ with SDI coming to 2 AV.io SDI capture cards connected to my laptop with USB 3.0.

Quality, as I said, 720p or 1080p 30fps if it's possible with 5 to 10 MBit/s.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

Thinkpad FTW, what's the budget look like? You could go with like a W540, or even go a little older and get a cheap T430. You can upgrade the panel, and change HFS  &CPU to a i7-3840QM. You'd be looking about $500 total cost, and that i7 keeps up with current gen mobile cpus

[D2ultima]

2 hours ago, Mario- said:

I'm capturing cameras, not games. This laptop will be used for streaming local sports events.

So 2 Panasonic AG-HPX250EJ with SDI coming to 2 AV.io SDI capture cards connected to my laptop with USB 3.0.

Quality, as I said, 720p or 1080p 30fps if it's possible with 5 to 10 MBit/s.

If that's the case, you probably don't need any sort of serious compression on your system and most any quadcore i7 should work for you. I suggest getting a machine with a decent cooling system on the CPU regardless, though. But you don't need any extremely high end system.

 

Do note that quadcores have "Q" in the name for mobile. Chips like the i7-7500U are EXTREMELY ill-suited to the task, being low power (15W maximum, incl iGPU draw) and they're also only dual cores. The "i7" name there is very misleading, so make sure it has a Q in its name like i7-7700HQ.

[Mario-]

1 hour ago, D2ultima said:

most any quadcore i7 should work for you

Alright! I'll probably get something like the XPS 15 9560 then.

Thanks for your help!

 

2 hours ago, Icuw1pc said:

what's the budget look like?

1500€ - 2000€. Don't really want to go far above that. The Thinkpad W540 looks pretty good, because it has Thunderbolt as well, which would be great for the Blackmagic UltraStudio capture card. I'll look into that.

 

[Gung Pow Chicken]

15 minutes ago, Mario- said:

Alright! I'll probably get something like the XPS 15 9560 then.

Thanks for your help!

 

1500€ - 2000€. Don't really want to go far above that. The Thinkpad W540 looks pretty good, because it has Thunderbolt as well, which would be great for the Blackmagic UltraStudio capture card. I'll look into that.

 

I've got mine pretty specked out, 32gb ram, 1tb msata ssd, 2 1tb samsung 850 pro's I use it for my test server environment. Runs amazing and can do anything I throw at it with ease 

[ramo55]

2 hours ago, D2ultima said:

If that's the case, you probably don't need any sort of serious compression on your system and most any quadcore i7 should work for you. I suggest getting a machine with a decent cooling system on the CPU regardless, though. But you don't need any extremely high end system.

 

Do note that quadcores have "Q" in the name for mobile. Chips like the i7-7500U are EXTREMELY ill-suited to the task, being low power (15W maximum, incl iGPU draw) and they're also only dual cores. The "i7" name there is very misleading, so make sure it has a Q in its name like i7-7700HQ.

 

Do you have any recommendations for laptops with super good coolingon the cpu/gpu?

[D2ultima]

3 hours ago, ramo55 said:

Do you have any recommendations for laptops with super good coolingon the cpu/gpu?

The only laptops that have excessively good CPU cooling are Alienware 17 R4 after heavy modding (including bending the heatsink by hand), Clevo P750DM2, P775DM2/3, P870DM2/3 or P870KM1 (they need re-padding and delidding on the processor; the only places that sell them out of the box like this are Obsidian-PC in portugal and HIDevolution in the USA... HID is a prema partner so they are more preferable to buy from; they ship worldwide... hopefully Obsidian-PC will be one in the near future), MSI GT62VR & its whitebook variant the 16L13 (Eurocom's Tornado F5, or HIDevolution's 16L-G-1080 which I've embedded a link for since it's difficult to find; only sells with GTX 1080N) and MSI's GT73VR. The 16L13 also requires a delid of the processor which HID will do, so unless you're fine doing it on your own while buying it from Eurocom (which can sell it with a lesser GPU for money saving) you should get it from HID.

 

I'd say no other notebook has what I'd call impeccable CPU cooling in their notebooks, even with adjustments and liquid metal.

[ramo55]

On 15/02/2017 at 11:31 PM, D2ultima said:

The only laptops that have excessively good CPU cooling are Alienware 17 R4 after heavy modding (including bending the heatsink by hand), Clevo P750DM2, P775DM2/3, P870DM2/3 or P870KM1 (they need re-padding and delidding on the processor; the only places that sell them out of the box like this are Obsidian-PC in portugal and HIDevolution in the USA... HID is a prema partner so they are more preferable to buy from; they ship worldwide... hopefully Obsidian-PC will be one in the near future), MSI GT62VR & its whitebook variant the 16L13 (Eurocom's Tornado F5, or HIDevolution's 16L-G-1080 which I've embedded a link for since it's difficult to find; only sells with GTX 1080N) and MSI's GT73VR. The 16L13 also requires a delid of the processor which HID will do, so unless you're fine doing it on your own while buying it from Eurocom (which can sell it with a lesser GPU for money saving) you should get it from HID.

 

I'd say no other notebook has what I'd call impeccable CPU cooling in their notebooks, even with adjustments and liquid metal.

 

Ohh wow okay. Up until this point I had never heard before of de-lidding a cpu. But do you think it's really worth it? As far as I can see most laptops these days have okay cooling otherwise we would all be hearing about a melting cpu every now and then. I think my main concern would be with the way gpu's are cooled. Throughout the years I would always see gpu's melting and getting the soldering balls underneath completely melting away, so is that not the case anymore? Have gpu's stopped doing that now?

[Dackzy]

49 minutes ago, ramo55 said:

Ohh wow okay. Up until this point I had never heard before of de-lidding a cpu. But do you think it's really worth it? As far as I can see most laptops these days have okay cooling otherwise we would all be hearing about a melting cpu every now and then. 

3

You do know that thermal throttling is there to stop that from happening, right?

 

We don't hear about thermal throttling that much, because a lot of reviewers are idiots. The razer blade (all of them) thermal throttles, Acer nitro laptops thermal throttles, and most other Acer laptops, Macbooks thermal throttles, some HP laptops thermal throttles, some Dell laptops thermal throttles, some Lenovo laptops thermal throttles.

 

It is actually fairly hard to find a laptop that doesn't thermal throttles, unless you know quite a bit about laptops.

 

A intel CPU starts to thermal throttle when you hit the 85c mark

[D2ultima]

1 hour ago, ramo55 said:

Ohh wow okay. Up until this point I had never heard before of de-lidding a cpu. But do you think it's really worth it? As far as I can see most laptops these days have okay cooling otherwise we would all be hearing about a melting cpu every now and then. I think my main concern would be with the way gpu's are cooled. Throughout the years I would always see gpu's melting and getting the soldering balls underneath completely melting away, so is that not the case anymore? Have gpu's stopped doing that now?

The Clevo P7 and P8 series use desktop CPUs, which have an IHS (hence delid). The mobile intel chips lack an IHS; never is there a need to delid them.

 

Yes, it is necessary if you want performance. I delidded my CPU and there was a 20-25c temperature drop all round. It's necessary for these laptops, as intel's stock thermal paste between the IHS and bare die is too shitty to function without an overly compensating cooler. Most every aftermarket desktop cooler is overly compensating. Even the cheap Hyper 212 EVO that almost everyone purchases.

 

You won't see anything melting unless someone manually disabled all thermal protection in their system and then ramped it straight to 100%, and that requires some SERIOUS bios and video BIOS hacking.

 

24 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

some HP laptops thermal throttles

 

A intel CPU starts to thermal throttle when you hit the 85c mark

Speaking of which http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/another-funny-thing-in-the-bga-bucket.801659/ (I know you saw it, but hey time for LTT to see it)

 

95c-100c if left stock by intel. Anything throttling 85c-94c is manufacturer set and not within default spec.