Need advice for a new laptop!

[pistoIs]

TL;DR Help me find a good modeling/rendering/CAD laptop UNDER $1000.

 

Hey guys!

 

I'm looking for the best option I could buy. I'm an architect in search of the best laptop I could get to do rendering/modeling in CAD/Modeling software (3DS, Maya, Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp + V-Ray and even Unreal Engine) for a budget of STRICTLY UNDER $1000. To give you better context, I already have a pretty capable PC I built myself at home but I need to be able to do all this things (atleast to a degree) on the move, so I don't need to do everything at home.

 

All of your opinions will be considered and will definitely help me find the option that suits me the best as I haven't been following the laptop market ever since I built my PC.

Thanks in advance.

[ErrystioT]

Acer Predator Helios 300? The 15.6" version goes for $999 on Amazon and packs a i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD. No HDD here but it can be installed separately if you have a spare internal 2.5" HDD. Though if you don't have a spare, a 1TB 7200rpm sets you an additional $60 ish. Which slightly goes above $1000. Regardless though, this is one of the few laptops that's just below $1000 with a GTX 1060, a heck of a deal.

 

There's another model that's recently released, and that's the new Dell Inspiron 7577, for about the same price as Helios 300, you get i5-7300HQ, GTX 1060 6GB (Max-Q Design), 8GB DDR4 and 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD (I think it's 5400rpm) combo. The main advantage here over the Helios 300, is the ThunderBolt 3 support with full 4 PCIe lanes (40Gbps theoretical speed) which can be really useful if you're into eGPU.

[pistoIs]

2 minutes ago, ErrystioT said:

Acer Predator Helios 300? The 15.6" version goes for $999 on Amazon and packs a i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD. No HDD here but it can be installed separately if you have a spare internal 2.5" HDD. Though if you don't have a spare, a 1TB 7200rpm sets you an additional $60 ish. Which slightly goes above $1000. Regardless though, this is one of the few laptops that's just below $1000 with a GTX 1060, a heck of a deal.

 

There's another model that's recently released, and that's the new Dell Inspiron 7577, for about the same price as Helios 300, you get i5-7300HQ, GTX 1060 6GB (Max-Q Design), 8GB DDR4 and 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD (I think it's 5400rpm) combo. The main advantage here over the Helios 300, is the ThunderBolt 3 support with full 4 PCIe lanes (40Gbps theoretical speed) which can be really useful if you're into eGPU.

Although the CPU is better on the Predator, Thunderbolt 3 is a pretty good thing going for the Dell. I'm going to check the two of them, thanks a lot!

[ErrystioT]

3 minutes ago, pistoIs said:

Although the CPU is better on the Predator, Thunderbolt 3 is a pretty good thing going for the Dell. I'm going to check the two of them, thanks a lot!

An additional note, the Max-Q version of GTX 1060 have slight performance difference (at around 10% below normal version) due to lower clocks, but more or less it's pretty much like a standard GTX 1060 on a laptop. Glad to help

[genexis_x]

On 05/12/2017 at 8:32 AM, ErrystioT said:

An additional note, the Max-Q version of GTX 1060 have slight performance difference (at around 10% below normal version) due to lower clocks, but more or less it's pretty much like a standard GTX 1060 on a laptop. Glad to help

Dell Inspiron 7000 Gaming series laptops have excellent cooling, 1060 Max-Q can be tuned to match a regular laptop 1060