Laptop for engineering student

[TehEpicCow]

Hello

 

I need a laptop for university. I also do some gaming and video editing on the side as well and need some suggestions

 

Min requirements:

- i7 6 core

- 1050 (max-q)

- under 6 pounds preferably

- under an inch thick

- enough io for an external mouse and keyboard

- 4 hours of battery life

- ddr4 ram

- 1080p screen

 

Bonus but not required

- warranty

- good asthetic

- easily upgradable (ie: don't need to take out entire innards to upgrade)

- not throttling too much

 

Budget: ~$2500 USD

 

Tldr: thin and light premium laptop

[TLCH723]

HP Omen 15 dc

[Streetguru]

5 minutes ago, TehEpicCow said:

 

You don't get to really upgrade modern laptops, at most you can replace the RAM/SSD

 

But do you need a quadro? Or are you not doing CAD?

[jklop0712]

Depends very much on the type of engineering. I'm in mechanical engineering and depending on the CAD software your school teaches it may or may not be important to get ISV hardware if you can afford it.

[TehEpicCow]

4 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

You don't get to really upgrade modern laptops, at most you can replace the RAM/SSD

 

But do you need a quadro? Or are you not doing CAD?

I was only really planning on upgrading ram and ssd as time goes by, I was thinking that a gtx graphics card would work better as I am doing software engineering but branching off towards artificial intelligence and its a better price to performance, from what I heard, is better with a gtx graphics card over a quadro in aspect to training ai

 

8 minutes ago, jklop0712 said:

Depends very much on the type of engineering. I'm in mechanical engineering and depending on the CAD software your school teaches it may or may not be important to get ISV hardware if you can afford it.

 

I probably should have mentioned at the top I am doing software engineering and probably branching off to artificial intelligence and you need a good gpu mainly for essentially teaching the ai in which it is much faster to do so on a gpu from what I had heard

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, TehEpicCow said:

 

Then GTX will be fine, but did you already have a desktop PC of some kind? An i7 + GTX 1050 is like $1000 at best

[jklop0712]

I think in your case then a gaming GPU should be fine. I would probably get something in the gaming laptop scene. Not very familiar with that space of laptops though. As to upgrading in the future, my strategy has always been to focus on non-upgradable specs when you initially buy because they are fairly permanent and making a mistake there usually results in buying a new computer to fix it whereas if you having good non-upgradable specs from the start you can work on the upgradable ones later and upgrading will cost you much less.

[TehEpicCow]

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Then GTX will be fine, but did you already have a desktop PC of some kind? An i7 + GTX 1050 is like $1000 at best

I don't really like having 2 separate systems. I much prefer just one

 

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, TehEpicCow said:

I don't really like having 2 separate systems. I much prefer just one

 

Might just be worth going all out then with the Ryzen 7 1700 laptop, though you aren't getting battery life with it.

https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-FreeSync-Display-Editing-GL702ZC/dp/B077GBJCNC

[TehEpicCow]

6 minutes ago, jklop0712 said:

I think in your case then a gaming GPU should be fine. I would probably get something in the gaming laptop scene. Not very familiar with that space of laptops though. As to upgrading in the future, my strategy has always been to focus on non-upgradable specs when you initially buy because they are fairly permanent and making a mistake there usually results in buying a new computer to fix it whereas if you having good non-upgradable specs from the start you can work on the upgradable ones later and upgrading will cost you much less.

Thank you, I will keep this in mind

[genexis_x]

46 minutes ago, TehEpicCow said:

Budget: ~$2500 USD

You're from US? For your requirements you don't need 2.5k

[TehEpicCow]

21 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Might just be worth going all out then with the Ryzen 7 1700 laptop, though you aren't getting battery life with it.

https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-FreeSync-Display-Editing-GL702ZC/dp/B077GBJCNC

I really need the battery life just because of my classes being back to back without outlets, and the hour breaks I did have I was going to use to charge it

 

4 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

You're from US? For your requirements you don't need 2.5k

I just had that much saved up after working more or less all summer so I figured that's how much I was going to spend on a laptop. How much do you think I should spend given my needs?

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, TehEpicCow said:

 

Then probably buy this HP Omen thing for under $1000 and toss in a 500GB SSD

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADVH6UV3135

Or look into a Ryzen 5 2500U laptop, not sure if their pricing is down or someone made a good one yet.

[genexis_x]

1 minute ago, TehEpicCow said:

I just had that much saved up after working more or less all summer so I figured that's how much I was going to spend on a laptop. How much do you think I should spend given my needs?

Even 1.5k USD is slightly overkill. Save some money for future.

Searching options for you, give me a few minutes

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Then probably buy this HP Omen thing for under $1000 and toss in a 500GB SSD

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADVH6UV3135

This is the old model which is very mediocre

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Even 1.5k USD is slightly overkill. Save some money for future.

Searching options for you, give me a few minutes

This is the old model which is very mediocre

I thought basically every laptop was terrible in some way? Picked it cuz it's cheap.

[genexis_x]

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

I thought basically every laptop was terrible in some way? Picked it cuz it's cheap.

Not all models. Last gen HP Omen has terrible quality and cooling

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Not all models. Last gen HP Omen has terrible quality and cooling

Then ASUS ROG Something with a 1050ti for $1200?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA0S7VW4752

Has anyone made a decent Ryzen APU laptop yet? like at around $600?

[TehEpicCow]

Also something I should mention, i intend on keeping this laptop for roughly 3-4 years and it needs to be less than 17 inches just because the dimensions of my bag limit me from using a 17 inch device, and I also need to carry the power cables as well. Also it needs to be an nvidea card because the api I'm using only supports cuda 

[genexis_x]

These are what I can find:

HP Omen 15 dc for $999 with 144Hz panel:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/507831/omen_15-dc0051nr_156_gaming_laptop_computer_-_black

 

Dell G5 - UHD 60Hz panel

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-g5-15-gaming/spd/g-series-15-5587-laptop/dncwfs626s

 

CyberpowerPC Tracer III Slim 15 / Eluktronics Mech-15 G2 - 144Hz IPS panel

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15-Slim-VR-300

http://www.eluktronics.com/MECH-15-G2

 

Asus GL703GM - needs repaste

 

CyberpowerPC Tracer III 15 / Eluktronics Mech-15 (72% NTSC) - 60Hz panel

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15-VR-300-with-Mechanical-KB

http://www.eluktronics.com/MECH-15/

3 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Then ASUS ROG Something with a 1050ti for $1200?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA0S7VW4752

Terrible cooling and OKish build quality. The newer GL503/703GE is much better

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

144Hz IPS panel

Seems like the easy choice

Wait how is the base model of that laptop only $1199 with an i7 and 1060?

[genexis_x]

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Wait how is the base model of that laptop only $1199 with an i7 and 1060?

Which model?

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, ZM Fong said:

Which model?

Tracer III 15 Slim VR 300

[genexis_x]

5 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Tracer III 15 Slim VR 300

It's a TongFang GK5CN6Z. New king of thin and light gaming laptop with good build quality and cooling. I'd tried it in hand a few days ago (Illegear Onyx). Sadly there's no TB3

[TehEpicCow]

11 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

These are what I can find:

HP Omen 15 dc for $999 with 144Hz panel:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/507831/omen_15-dc0051nr_156_gaming_laptop_computer_-_black

 

Dell G5 - UHD 60Hz panel

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-g5-15-gaming/spd/g-series-15-5587-laptop/dncwfs626s

 

CyberpowerPC Tracer III Slim 15 / Eluktronics Mech-15 G2 - 144Hz IPS panel

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15-Slim-VR-300

http://www.eluktronics.com/MECH-15-G2

 

Asus GL703GM - needs repaste

 

CyberpowerPC Tracer III 15 / Eluktronics Mech-15 (72% NTSC) - 60Hz panel

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15-VR-300-with-Mechanical-KB

http://www.eluktronics.com/MECH-15/

Terrible cooling and OKish build quality. The newer GL503/703GE is much better

 

I appreciate your help in showing me all these laptops but they all (with their power bricks) seem to just be too large volumewise, as well as most of them (judging by battery size) don't seem to have that 4 hours of moderate use (compiling & training)

[genexis_x]

34 minutes ago, TehEpicCow said:

I appreciate your help in showing me all these laptops but they all (with their power bricks) seem to just be too large volumewise, as well as most of them (judging by battery size) don't seem to have that 4 hours of moderate use (compiling & training)

Hmm what's your preferred volume? What do you mean by 4 hours of moderate use?