Laptop

[yanis lachat]

Hello everyone,

I will have the opportunity to work remotly and I was wondering...

Is it possible to work and render large projects on a laptop?

if yes, what minimum configuration would I need??

Thanks for your help

 

yan

 

[Scott Schroeder]

The basic answer to your question is yes, but the real answer is closer to maybe or no. The biggest reason that the answer would be no is that laptops have several massive disadvantages that outweigh the advantage of it being lightweight and portable.

The first is that due it the laptop being lightweight and portable, heat becomes an issue quickly. When rendering, components get hotter faster, stay hotter longer, are harder to cool, and can potentially wear out faster. Second is replacing components if they fail, is a lot harder on a laptop. Third is that cost for a laptop compared to a same spec desktop is a pretty decent difference. A decent rendering laptop could set you back $2-3,000 easily when you could build a same spec'd machine for half of that. And lastly, the fourth disadvantage is performance of those laptop components compared to their desktop twins. We have laptops at work that have RTX 2080 MaxQ graphic cards, but compared to desktop RTX cards they perform just above the entry level RTX 2060 desktop version. If you compare 2080's the RTX 2080 desktop is about 40-50% faster than the 2080 MaxQ laptop version. 

Now, if you are going to be working remote AND traveling a lot, then a laptop is a great choice. If you are going to work remote, but not travel and work from the same location 90% or more of the time, the a traditional desktop is probably the better choice in my opinion. I have a real love/hate complicated relationship with my laptop at work.

[yanis lachat]

Thanks VelvetElvis,

I will be working in the same location most of the time but in other countries. So I need to transport my pc with me. Is it possible to configure enough power in a reasonnably

small desktop pc? small enought to be transportable?

Thanks again for your help

[Scott Schroeder]

Yeah, you can configure a laptop to suite your needs. It just just what your budget is and can that match the reality of what high performance and mobile friendly laptops cost. This is the series that I'm on right now, https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GS65-Stealth-9SX

For day-to-day modeling tasks and preview rendering, the laptop is great. It's pretty good for Unreal, Twinmotion, Lumion as well. However, the sustained use in being in Unreal all day or rendering all day, can take a toll on performance as the laptop tries to keep itself cool. The previous generation of laptop my team 4 of was on, we had 3 of the laptops fail within a year due to swelling batteries or fan bearings going out. The newer series we are on, we've been pretty stable though and have had minimal issues. So like all tech, it may be hit and miss with success.

If you need to move around a lot, then I would absolutely go with a laptop over lugging around a PC everywhere. Even a small form PC case would still probably not hold up well to constant travel, whereas a laptop will. However, pay for extra performance in that laptop. Don't cut corners or budgets as those will cost you work time in problems that arise with less than ideal systems/components.

[yanis lachat]

Thanks VelvetElvis

 

[Jose Negrete]

To add to what VelvetElvis said, I worked mainly on a MSI GS75 for the majority of last year. Static renderings in vray/corona/lumion, UE4 w/ gpu light baking and animation rendered in lumion. The laptop was able to do all of the work but I had the fans on max speed most days and eventually one of them failed and I switched back to a desktop. 

[Francisco Penaloza]

I would be careful using MSI, in our experience, ( ovev 100 machines) most of them fail before the year, as @VelvetElvis mentioned swollen battery is a main issue, same for the thin Dell workstations Laptops. The heat makes the CPU or GPU to throttle losing performance. I have a Razer with a Quadro 5000, it is all aluminum, and I can't touch the keyboard when I am rendering or doing VR , it get dangerous hot, I use a extra pad with fans to keep everything reasonable hot, but as mentioned there is no comparison with desktop.  There are small desktop computer, but the smaller you get the same issue apply, it is just physics.  Now moving around a desktop may damage the internal because they are not designed to be moving around.  If you need a reliable machine for a couple of years I would recommend the ugly one that you won't want at the beginning

Lenovo, Dell or HP do thick workstation, with Quadros video cards, plenty of memory and a big kick to your pocket , but if you need something reliable, that's the way to go.

I would love to recommend Razers, but honestly I never had a laptop that get so hot, I could burn my legs if I place it in his lap, I hope the new models fix that, but newer powerful CPU and GPU will generate more heat and the thinned the laptop less space for fans and air circulation.

Also if you will be on the move maybe you should look in to using cloud rendering, Chaos cloud work seamlessly with 3D Max and V Ray, other could render services have good plugin for most 3D software, I would recommend that rather than keeping your laptop crunching overnight an image or animation. That's the way it work for me, since work from home fun started

 

 

[yanis lachat]

 

What do you think about this one?

https://dreview.tech/asus-rog-zephyrus-duo-15-se-most-powerful-laptop/

[Scott Schroeder]

7 hours ago, yanis lachat said:

 

What do you think about this one?

https://dreview.tech/asus-rog-zephyrus-duo-15-se-most-powerful-laptop/

On paper it looks like a great laptop. Though, you'll want to make sure you upgrade the RAM to something more than 16. You'll either want the max you can put in there or at least 32 gigs. I would look for at least one other review that looks at thermal and cooling performance though.

[James Vella]

The Zephyrus Duo is a fantastic machine, I would have purchased it since its slightly faster than the Asus Rog Strix I just purchased (by a small margin), but I wasn't keen on the duel screen vs battery life. 

Im also working remotely in different locations every day and happy with the Rog Strix so far (G733QS). The 3080 is a great card and the CPU is just blazing fast. 

I also recommend what @VelvetElvis said about the ram, I instantly put this up to 64GB haven't run into any issues with larger scenes yet. I also got both the CPU and GPU repasted (in hindsight I should have left the CPU it already had liquid metal). Thermals are good, under full load the GPU hits about 80degrees and the CPU goes up about 90degrees. I wasn't expecting that after repasting but apparently those AMD CPUs burn hot and safely up to 100 degrees. 

[albert b]

First post in a long time - I have experience with using mobile workstations / desktop replacements. Just last year I purchased an EON15-x laptop from Origin PC. Eluktronics is another good vendor, stupid name, good builds. Highly recommend both vendors.

With my Origin Laptop I'm able to complete relatively large scenes & the cooling solution is robust, display has good color / no glare...Only drawback is power brick needs to be plugged in if you are actually doing any work, especially rendering.