Hi! Which one would you recommend for an Architecture student?

marksubak said:

batmalin said:

I would choose the second one form this list.

Hi! Can you teach me how to do that benchmarking thing? I also want to see the benchmarks of the other laptops. Thanks

"marksubak" firstly, you don’t need to overspend like $3000+ to have a laptop capable of handling or competing with every model you’ll see at work or at school, you’ll be able to land a capable and portable machine and avoid the three most common mistakes architects and students make when shopping for laptops:

• Buying the wrong graphics card: this depends on additional plug-ins,software and the size of your projects.
• Not having enough RAM.
• Buying an awful display: A low resolution display won’t give you enough workspace and a very high resolution display will not scale up with your software: AutoDesk, 3DS Max, Maya, etc.

If you have deep pocket, you’re better off investing on portable and well-designed laptop rather than power you will never put to full use. This applies to some professional architects too. This will make your laptop last you several years and more pleasant to work with. For architecture (which I’ve done for 20 years) the most important criteria(s) are:  

1. GPU - 1050/1050Ti for students is plenty. A 1060GTX is going to be more useful for professional architects who are dealing with huge projects. A  Quadro/FirePro only for those dealing with special plug-ins in Revit/3DS Max.
2. RAM - 8GB RAM for students. 16-32GB for Architects.
3. CPU - +4GHz for drafting or drawing. Quad Core for rendering, unless rendering back home or using the cloud. If rendering on your laptop, make sure you have at least a 6-8 core CPU. Ex: Core i7-9750H/AMD Ryzen 7.
4. Display - 15” full HD. 17” would be better but that means more weight to carry. Only advisable for pro architects unless they are moving from site to conferences all the time. 4k is no longer something to avoid but actually recommended.
5. Storage - 256GB SSD for students is enough. 512GB or 256GB + 1TB HDD for Architects. x2 PCIe NVMe SSDs , one used for windows, the other for Arc software is actually the best combo.
6. Weight - The most ideal weight for anyone on the move would ~3lb. unfortunately laptops with dedicated graphics card & fast CPUs will go over that (4-7lb).