Off the shelf laptop for AC25 + Twinmotion

[GeorgieB82]

Hi all,

My beloved Goliath (custom built laptop) is starting to struggle with larger models in Archicad and sync'd working with Twinmotion. I am considering upgrading components but it may be better to get a replacement laptop.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

[Miha_M]

I think as long as you find any mobile workstation with a high clocked and as many as possible core processor, at least 64gb ram, a quadro or other cad type dedicated graphic card (although better gaming cards work just as good) and big enough ssd or m.2 drive it will work just fine. 

[Erwin Edel]

I don't have direct experience with their laptops, but HP Z range of workstations have been very reliable for us throughout many years. They also have mobile workstations in this range.

Upgrading  (meaningful) hardware is ussually not possible with laptop, since most of the chips are intergrated with notebook / laptop hardware. At least I ran into this issue when I was researching if I could replace GPU in a cheaper laptop when Nvidia dropped driver support for it.

[Lingwisyer]

If those specs in your signature are up to date, and your laptop is your main work machine, it will definitely be worth buying a whole new machine and being generous with the budget if it allows.

Pretty sure the CPU and RAM makes the most difference with increasing model size, which are both restricted by the sockets on your motherboard so any upgrades will be severely limited.

[Scott Boyd Turner]

I would also support Erwin on this I use a HP zbook studio as my workstation and am looking to update to a newer model as mine is about 5 years old now and is starting to show its age. It has been very reliable and the support from HP for their workstation products is excellent (24 hr on site repairs and regular driver etc updates)

[Nader Belal]

Hold my tea/coffee/what ever ...

What ever you PC form will be, it must:

1. Have 1 TB HDD, less than that it will run out of space and may suffer bottle necks (preferable 2, one for system OS, and the other as scratch disk and temporary storage of archive).
2. 32 GB RAM, for windows reasons.

And in case you are search for a new laptop:

1. Check this site reviews NotebookCheck (click on name), but only those reviews done by them, not by others.
2. Don't settle for a score less than 83-85%.
3. My personal taste is to go with 17" (more real estate and less strain on the eyes).
4. Screens must have a matt surface (less strain on the eyes from reflective surfaces).
5. Colour accuracy must not be lower than 72% of NTSC space.
6. Refresh rate 60% or above (less strain on the eyes)
7. Any screen that is higher than 1400px is an over kill for any laptop screen size, and above all, money wasting.

[Miha_M]

As for the HDD I would also suggest an SSD or M.2 for everything OS and software related and another classical spinning HDD for data. If you have enough upload bandwidth and a good cloud backup set up for data, you could go without the second drive. But I would still prefer the second data HDD AND cloud backup.

[Nader Belal]

As @Miha_M  said, a second HDD, isn’t as important as primary HDD, but It’s advisable to have the secondary HDD, just in case the primary suffers a problem so you would not lose all your work.

@Miha_M I will reserve cloud backups and storage only for work exchange, and for permanent storage I would go with a NAS, with 2 HDD minimum

[Karl Ottenstein]

@GeorgieB82  I would add that any laptop with a good enough graphics adapter for TwinMotion should have a robust cooling system, which may well increase the cost if it uses decent heat sinks and multiple fans.  A laptop stand that encourages good ventilation is worthwhile (and adjustable metal stands that give a better typing angle and raise the monitor are cheap).  The fans will blast the entire time you're in Twinmotion.

[GeorgieB82]

Thank you all.

I have spoken to the company that built my laptop and I can increase the RAM from 16Gb to 64Gb and add a second SSD but other than that there isn't much I can do. I think this would be enough though as it does seem to be the Memory that hits 100% when working hard not the CPU or GPU.

As for cooling I use a twin fan laptop riser and set the laptop fans to max when doing heavy processing and the temperature stays low.