Hi All,
I am looking for advice, We are a boatbuilding company, and currently use a desktop pc with Rhino 3D for our vessels. These vessels are 20m long, with 16,000 surfaces. Getting into keyshot rendering. I need a laptop that can produce decent renders and isn’t glitchy when operating within the workspace. I have in the past brought and under spec’d system and it bit me a year later.
Our IT guys is specifying this laptop : New DELL MOBILE PRECISION 3580 . I feel might be a bit under spec’d.
I want to run at least 2 monitors but when not using an external monitor would the 15" screen be enough. I was thinking a safe bet would be a dell xps17 or Precision 7680.
Feed back appreciated.
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Hello,
I am not gonna give you very big answer, I would not buy Dell for rendering and reason is ratio between speed/price/value. Now different story is if you can go with Dell Alienware. I know lot of companies prefer building Dell computers. But they are quite expensive and basically any other gaming laptop wipe floor with them.
I dont know which version of Dell 3580 to work with, so if I am going to look at the basic model with the same price you got option like this.
MSI Vector 16 HX A13VHG-458X - This machine is like 2300euro, it got bigger screen and much more better GPU for rendering.
Lenovo Legion Pro 7 16IRX9H
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 G634JY-NEBULA034W
There is plenty option if you are not gonna consider Dell computers and also RTX A graphic cards which are absolutely overpriced in my opinion. The whole lineup of Dell Precision are quite weird 
Big price and there is literally nothing what is attractive for me as creative person.
Hi @rikki.mcguire,
I’m with Texture Man, you basically want a gaming laptop for 3D/render work these days. On the other hand, if mobility is not that needed I wouldn’t buy a laptop but a gamer desktop.
Desktops always have more speed for same value and it’s also a lot easier to change some hardware. Also, most gaming laptops are around 3.5kg which is not a real pleasant weight to carry around a long time.
And if you decided for laptop/desktop, just make sure a nice GPU is really something you would not regret since it saves a lot of time compared to renders using CPU. No need to a pro series A500 but just go for the best Nvidia RTX card which fits the budget.
@harry.wills bought an Alienware laptop with amazing specs and I think he’s still happy with it although it’s heavy. Still, there are cheaper solutions but think his company also wanted to order from Dell.
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Yes Oscar advised me on a laptop for work, my work like to use Dell products specifically.
I went with something like this:
It’s heavy and is required to be plugged in for anything longer than 20 mins, but I love it. I work with Solidworks and Keyshot and have 0 complaints.
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I agree with @TextureMan and @oscar.rottink. I am using Raider GE78HX 13VI with RTX 4090. It is similar to your IT suggested.
(https://www.msi.com/Laptop/Raider-GE78-HX-13VX/Specification)
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Raider-240Hz-Gaming-Laptop/dp/B0BT2ZHDNV?th=1
It is heavy and they don’t mention about it, but power supply is almost 1,3 kg. If you need to carry it every day, you should consider that. And a lot of led lighting (which I don’t like shiny things so much). I use Fusion 360, Photoshop, CorelDraw, AutoCAD, 3Ds Max. Sometimes 2-3 of them at once but I don’t get any big performans issues. Although I am using Win10 Pro (originally Win 11 Pro) and I believe I couldn’t install drivers correctly, so I don’t get full potential of laptop. Still, I have a good performans with it. I may try to switch to Win 11 Pro.
It sounds like to me, your IT specialist recommended a good laptop.