Laptop for Engineering Degree: portable, gaming, Matlab, office work etc.

[captaindyson]

Hello to the TH forum members!

in October I will be off to university to study engineering and as such I need to find a laptop that will serve my needs. Unfortunately despite my average knowledge in gaming desktops, I know little about the ability of laptop parts in comparison, nor about the recommended parts for the software I will be using. I have filled in the FAQ list to help:

1. What is your budget?
£1000 including windows OS and office software, although there is a little leeway in this, but not much.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
13"-15" it just needs to be portable with good battery life.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
I don't mind but the better it is the happier I am!

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable.

5. How much battery life do you need?
3 hrs or more, as I say this is for uni.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Yes, mainly FPS games like BF3, BF4 when it is out, call of duty series, and it does not have to be ultra settings so long as it looks good (medium?) and is still fun to play and will be able to play games 3-4 years down the line (understandably on low settings.)

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Plenty of office work, so word docs and internet usage, also will be using Matlab software and possibly some 3D CAD software a year or 2 down the line.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Most of my files will be held on external storage, so as long as it can hold the software then it is OK, so i am guessing a 180GB SSD would be the minimum. (Note: I would like an SSD if possible due to speed improvements and reduced battery drain although this is not critical)

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
No specific sites, just so long as they are UK retailers.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I want it to last 4 years and still be running ok at the end of it.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I am not bothered by this although at least a DVD drive would be nice if it is possible.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I have no brand preference so long as it all works well and has good support if it does not.

13. What country do you live in?
England

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I can't think of much else but feel free to ask me anything you need to know.

Kind Regards
Captain Dyson

 

[Deus Gladiorum]

That's quite the criteria, and I think I can meet all of that for you except for that SSD, unfortunately. But here it is:

http/www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-v3-772g-17-3-laptop-champagne-gold-21414718-pdt.html

This is actually a pretty ridiculous laptop. The i7-4702mq is basically as fast as laptop CPUs come. They're absolutely fantastic and it slightly irks me that they're better than my desktop AMD CPU... >.>
But moving on from that, it'll handle any application you throw at it quickly and efficiently regardless of what it is.

The GPU is a GT 750m, which is currently Nvidia's best medium-end laptop GPU. Medium end may sound like a bit of a turn off, but at moderate resolution you'll still handle BF3 at and near 60 fps on high, even with 64 man servers. also it's great for any 3D rendering you may decide to do.

The RAM is 12 GB because... why not I guess?

The resolution is both a pro and a con for this laptop though. It's 1920x1080 at 15.6". The good news is, that's some ridiculous PPI levels meaning you probably won't have to turn on anti-aliasing for any game since you'll likely have very little to no aliasing from the start. The con to this is that that GPU won't really handle 1920x1080 for every game. I recommend for newer games you put it on something like 1366x768 for games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Battlefield 4 (once it comes out), etc if you want to go for 60 fps. However, if you can manage with 30 fps, this guy is running Battlfield 3 beyond 30 fps with the same GPU as your and a worse CPU on 1080p at Ultra settings:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph297fr3DYQ

So overall it's a great buy. It doesn't include Microsoft Office but there are way less expensive alternatives in the first place, plus you get £100 cashback for this thing anyway, so the £200 you'd have in total after buying this and claiming your cashback should be more than enough to afford that rip off software.

Speaking of software, this thing clearly comes equipped with a hell of a lot of bloatware. I recommend you do a clean install for it before you use it if you know how to do so. If you need to replace your anti-virus afterward, I personally use "avast!" and it's better than McAfee in my opinion. Plus I think it's less of a system hog.

 

[captaindyson]

That's quite the criteria, and I think I can meet all of that for you except for that SSD, unfortunately. But here it is:

http/www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-v3-772g-17-3-laptop-champagne-gold-21414718-pdt.html

This is actually a pretty ridiculous laptop. The i7-4702mq is basically as fast as laptop CPUs come. They're absolutely fantastic and it slightly irks me that they're better than my desktop AMD CPU... >.>
But moving on from that, it'll handle any application you throw at it quickly and efficiently regardless of what it is.

The GPU is a GT 750m, which is currently Nvidia's best medium-end laptop GPU. Medium end may sound like a bit of a turn off, but at moderate resolution you'll still handle BF3 at and near 60 fps on high, even with 64 man servers. also it's great for any 3D rendering you may decide to do.

The RAM is 12 GB because... why not I guess?

The resolution is both a pro and a con for this laptop though. It's 1920x1080 at 15.6". The good news is, that's some ridiculous PPI levels meaning you probably won't have to turn on anti-aliasing for any game since you'll likely have very little to no aliasing from the start. The con to this is that that GPU won't really handle 1920x1080 for every game. I recommend for newer games you put it on something like 1366x768 for games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Battlefield 4 (once it comes out), etc if you want to go for 60 fps. However, if you can manage with 30 fps, this guy is running Battlfield 3 beyond 30 fps with the same GPU as your and a worse CPU on 1080p at Ultra settings:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph297fr3DYQ

So overall it's a great buy. It doesn't include Microsoft Office but there are way less expensive alternatives in the first place, plus you get £100 cashback for this thing anyway, so the £200 you'd have in total after buying this and claiming your cashback should be more than enough to afford that rip off software.

Speaking of software, this thing clearly comes equipped with a hell of a lot of bloatware. I recommend you do a clean install for it before you use it if you know how to do so. If you need to replace your anti-virus afterward, I personally use "avast!" and it's better than McAfee in my opinion. Plus I think it's less of a system hog.

Thank you for your advice, especially on antivirus etc. but the laptop you have suggested is a 17" model, and this is too large for my needs, i noticed the video you posted was played on lenovo Y500 (Y510P being this years model) how does this compare? and i noticed that Clevo sell a W230st bare bones which apperes to have potential, but i cannot find a UK distributor for either of them.

Does anybody know of a uk distributor for these or of a laptop that fits my needs that I can attain in the uk?

Thanks again
Captain Dyson

 

[Deus Gladiorum]

That's quite the criteria, and I think I can meet all of that for you except for that SSD, unfortunately. But here it is:

http/www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-v3-772g-17-3-laptop-champagne-gold-21414718-pdt.html

This is actually a pretty ridiculous laptop. The i7-4702mq is basically as fast as laptop CPUs come. They're absolutely fantastic and it slightly irks me that they're better than my desktop AMD CPU... >.>
But moving on from that, it'll handle any application you throw at it quickly and efficiently regardless of what it is.

The GPU is a GT 750m, which is currently Nvidia's best medium-end laptop GPU. Medium end may sound like a bit of a turn off, but at moderate resolution you'll still handle BF3 at and near 60 fps on high, even with 64 man servers. also it's great for any 3D rendering you may decide to do.

The RAM is 12 GB because... why not I guess?

The resolution is both a pro and a con for this laptop though. It's 1920x1080 at 15.6". The good news is, that's some ridiculous PPI levels meaning you probably won't have to turn on anti-aliasing for any game since you'll likely have very little to no aliasing from the start. The con to this is that that GPU won't really handle 1920x1080 for every game. I recommend for newer games you put it on something like 1366x768 for games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Battlefield 4 (once it comes out), etc if you want to go for 60 fps. However, if you can manage with 30 fps, this guy is running Battlfield 3 beyond 30 fps with the same GPU as your and a worse CPU on 1080p at Ultra settings:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph297fr3DYQ

So overall it's a great buy. It doesn't include Microsoft Office but there are way less expensive alternatives in the first place, plus you get £100 cashback for this thing anyway, so the £200 you'd have in total after buying this and claiming your cashback should be more than enough to afford that rip off software.

Speaking of software, this thing clearly comes equipped with a hell of a lot of bloatware. I recommend you do a clean install for it before you use it if you know how to do so. If you need to replace your anti-virus afterward, I personally use "avast!" and it's better than McAfee in my opinion. Plus I think it's less of a system hog.

Thank you for your advice, especially on antivirus etc. but the laptop you have suggested is a 17" model, and this is too large for my needs, i noticed the video you posted was played on lenovo Y500 (Y510P being this years model) how does this compare? and i noticed that Clevo sell a W230st bare bones which apperes to have potential, but i cannot find a UK distributor for either of them.

Does anybody know of a uk distributor for these or of a laptop that fits my needs that I can attain in the uk?

Thanks again
Captain Dyson

The y510p is just as good a laptop, and in a couple respects even better (marginally better processor, 24 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD). The same website listed it for the same price as the one I showed you but it was out of stock. There's a slightly different y510p on lenovo's site here:

http/shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y510p/#customize

But the price is £999 and I felt that may have been too close to the end of your budget range. It's an 8 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD, an insignificantly better GPU and CPU, and 16 GB of RAM for no reasonable explanation.