Perfect buy- laptop for rendering with CAD for uni?

[Holls]

1_What is your budget?
2k AU$

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Whatever's available but +16" would be awesome if possible

3_What screen resolution do you want?
Full HD

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable to be used at univeristy

5_How much battery life do you need?
+10hrs at the least

6_Do you want to play games with your laptop?
not really, maybe d3?

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop?
Rendering with CAD, Vue,

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
would appreciate 300GB and i'd be looking at an external drive to back up my work

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.
N/A

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?
min 3 years, preferably 5 to last my entire course.


11_What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD & bluray capabilities nice, but not pivotal.

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. trying to avoid dell or apple, bad experiences with many a dell and I dont want to have to familiarise myself with a new os with apple, would prefer Asus as they seem most reliable and value for money from mine and other's experiences

13_What country do you live in?
Australia

14_Please tell us any additional information if needed.
No preinstalled antivirus, would actually prefer to install os and further programs/applications from scratch



Thanks

 

[Maziar]

I'm afraid you are not going to find a 16" Full HD laptop with 10hrs of battery life.
Big displays and battery life don't play nice together, so you have to lower one of your expectations.

 

[Snipergod87]

I'm afraid you are not going to find a 16" Full HD laptop with 10hrs of battery life.
Big displays and battery life don't play nice together, so you have to lower one of your expectations.

Especially more so with powerful hardware to render graphics (CAD). You would need extra batteries to get 10+ hours.

 

[WR2]

I suppose we're all curious why you were thinking you'd get a 10hr laptop battery life out of a workstation class powerful laptop?

At the near top end of your price range. ASUS N73SV-FHD-TZ087V AU $1,699
Core i7-2630QM 2GHz Sandy Bridge CPU, 6GB RAM, 1.2TB HDD (2x640GB), Blu-Ray optical, 17.3" 1920x1080 LCD and GTX 540M video card.
Also you'd need to wait till near the end of the month for this new 'hot' laptop. You'd also be able to get a 2nd battery if you need extra time away from the wall socket.

 

[Snipergod87]

I suppose we're all curious why you were thinking you'd get a 10hr laptop battery life out of a workstation class powerful laptop?

At the near top end of your price range. ASUS N73SV-FHD-TZ087V AU $1,699
Core i7-2630QM 2GHz Sandy Bridge CPU, 6GB RAM, 1.2TB HDD (2x640GB), Blu-Ray optical, 17.3" 1920x1080 LCD and GTX 540M video card.
Also you'd need to wait till near the end of the month for this new 'hot' laptop. You'd also be able to get a 2nd battery if you need extra time away from the wall socket.

Under load that will probably last a little less than an hour (probably 45 minutes) with that 44wh battery, nornal usage maybe 1.5 I wouldnt expect anything more, maybe 2 hours under battery saver low backlight, wifi off.

 

[Holls]

I'm sorry i should have clarified,

I'd be rendering my classwork etc while the laptop were plugged into the wall, id want the battery life to last me while i was at uni for taking notes and doing research away from home without limiting myself.

I'll be honest and say that 10 hrs would be bloody convenient but probably unrealistic but thats why im posting here, im unsure as to whats available or not. - i got that figure from a laptop i was looking at on the asus website, where it claimed to last all that - but who knows...

ideally i'd be looking at making the purchase in either mid - late february

cheers

holls

 

[WR2]

I'll be honest and say that 10 hrs would be bloody convenient but probably unrealistic but thats why im posting here, im unsure as to whats available or not. - i got that figure from a laptop i was looking at on the asus website, where it claimed to last all that - but who knows..

There are sub-notebooks with ULV (ultra low voltage CPUs that do have much longer than average battery life.
Here is a review of one of those ULV notebooks: Asus 13.3" UL30A CULV Notebook Review The claimed 12hr battery life turned out to be quite a bit less. It goes without saying the lower power CPUs wouldn't perform anything like that desktop replacement Asus N73.

 

[Snipergod87]

There are sub-notebooks with ULV (ultra low voltage CPUs that do have much longer than average battery life.
Here is a review of one of those ULV notebooks: Asus 13.3" UL30A CULV Notebook Review The claimed 12hr battery life turned out to be quite a bit less. It goes without saying the lower power CPUs wouldn't perform anything like that desktop replacement Asus N73.

Agreed the ULV notebooks will not be able to render CAD or anything of the sort even when plugged in withoug bringing everything to a crawl and taking forever. I would recommend finding a laptop with switchable graphics so when you are on battery it uses the intergrated graphics card and when you need to under a heavier load it will use the dedicated graphics card, so you get the best of both worls (this only matters if your applications will use CUDA, and if you want to game otherwise an intergrated graphics card may suffice) The other main concern would be the processor, you would undoubty want a quad core mobile processor, and since you will be buying in feb there will be sandy bridge laptops available giving more performance at less power consumption. Even so a quad core will drain power alot faster than the ULV procesors. 10 hours is a bit unrealistic unless the battery is huge.

My laptop with a Core 2 Duo (25watt TDP chip) and a dedicated graphics card, idle (low work loads) gets about 3.5 hours with a 52Wh battery (which has degraded to 47Wh)

I am sure people here would be glad to help you find a laptop, but I would recommend until we see some sandy bridge laptops out beefore we make a good recommendation. It may be best to ask again in a week or two.

 

[Holls]

Best answer selected by Holls.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar