I’m looking to future proof my setup. I’ve just been offered essentially my dream job as a systems and robotics engineer for use with kuka robots with the idea of scaling the company I work for.
I’m looking at designing grasshopper interfaces as well as heavy 3d modelling with rhino 8 and I use twinmotion for all my rendering.
I would like a 16” screen with 64+gb of ram 1 or 2tb NVME and an Nvidia 5090 RTX GPU. Storage is not a huge factor but at least 1tb SSD would be good.
is there anything else I should look for in a machine so that I don’t need an upgrade for the next 3-5 years preferably. price is not a huge issue but I would obviously prefer to be somewhat frugal, so essentially I’d like something mid to high range in price that I can upgrade periodically.
I know there are a lot if threads asking this but I feel like they are all on the budget side of things.
I have an ultimate luggable laptop from seven years ago that still does the job. MSI Titan series is still their high end with 5090s. They are workhorses. 16” screen in my opinion is too small for work, 18.4 screen was perfect.
For work it is no compromise. For portability, it’s big, heavy and never had battery life that amounted to anything and got lots of looks at the airport x-ray machine.
running MSI Creator 17 B11UH-442 here since late ‘21
added another 32GB myself and a 2nd ssd.
I like the machine, slim and powerful, I needed lots of Vram so I got the top of the line GPU with 16GB then.
However it is very tricky to service the laptop because of the way it is built. You have to comfortable with taking things completely apart (eg. Ram upgrade). Not sure how MSI machines are built right now, but I’d assume not too much has changed.
things to consider:
1
the fans will cause problems at some point (like in any laptop) collecting dust and getting noisy
Make sure you are comfortable with replacing or servicing these.
2
check how to add remove components like RAM, SSD make sure you can handle the process.
3
if you do extended 100% CPU / GPU stuff a big workstation-laptop with more capable cooling might be better than a modern “slim” design.
No one can tell you what is “best” without understanding your criteria for “best”. I would advise you to reflect on what you mean by that: write extensive lists of criteria, weight them for importance to you and go from there. I started the process of looking for a new laptop and eventually ended up buying one with a very different spec to what I had initially thought, largely because as I considered classes of candidate machines I recognised that while they met my ostensible criteria, they needed to do things I hadn’t properly considered. My criteria evolved.
You don’t say whether you will have access to a decent desktop as well. I do all the heavy hitting stuff on a desktop and my laptop is for mobility or more casual work (in front of the television, say) so I don’t need a top end mobile workstation.
Whether you have a desktop, or just a laptop, you are going to want a lot of screen space, so budget for a big hi-res monitor. Doing that stuff on a 16" screen will drive you crazy and you’ll be less productive and make more mistakes. (Although you will always want more screen space: over the years I’ve gone from a state of the art 24" 1920 monitor, to two, then a 32" 4K, then added a portrait mode side screen. Now I’m thinking two 28" 4K screens so I can see the full Rhino desktop at the same time as the full Grasshopper canvas.)
You don’t mention other applications. I do a lot of screen grabs for documentation so I find a stylus and touch screen for annotation helpful. Also for photoshop, for which accurate colour gamut is important too.
Just some ideas of things you might consider. Good luck with the quest - and the new job.
going a bit OT, but I can relate to your ‘screen journey’
Using my laptop as desktop replacement with two LG Dual-Up 27,6” (2.560 x 2.880) over thunderbolt in landscape side by side, Laptop screen remains off.
love it, as I find usual 16:9 format too wide for dual monitor setup and this gives me a 5760x2560 desktop in a very ergonomic field of view. (less neck movement)
Had two of the funny square Eizo EV2730Q (1920x1920) before that and since I find more square screens in a multi monitor setup to be superior
