I use everyday, a HP ZBook Fury G8 mobile workstation. with a Nvidia RTX A5000 16 GB graphics card and a Xeon processor. Its a little bigger than I would like when carrying it around but its got a large screen that is useable when its not connected to two monitors. It handles everything from large assemblies to complex molds. It even has no problems with those molds in the large assemblies.
I see some of the answer suggesting pretty beefy machines. Is an i9 and 16GB VRAM GPU really necessary for Rhino?
AFAIK Rhino and Grasshopper are mostly single threaded, and the OP seems to not want to render on this machine. Wouldnāt a lighter, more reasonable specd laptop be preferred?
Iāve wandered for a while what specs would make the best ābang for buckā solution, it seems that information on the topic is quite sparse and shallow.
Although I particularly use a laptop with an i9 and RTX 4080, I feel like I would be better served by something lighter, more battery efficient, and cooler/quieter. Itās really annoying having to carry a 1kg charging brick along my 3kg laptop. I say that because at work we have some older PCs (Ryzen 5 3600X + GTX 1650) and, honestly, itās fine.
For 1500ā¬ Iād look for a Lenovo Legion Slim, or similar, upgrade the RAM to 32 or 64 GB and thatās it. Or a Macbook, if one prefers it, some of my colleagues use them and they seem great as well.
Iād love to hear more insights into the communityās choices though.
I have been using BOXX machines forever but their recent pricing has gone full mental..
My last two machines are from titan computing and they have been very good. Their customer service is also pretty impressive (iām picky about customer service for some reasonā¦)
They actually understand what 3d modeling and rendering are (as did Boxx, unlike Dell) and a human can help you tailor the machine as needed.
Personally, I prefer the pc over the mac as raytrace rendering performance on the mac is still quite a ways behind the PC, and I personally do a lot of rendering.
(my 6 year old titan/ quadro 5000 is still 2 to 4x or more faster than my newer M class MBP for the same scene)
If you do not do a lot of raytracing, the actual on screen graphics performance of the mac is quite impressive, the display is arguably prettier than the pc and the AA is better to my eye on the mac.
It only falls behind when raytracing enters the chat.
The UI for mac and pc is largely unified now, and will continue to migrate more closely together as both platforms develop into the future.
There is an old race car saying, āspeed costs moneyā¦ how fast do you want to go?ā
Same mentality applies to computers IMO.
In my opinion, yes. Were I work every one gets a ZBook that is an engineer. Everyone else gets something that can just get onto the internet and run excel and word. Ive had lesser laptops and there is no such thing as to much horse power when it comes to 3d modeling
Definitely, but sometimes the race is a rally, and an F1 car is not suitable for that.
For example, I could run VRay GPU with a cheap NVIDIA, but canāt at all with any AMD.
I was wandering how one could reliably assess the performance of each computer component in Rhino/Grasshopper, and, given a limited budget, where the money would be better spent. Although itād be very dependant on the use case, I guessā¦
Those zbooks seem to be the go to cad laptop for engineering software like solidworks
I think the ones at campus had i7 ultra and 32gb ram so they are not that weak performance wise
Thanks Iāll check them out then
I think its hard to get a decent machine for this budget. Not to mention other disadvantages like heating and weight.
An alternative is using a medium spec laptop and use a remote desktop connection to a Desktop PC. And only use it if the computational power is really required. 10+ years ago, we could also run Rhino and Grasshopper on laptops. And nowadays Iām using Remote machines all the time.
Two years ago, I bought myself a (then brand new) M2 MacBook Air with 8Gb of RAM. I needed a machine quickly and wasnāt expecting to be doing any CAD work on it. As my first MacBook, I was very impressed with it. Lovely machine
In the present day, I find myself with slight buyers remorse, wishing Iād spent that extra money for 16Gb of RAM. As what do you know, here I am using Rhino on it today. It handles smaller files perfectly well, but I tried opening up a model around 150Mb in size and it began to sweat. I dare not push my luck with anything heavier
Moral of the story, I can certainly vouch for MacBooks, though 16Gb at minimum, and maybe consider a Pro as opposed to Air - though this is hardly a budget option
Going further back, at a previous job of mine, we were all using HP laptops - no desktops whatsoever. Not especially chunky ones either, though I donāt recall the model. Consider checking HP out
I disagree with the notion that one should avoid laptops as CAD machines at all costs. The machines we used were perfectly adequate for our needs, ran Rhino effortlessly and was up to the task of FEA with SolidWorks simulation too
Ironically we didnāt exactly need laptops as I was never on the move with that particular job, so a desktop would have been preferred - my point is just that laptops arenāt the severe compromise they used to be
there is a key phrase you need to look for when buying a ālaptopā
āmobile workstationā is what you should search for. These typically have standalone graphics cards that can handle Rhino. ālaptopsā often have only intel or amd on board graphics or even worse a snapdragon architecture all which are not good for rhino.
v9 will be more tolerant of parallels, snapdragon, intel and amd on board, etc as it will be D3d instead of open gl as default. but for now, you want a really dedicated graphics card with 4gb vram minimum for each monitor you want to connect.
see this thread-
From the OPās requirements:
How many of the comments above assume rendering will be important? Many of the comments and recommendations appear to be based on what is needed for extensive rendering, which may be the experience base of many participants on this forum.
let me clarify a bit here:
i am on the road for 3d print technician orientation towards cad constructor
rhino is needed because it can be used for commercial work plus its quite good realising a product fast having access to better surfacing and solidworks is needed because its whats used in school and most companies here use it
i am also away from home each month for 4 days straight i have decided its a chrime not having cad with me when ideas pop up, out of all the companies ive been to so far they always started having access to cad at all times realising and testing their ideas. i believe there is a pattern here that it is crucial to have it during this period.
and bambu slicer and problably other slicers in the future
thats about it, i am also upgrading my pc soon that will handle any future renderings.
what remote service do you use?
i have thought about this but it requires a good connection right?
the ones i have tried do not work that well but maybe i am missing something here
thank you for posting this i was looking for that thread
@theoutside right now the only one that looks interesting is this: HP OMEN Gaming Laptop 16-ap0022no | BƤrbar dator | HP Store Sverige
The ram can be swaped I think for more memory but compared to my desktop that I have right now from 2011 itās miles away
Any opinions about the tech specs would it run rhino without issues?
@CADARTZ - Iāve been running Rhino on a Lenovo Thinkpad 16ā - (it runs better than my 10 year old desktop in some regards). The build quality is quite good, although the power supply is a huge brick and it gets too hot to actually work on ones lap - I think that this will be the case for most powerful hardware that is compressed into a portable size.
Itās a couple generations old now so looks like theyāve got some good deals running at the moment
As this is a thread about laptop recommendations:
Does anyone have experience with how Rhino performs on AMDās strix halo pro platform?
I know the mantra has allways been āget a laptop with dedicated graphics cardā, but things in the integrated gpu world have changed following apples lead and in some ways surpassing it.
You can get these laptops with up to 128 GB of RAM of which up to 75 % can be dedicated to GPU use. The integrated Graphics unit has been benchmarked comparable to an RTX 4070.
They are still very rare and quite expensive, but if you look at prices of premium workstations/gaming laptops with at least 64GB of RAM the difference is somewhat neglegible.
So far the rule has been nVidia dedicated/discrete cards.
nVidia just makes better drivers and have better openGL support than the others.
I stick with intel too, but probably out of old habits as I have never had any issues with the nVidia intel combo.
(Rhino 9 will support directX too, so this should change so more cards are well supported in the near future 
)
When it comes to laptops I always recommend buying a laptop from the pro line of Lenovo, msi and Asus or hard core gaming brands like Razer etc as they have good and silent cooling, great screens and are well built. IMO laptops are more than just power, they are also a contributor to your working environment and your eyes into the project. So if you can then go for Oled or IPS screens. So going down a bit on the cpu power and the gpu power can be a good decision if you end up with a better over all experience. My experience is that there are more issues with Acer and HP than the others (battery life, hardware quality)
Screen size wise I recommend 16 inch over 14 and 17 as it is a good compromise between portability and work space, and often give space for a numeric keypad that is far superior for typing in values if you do that a lot. 4K is overkill on a laptop IMO and FullHD can be good enough, but a bit higher than FullHD is never wrong either.
Just my two cents, and things might have changed since I formed my opinion. I like the design of the HP you shared, so I understand if you want to go for that one, appearance is also important, Iām a sucker for that too 
Good luck!