Hello all, I need some advice to help finalize my new laptop decisions.
I am a Data science student, soo most of my working data will be stored elsewhere, and any intensive neural net training will most likely be done on a supercomputer/ gpu machine.
However I would like to have a substantial amount of power at my disposal, so ram and processor speed are important, and an onboard gpu wouldn’t hurt my feelings.
I’m would prefer something 15" or 16". And I plan to be running linux although I am no expert and it’s only my second linux machine so something that is fairly painless to make the switch with… without a bunch of useless "gimmick " options that will break would be nice.
I was all set to buy a system76 machine orrr maybe a purism aaannnd then CES20 happened and AMD make me take a double then a triple take… the ryzen 4000 lineup especially the 4800H have caught my eye in a big way and now I just cant decide.
Do I go with one of the much pricier Intel baised custom laptops ( system76,purism)…do I wait a few months and try one of the new AMD machines that offer better performance for almost half the price but aren’t built on an linux distro…or do I go with a tried and true machine that offers plenty of support converting to linux such as dell xps, Lenovo thinkpad or something of that nature.
I have set my budget at $1600. Maybe $2000 if it’s something that just cant be passed up…oh and No Apple.
So I guess any opinions on best quality/hardware for the money, ease of use with linux and adaptability, any hope to amd walking into the mobile cpu game the way they have in desktop game? Less vulnerable then intel chips? HELP Level1
Yeah, that’s a badass chip, but don’t expect it for a few months in premium systems.
Yeah, you’re going to be hard pressed to get something with a 4800H and cuda cores for less than $1800, but it’s definitely possible.
You might want to consider going CPU only laptop and make sure it’s got thunderbolt so you can get a 2070 or something in an enclosure. I don’t think hot-plug works on Linux at the moment, but that’s not a terrible issue.
AMD is vulnerable to fewer CPU exploits than Intel, but they’re still vulnerable.
I’m unhappy with my XPS 15. I have done the liquid metal mod paste on it and it’s still a furnace.
Some of the thinkpads are good quality, but I’m not personally a fan of them.
I’m banking on Dell fixing the XPS when they release one with AMD in it.
I’m hoping 3000/4000 Ryzen mobile is better than 2000 mobile series.
I’m going to assume mine is a lemon, but even after slews of updating, rollbacks, and probably close to 100 hours of dedicated troubleshooting I still have pretty severe issues. Only two BSOD so far this year, so I guess that’s better
My experience with the desktop has been less than stellar. Bios update after bios update for incremental tweaks just to get the thing to do what it was supposed to do Day1. I feel like a beta tester.
So, I’m considering linux because the vast majority of what I will be working with ( at school and most likely for a career ) will all be done in R / python or similar languages, and I constantly need to interact with services such as git / aws / Jupyter or other server baised environments that i can simply ssh into. So having command line ability/ access to be able top pull/ push large files share work or just ease of access is becoming ever more necessary. ( also im just sick of the unbelievable amount of garbage that’s unavoidable in windows these days
I mean, mobaxterm + shutup10 would solve both of those issues, but I’m not going to try to convince you to use windows to develop on. You do you bb. I still think the razer blade 15 base are a compelling buy in your pricepoint.
Dell Latitude 5501 Series or any other brand business line of laptops.
General Linux compatibility is quite good, the 5501 line is their workhorse latitude line. Another option is the Precision line as well. If you can’t afford more than 4 Cores, i5-U series processors can get the job done with sufficient cooling (so no thin & lights).
If you need it now, what I’ve listed are good options, we probably won’t see AMD processors in the mid-high end business line of laptops for a good couple quarters, Dell may be one of the first to adopt thanks to AMD picking up some key Dell staff, but that was out of their XPS/Alienware division rather than their business line.
I know it is for sure, I’m currently doing that on my surface pro, however I find it annoying having to tweak it and when some applications conne with their own command line such as anaconda navigator or Atom it becomes a pain to interface with them all.
And to be honest having those features is just a bonus, I mainly want to switch because I’m just sick and tired of windows and all it’s garbage and vulnerabilities plus a list of. Work flow optimisation reasons… plus I’ve been looking for an excuse to move to linux. And this is as good of a time as any ha ha.
But good looking out on mentioning the power shell, I know a ton of people who had no idea.
Actually during the launch they announced the first few machines, Asus Zepherious g14 SE supposed to drop in February and the Dell G5 15" second quarter.
