Looking for a workstation laptop

Hi everyone.

I’ve been using my personal desktop while working from home for the past year.

With the view of going part-time back to the office, my company are going to be providing me with a laptop, and have asked what my preference would be for a specific model.

Use case is software development.
Unknown budget, but I suspect anything north of £2000 would be too much.
(Think mac book pro prices as the ceiling)

I dislike any of the U series CPU’s from Intel in all previous laptops I’ve tried in the past.
(Coming from a 6700k desktop with an NH-D15 on it!)

As I only have one desk at home, I will also be picking up a L1T KVM when they get in stock to use with my two 27" 1440 monitors.

So really I’m looking for a powerful laptop that can output two Display Port signals.

My initial thoughts go towards a Lenovo P15. - But happy to look at any other suggestions.
I’ve always like Lenovo workstation laptops in terms of their performance.

My question with the P15, is that it provides Display Port over USB-C.

Would a simple converter from USB-C to Display Port (female)
Followed by something a Display Port splitter like this:
(cannot include links, search Amazon UK for “DeLOCK-Displayport-1-2-Splitter-DisplayPort-Out”)

Into the KVM and then onto my monitors play well?
(I’m not fussed about refresh rate, 60 would be fine, even if one monitor is capable of 144, as long as it handles 1440p for non-gaming applications that would work for me)

If it makes a difference I use Fedora for my OS.

Thanks,
Jon

I currently have a Dell Precision 7550.

i9-10885H
64GB RAM
Quadro RTX 5000 dGPU

Pro’s: its a beast, I can run multiple heavy productivity applications without needing to swap ram. When I do need fast speed it can boost up to 5Ghz. Keyboard has 10 keys for data entry.

Cons: It cant boost long, and the CPU runs HOT! When I run GPU or CUDA workloads I hit the thermal limits of the laptop. The Keyboard is garbage compared to the XPS line. Cost, granted work pays for it but the cost is simply not worth it, the real problem is the limited number of comparable workstation laptops.

While it may be on the “gamer(y)” side of things the AMD Ryzen Mobile chips look like killer workstation cpus if you dont need intel (which I do).

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Does that budget apply to any peripherals? Or strictly the laptop?

I have been using an X1 extreme for over a year and it’s been a workhorse.

That said, if I were to upgrade I’d be looking at a ryzen machine for the extra cores going forward.

Budget is just for the laptop.

Obviously if a dock can be included in the price, that’s even better.

Thanks for the recommendations.

It may be hard to get a “gamer” laptop signed off by the corporate overlords - but I’ll have a look at them and see if I can write up some justifications :slight_smile:

I get it, thankfully we have an our corporate overlords give us an option for one of the Alienware laptops but its still intel/nvidia because that is what our applications are built for.

I opted for the Precision because it was the only one they offer to us with 64GB of RAM and my uses cases are always ram limited.

TBH I think the ROG Zephyrus is a subtle enough “gamer” laptop you could probably convince them.

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I request you look at system76.

Also if you’re looxing at gamer crap look at msi workstation laptops with real gpu’s in them not quadros. Pelformance wise and spec wise its hard to beat.

You can probably look at likes, of System 76 / Lenovos Legion series / Asus Zephrus
Far less of the gamery aesthetic, but still delivering on the internal goods