Need a new laptop soon what should I get?

Hardware Hub Laptops & Netbooks
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I know it might look like a duplicate thread. Coincidence I guess as work is refreshing a laptop (so not much my choice) but I’m also in need of a new personal laptop.

Current personal laptop is showing it’s age, its hurting, can’t do type 2 virtualization (good enough), its physically breaking and it also doesn’t have enough display outputs for the future use-case I have (three monitors minimum, daisy chain is fine as I intend to get a docking station).

Usually I wouldn’t need to ask for recommendations as I usually watch vids from Dave2D, Matthew Moniz and many others and would be jonesing on one already. But for some reason I kind of fell off of watching laptop reviews a while ago and am legit scratching my head what to get.

Use-case, would like something more desktop replacement oriented. Meaning I don’t really care about the screen specs (it will be docked mostly) but want good type2 hypervisor performance, decent GPU if I want to start dipping into AI and good docking station support (to include at least 3 external displays of 1080p or better support).

Last I left off on drooling over laptops was for:

Asus Zenbook Duo - really just the screens getting me, not the specs as the RAM is soldered and only CPU choices are Intel. Really love the idea of this laptop when actually traveling though.

Insert_Here Pretty much any laptop using an AMD 8 or 16 cores (such as Ryzen 9 7945HX3D or the like) + lots of RAM (more than 16 gigs) to allow for good type2 virtualization. But I guess Intel has really stepped up their mobile CPU game recently (not sure though, like I said I kind of fell off on recent reviews).

Where is this putting me these days?

Honorable mentions:
From various angles I really like what Framework is doing. I don’t mind paying more if one of their rigs hits my use-cases.

System76 laptops. If I were a graduate of the “1 year Linux challenge” I’d look into these more deeply, but I think I still need to ride on Windows for a while longer.

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Sounds like you already have a docking station.

If so, what model?

Edit - And never mind, reread the post and missed this part -

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Sorry, bad context on my part. I do not have a personal docking station, just the one for the work laptop so doesn’t count. Just trying to convey im game to invest in one in support of more I/O

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I hear they use a proprietary way to update their firmware/BIOS instead of the fwupd method

I can only get HSI-1 with Asus. I think your HP can do HSI-3. Like you I needed it for the OLED screen… unfortunately the software stack I use in Linux does not support 10 bit/HDR at this time so the screen is actually irrelevant. The XPS is looking nice because of the OLED screen but jeez, the price is like 3x…

Have you considered those mini-PCs like Beelink/Minisforum/Topton/etc? If you sort of DIY it, you can customize your keyboard and mouse/trackpad/trackpoint experience.

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I’ve heard good things about eluktronics. I know a couple of coworkers that have them and they all like them a lot.

Wouldn’t jump on a framework just yet. Currently they are having some problems keeping firmware/bios up to date.

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I have especially for home labbing a proxmox cluster. But i travel and want this particular compute to be laptop form.

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Wow never heard of them, will check it out.

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If you’re interested in something from a Tier 1:

Probably a hot take, but I like HP EliteBooks; keyboards feel pretty good as long as you’re OK with a diving board trackpad (or at least the last time I checked). Look at a ZBook if you need a discrete GPU. Sure View screen looks like garbage, but the selling point is an electronic privacy screen built in.

The fairly gigantic issue though is that once in a while, they’ll suicide on you and you have to pull the battery and reconnect it. Only really seems to happen if you completely kill the battery though.

Otherwise my saying for Tier 1 OEMs usually is “Everyone makes good business machines, everyone makes bad consumer machines.”

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Look into enterprise workstation laptops like the Dell Precision, Lenovo ThinkPad, or HP ZBook.

Typically these laptops will have processors with 45+ W TDP, 32, 64, or even 128GB RAM, a separate graphics card such as the RTX 2000 Ada and can process large datasets with little to no issues.

But you’ll probably have to go Intel if you’re going that route.

Lenovo does offer Ryzen models, such as Thinkpad P16.

Refurbished laptops will perform nearly as well and save you money.

The best of last generation may compare favorably with the new mid-range models if you’re willing to go used.

Enterprise workstations are pretty solid and will last a long time.

As far as gaming laptops?

The MSI Titan GT77-HX laptop comes with an i9-13980HX (still not as powerful as the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D you mentioned), up to 128GB RAM, and a mobile RTX 4090.

You can compare this with other Ryzen gaming laptops you might have been checking out.

Pretty sure the only Dell laptops that offer Ryzen 9 7945HX3D are Alienware models.

Here’s a link to one -

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My two favorite used laptops i have for messing around are old enterprise models (t420 and i forget the HP model).

Have any recommendations for the latest “batch” that should be on eBay? Im thinking companies refresh about every 3 years so some good 2021 models?

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Corporations typically decommission laptops once they’re out of warranty.

Think 3 years, 4 years, or 5 years depending on contract.

Example -

Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 was released in 2018, so 6 years ago.

Tablet PC with i5-8350U and 8-16GB RAM

You can find them on eBay right now for under $100.

Buy it, take it apart, apply new thermal paste, slap in a 1TB drive, and you’ve got a decent tablet for cheap.

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I’m tracking- I got my faithful T420 and HP EliteBook 8540p. Upgraded the RAM on both, re-did the paste and converted over to SSDs.

Later they even got the defcon treatment

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And man, that 420 keyboard. Love that laptop except for the screen.

Oh and i have the OEM docking stations for both too. Im all onboard the used enterprise market for good to above average performing laptops but im hoping to get something more beastly this time around, something with big specs vs. i5 or even i7’ish.

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If you dig around “factory refurb” by HP or Dell, you should be able to find a Ryzen 7 5800H or Core i7 “H” series for under $750. For a short period of time HP had been clearing out previous gen Ryzen 7.
On the other hand for a budget, look on Microcenter(instore/online) they sometimes have clearouts of “old new stock” HP ProBooks & Elitebooks that still carry a 1-3yr factory warranty.

This one looks good for $349.99:

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Oof, six core is juuuust scraping minimum for me but maybe ok. I’m also not against running an external discrete GPU when docked. Awesome price! I’m going to go over the I/O some more. Oh snap and a built in card reader!

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You might be able to find a factory refurb Ryzen 7 for $500-550 if you dig around.

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Wow, brand new and docking station included

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Last year they had been bundling those docks on G8 models.
Keep in mind if you run more than 3 monitors on any IGP, you’ll crave 64GB of memory.

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Just saw this laptop supports up to 64GB of RAM so I’ll probably be doing that. I’m wanting to get something over the top Gucci/nice but the more practical voice on my shoulder is saying this ebay listing is the one. Its ‘good enough’ to run a few VMs, the three monitors, and still be portable when needed.

A nagging bummer is no lightning so no eGPU to truly replace my current desktop.

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You might find some old new stock Intel versions in a similar ballpark, its the only reason to look for TB3/TB4 for desktop replacement duties. B & H tends to run some interesting promos too.

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Finding that going to the AMD 6000 series brings type-c 4 and TB3 support if on a system that comes pre-installed with Windows 11.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/vl5qy5/so_eli5_are_all_amd_laptops_getting_external_gpu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

So this one gets me 8/16 cores and USB4/TB support (supposidly)

Would need to tack onto the price a docking station just to get my x3 display requirement addressed.

A bit more $$$ but then it checks all the boxes (supposedly), and I also don’t see myself needing to upgrade the RAM and HDD (maybe, just maybe the RAM later but I’ll see how the 32gigs hold up).