I heavily use my workstation (7900X based) for income doing drawing / 3D work and admin stuff. It’s been reliable, got no problems with it.
But these stupid RAM prices and availability have got me a little worried. What if my computer craps the bed, or needs a full reinstall of the OS.
A few years ago I had two workstations, it was great. Any problems with one of them and I could deal with it when I had time. I get paid because I get work done quickly for people, so downtime isn’t helpful. I do have a mid level performance laptop that I can use, but it’s horrible not having my 3 x 27" monitors.
I’ve got an A4000 GPU for the job, so at least the most expensive part is something I have already (bought it when it was on offer).
Any comments welcome that tip me over the edge or prevent the expense, that’s looking to be around £1200. I can kind of afford it, but I might put it on my 0% credit card to ease the pain (ends July this year).
Thanks in advance!
Do it.
DON’T do it, prices will come down.
Do it before prices/availability go up or get worse!
We keep a complete spare for much the same reasons, though it’s covering a larger pool of machines. I’d be hesitant of taking on debt just to have a spare besides the laptop, though. The other thing I do is hold cold spares of some components where prompt replacement is needed, which might be a better fit here.
Replacing a component later, buying used, or even buying a laptop that can do 85% of the performance makes more sense than spending a bunch of money now just to have a system sitting around.
Yeah I think that might be a more cost effective solution for sure, though I don’t upgrade so much these days, normally decide on a new machine when the current machine doesn’t do what I need it to do anymore, or it gets a little too long in the tooth.
May be I’ll wait for prices to get a bit more sensible…I wish I had fronted up enough money for 4 sticks of 16GB RAM instead of just 2…they only cost £100 early 2024. Current price, £330!
That’s a good point actually, I’ve been needing a more powerful laptop for some time now, to be used when I meet with clients. And like you say, it’s all very well to have a machine idle, but a bit of a waste of money really.
Recall that said in the film Contact, never knew that was his comment, thanks!
I’m sure it is low, I’d hope the same goes with all the other components that don’t move. One thing that concerns me is that it might not be the top, but the bottom of the new market
That’s grim and kind of my fear.
My concern is a situation where I simply have bad luck and a computer dies, I then have to use my slow laptop to work on and I’m probably about 50% efficient on that. So I’ll have to work twice as long to produce the same amount of work, potentially while looking at overpriced components. I could spend time locating the faulty component and change it out, but that’s more short term time used up, that needs to be spent catching up with work.
I definitely do want a high performance laptop at some point, that’ll cost in the region of £2000, but I can delay that. I kinda prefer spending around half that for a spare workstation, especially as I have a spare and very good GPU.
I am in a similar situation as you as far as work is concerned. I do all my work on my laptop and i have my desktop computer as a backup (or AI/game stuff). My laptop is connected to a docking station with 2 large displays.
what software do you do your cad in? You don’t need a really expensive laptop for most of the drawing/3d work because it is all cpu constrained and single threaded. but it depends on what software it is.
Sorry to hear that - is your laptop more powerful than the desktop, or do you just need the portability? Just curious!
I’ve mainly use AutoCAD, occasionally SketchUp Pro and sometimes Blender, for around 30 years now, so you could say I’ve used it on a few different machines over the years Started with a machine that had 16MB of RAM…I was so jealous of the older guy that had 32MB
I’d opt for the laptop and hope the workstation survives in the months you’re saving up (if necessary). It’s going to be more expensive but it will still be useful if your workstation doesn’t fail. You could sell the GPU, or if you expect GPU prices to start exploding too wait for a more opportune moment to do so.
Think about doing a full system image to cover the risk of needing to reinstall the OS. And also other backups in general. With a full image you should be up and running in less than an hour (assuming no SSD failure). If another component fails you should be able to replace it fast; probably same day since in the UK you should have PC stores close?
Ok, but the madness has to end at some point. Eventually the returns in this vertical become so great that someone with sufficient capital will want a piece of the pie, expanding production and driving prices down. No?
Yes. The prospective someone just needs to start a DRAM business and build a few fabs. Only takes most of a decade, by which time it’s widely anticipated the LLM bubble will be long over.
Hence the attention to what could convince Samsung or Hynix to build additional fabs anyway (only 3-4 year lead time) and the extent to which CXMT might be able to ramp volume.
I’ve got Macrium Reflect (paid) running daily and it saved my butt a few months ago when the software went a bit wrong. Yes there are stores around that I could get some components same day ish, my concern is if it happens at a critical moment. If I don’t meet certain deadlines, it reduces the chance of repeat business.
I need the portability and laptops are pretty fast! I bought this laptop 1 year ago and it has a 14900hx, 96gb of ram and a rtx4070(mobile). last month i built a new desktop with a 9950x3d, 128gb of ram and a 5090 so it’s not faster than that (but it was before that).
Autocad will just use single threaded perf and most laptops are actually pretty close to desktops in single threaded performance, you also don’t need the quadro GPU sell it (i’m speaking from more than 10 years of autocad/inventor discussions about this).
Autocad also is very reliant on cpu even with gpu tasks, so a simple gpu will be fine, even for 3d stuff. The only real difference a laptop would make is render times on blender.
I would have a look at last years models with a 14700hx/14900hx or a ryzen AI 370, i don’t think you will even notice a speed difference! For battery life the ryzen ai 370 will be much better but prices are rising (maybe if you sell the quadro 4000 you can afford it?) That way you can also work at clients
Started with a machine that had 16MB of RAM…I was so jealous of the older guy that had 32MB 
