I have this question, what labtops would you recommend for making 3d modeling for animation, from my findings you would required a RTX or GTX graphics card for smooth modeling and rendering. My budget wise is a least $500 -$800 and it’s a hard decision on finding on even at Amazon.com. If someone can answer that would be Awsome. It’s a hard decision on finding the right one that would work best on working 3d modeling/animation. ![]()
I would say you want something with a Nvida GPU if possible, you will want a minimum of 16gb of RAM, if possible 32gb if you can find one with that. In my opinion storage is the least important out of the box, since on a lot of laptops you can either do a DIY replacement of the SSD or just buy some external SSD’s to expand the storage.
What brand of labtops would perform better ??? So many to pick but hard to decided.
Brand doesn’t really matter so long as it is reputable, a gaming laptop is the most likely to have the GPU and the cooling, I have had good experiences with HP, ASUS, and Samsung. Personally I would never buy a Lenovo since the one I have back in 2018 broke after just 1.5 years also I know someone who had a Microsoft Surface that broke after 2 years of use.
Ok, is Amazon the best site are there other sites to find one. And also. Thank you for your response. I highly appreciate. Am trying to get back to 3D modeling and animation I love doing so much. My other labtop Microsoft surface book broke down with a swelled up battery which sucks in 2021.
Regarding the surface, someone I knew had a surface and the sensor for if the screen was open or closed broke, meaning the screen kept turning on and off whilst it was fully open, it was only two years old.
When shopping for a laptop I generally just use Google shopping since it finds deals across multiple sites, just make sure where you buy it from is reputable.
What country do you live in, that way I can give you some recommendations for your location, for example in the UK I really like CCL (https://www.cclonline.com) and SCAN (https://www.scan.co.uk)
I have purchased a laptop from Amazon before and it was fine, it was an ASUS Vivobook 16, although I found it on Google Shopping.
Do you actually need a laptop or would a desktop work, for that budget you could probably get a RTX 5060 and a 12 core CPU in a desktop.
If you want portability you could remote into a desktop from the same network using RustDesk (https://rustdesk.com) and from anywhere in the world by remotely accessing your network using Twingate (https://www.twingate.com). RustDesk does support remote access from anywhere without port forwarding but I would reccomend disabling that and using Twingate instead, in my experience you get less lag and it is more secure.
LOL, I’m using a Lenovo ThinkPad 16G. Before that, I had a Lenovo Legion 5. The only reason I replaced the Legion was because I was drinking a cup of water, the handle broke, and it spilled all over the keyboard. Both were Ryzen 7’s the ThinkPad has 24GB memory and a 3060.
Yeah it might just be my experience with Lenovo’s but personally I would never buy one again, even though I have heard great things about them.
I’m on a Dell Precision 7700 series Workstation … love it!!
I’ve chewed through most every major brand, but this Dell has stood the test of time.
Long long way from my first lappy, '98 Toshiba Satellite 4000 CDS!!
As people have already said, you want 16 or 32 GB of ram and an Nvidia GPU. I wouldn’t go beyond 60 class card, as the price explodes without much benefit.
I would pay attention to the wattage of the GPU. Some are capped at 90w, some go all the way up to 130+. A 60 class, 130 watt card will be faster than a 70 class 90 watt card.
I would also pay attention to the screen if you do not use any external monitors as this is where brands try to save money. Some of the panels are terrible at color reproduction or are very dim.
Another area I would investigate is the cooling. Look for thorough technical reviews on specific laptop models you have in mind and see how cool they run. A cooler laptop will be quieter, faster and last longer.
I would sacrifice storage if need be, that can be upgraded later down the line. I would again look for reviews mentioning the RAM configuration. You want double channel ram, otherwise expect issues with performance.
I would approach brands with an open mind. None of them are bulletproof. You get good models and bad models in the range of every brand. So rather focus on the model, not the brand.
I would also sacrifice the CPU for GPU. A modern 6 core CPU is plenty fast for a laptop, 8 cores are not necessary.
I agree with everything you have said here except for the CPU . In terms of the CPU I have a desktop PC with a Intel core i5 14600K 14 core CPU. Whilst 14 cores aren’t needed I wouldn’t go lower than 8, in my experience Blender runs better with lots of cores, eight is also the reccomended amount on the Blender requirements page.
Yes like I mentioned in my post I would say to sacrifice on storage since it can be easily upgraded, although I wouldn’t go lower than 500gb since trying to fit apps and files on 256gb is nearly impossible.
Blender states that 4 are minimum and 8 recommended, so 6 land in the middle. I would say current 6 core is plenty fast and suits the limited cooling capacity of a laptop rather well.
I run a Ryzen 5000 6 core laptop from 2022 and find no issues performance wise. Of course it is not a desktop beast, but works well. The newest chips have roughly double the IPC per core, so should be plenty. Dropping 8 for 6 is worthwhile if it means you can go from 50 class to 60 class GPU.
Before I built my desktop I had a six core Ryzen 5500 laptop, it struggled with sculpting and the CPU was always 100%, my 14 core doesn’t struggle so I would say 8 is probably a safe option .
You will be able to get a far better desktop PC for that budget. That’s quite little for a laptop…
Yeah I agree with that, I spent £500 on a six core 16gb 500gb 16 inch Asus laptop about 2 years ago.
If you went with a desktop you could probably get a 5060 and a 10 or 12 core CPU with 16gb or 32gb of ram. Then you can use a tool like RustDesk to remote into it from a laptop.
I mean yeah, I get it, a laptop might be more convenient, I don’t recommend it in any case, but at least if you are prepared to waste some money on it it might still be OK for work, but with this budget it might be a problem while one can still probably get away with an OK(ish) PC for that price.
Yeah, thing is it’s not so much the number (within reason) but the actual specs and performance of the cores.
Frankly, laptop CPU’s are a bit of a naming and configuration nightmare, you can have two very similar named CPU’s and even very much the same names as a desktop CPU and they can all be very different.
For example, your Ryzen 5500u laptop CPU vs the desktop 5500, you’d think would be much the same, just lower power for the laptop.
However, that’s not the case, the 5500u is a Zen 2 core architecture, while the desktop one is a whole generation latter as a Zen 3. Combine the very low power TDP of the 5500u, much lower base frequency and even little lower boost frequency and the overall performance would be night and day.
So 6 cores vs 8 cores really could make little difference, it all comes down to what those cores are and how its all been configured.
When I brought the laptop I didn’t do Blender, I just needed a laptop that could do web browsing, email, office and a bit of photo editing. It was only when I got into Blender it wasn’t good enough, then I decided to build the desktop.