Advice please - laptop for Architecture student

Hi All,
I'd very much appreciate some advice from you knowledgeable folks...my daughter is midway through her first year studying architecture and after a new laptop...I'm surmising she will need something with a decent spec to run some specialised software now and in the future. She asked her tutors and they recommended a windows machine for versatility but I'm unsure where to start with regards to spec, manufacturers and cost v benefit..hence all advice much appreciated. My lad has an Asus Tuf gaming laptop that has been faultless for a couple of years and seems to chunter along quite happily so is something similar going todo the job or overkill in areas that are not needed ?. Obviously some will say go get a Macbook so I'm all ears as to why for her subject..:-)
Thanks in advance

Just bought my lad a new one. Second time round as he insisted on buying cheap, and we all know how that goes.

Got a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G6 direct from Lenovo. CPU upgrade to i7, 32 GB 1TB. About £900+, until you log into their education site that is. £640. You just need a Uni/school email.

It came last week, very impressed. I configured it without windows, which saved £110 and paid for the processor upgrade. You can buy a windows license for £10.

Getting the latest Windows version installed was impossible as there is no way to do it without a network, and Windows installer couldn’t find any drivers to use. Managed it in the end and it is super.


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Probably be running 3d apps like Autocad , Blender , maybe Maya and Houdini.

For architectural stuff you don't need a particularly fast machine to run these apps well , however if she plans to do a lot of photorealistic renders you might want to head towards something with a more advanced gpu.
A gaming laptop should be able to handle it but try to max out the ram and cpu as well as the gpu .

I have a year old macbook pro that is totally fine for most professional 3d cgi work but its fully max spec including ram and cost about £4500 , a decent gaming laptop with a decent amount of ram should be considerably cheaper.
I still have a standalone Windows/linux workstation with two 3090 gpus in it and a lot of ram ( 128GB I think) which in theory is more powerful than the macbook but I've yet to encounter anything the macbook can't handle, the PC is cheaper spec for spec though.

You can also use cloud rendering services and offload the rendering to a much more powerful machine for not much money if required ( I use Fox render farm in China a fair bit)

OP: do you know what software she is likely to be running?

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Originally Posted by Mr.D

Probably be running 3d apps like Autocad , Blender , maybe Maya and Houdini.

For architectural stuff you don't need a particularly fast machine to run these apps well , however if she plans to do a lot of photorealistic renders you might want to head towards something with a more advanced gpu.
A gaming laptop should be able to handle it but try to max out the ram and cpu as well as the gpu .

I have a year old macbook pro that is totally fine for most professional 3d cgi work but its fully max spec including ram and cost about £4500 , a decent gaming laptop with a decent amount of ram should be considerably cheaper.
I still have a standalone Windows/linux workstation with two 3090 gpus in it and a lot of ram ( 128GB I think) which in theory is more powerful than the macbook but I've yet to encounter anything the macbook can't handle, the PC is cheaper spec for spec though.

You can also use cloud rendering services and offload the rendering to a much more powerful machine for not much money if required ( I use Fox render farm in China a fair bit)

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Originally Posted by Mr Pointy

OP: do you know what software she is likely to be running?

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I agree with both of the above.
I would also add that laptops may not be particularly useful for CAD style work unless they can be docked/attached to a larger screen (or two), which seems to be getting a rarer thing as laptops get smaller and smaller. If she is doing a lot of drawing on the software, she may also need a 'static' desk PC/Mac too.

It all comes down to what software she needs to run. A lot of Autodesk products are certified to run with Nvidia Quadro graphics cards, it’s what I was issued when I worked for them. I suggest making a list of applications she uses now and will use through the rest of her degree. Once you have that, look at the system requirements for those applications. Ultimately, the make and model of the computer, be it a Windows PC, or a Mac, doesn’t matter. What is important is it is a tool to run the required applications.

It may be worth while contacting the university’s IT support team or main IT website for the student software download site. Here it should show the specs required to run the software. The course guide and module guide should list software required. The university may have specific IT suites for particular courses and worth checking also.

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Originally Posted by Phil Lee

It all comes down to what software she needs to run. A lot of Autodesk products are certified to run with Nvidia Quadro graphics cards, it’s what I was issued when I worked for them. I suggest making a list of applications she uses now and will use through the rest of her degree. Once you have that, look at the system requirements for those applications. Ultimately, the make and model of the computer, be it a Windows PC, or a Mac, doesn’t matter. What is important is it is a tool to run the required applications.

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You won’t need a quadro for anything other than large deployment enterprise level and properly scientific scrutiny of data ( ie withstanding peer review). Large companies like them certified as it leaves potential to sue for losses if the cards fail but thats with billions at stake . Autodesks stuff will run fine on gaming cards. You might hit the odd bug ot glitch that you wouldn’t on a quadro once in a blue moon but the software is so buggy anyway its a moot point .

A decent rtx 30 or 40 series mobile gpu will be a better bang for buck , you won’t get a quadro thats got any grunt below £4k and a £500 gaming card will still outperform it 99.9% of the time. I don’t even know if you get a laptop with a quadro on board , its a workstation card.

https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-...laptop-for-cad


Here you go . I agree with what they say , Asus is a brand I’ve never had any trouble with ( although I personally haven’t had a pc laptop since about 1999).

Mac incompatability has been talked about for years . I’ve never had any issue running high end 3d apps on mine to create pro work for deadlines.

linux may be something to consider as most pro workstations are generally linux environments ( I personally prefer linux to windows but I’m also pretty familiar with a linux/unix comand line interface , and I often use the terminal on my macbook for moving large files about).

You shpukd be able to dual boot a pc laptop to have windows and linux , not sure about macs any more ( but its built on unix anyway which is the same thing almost) .

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Originally Posted by Mr.D

https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-...laptop-for-cad

You shpukd be able to dual boot a pc laptop to have windows and linux , not sure about macs any more ( but its built on unix anyway which is the same thing almost) .

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With Windows 10/11 you can install Linux using WSL2, and have Linux running alongside/under Windows without the need to dual boot. We used to be a Mac site because we had 100s of Linux boxes for calculations and needed desktops that ran MS Office and could talk to the Linux machines. Over the years the Macs have moved further and further away from being Unix/Linux compatible while Windows is now essentially 100% compatible through WSL2, hence we run Win11/WSL2 on the desktop tops and Linux on the servers.

WRT to the laptop, we have found Acer. Asus and Lenovo all to be reasonable brands. We tend to buy Lenovo for higher end machines and then Asus/Acer for the lower end stuff as we feel the quality of the Lenovo's 'seems' to be higher.

Fantastic.. Many thanks for the advice everyone.. she'll confirm what software she's likely to need (apart from AutoCAD) and check out the Lenovo education site too.. Appreciate it