Building/Buying a new Laptop for on sight render machine

[Evan Wright]

Hey everyone,

I've been doing data work on set for a numbers of years now. I'm trying to figure out my next portable laptop that can do on sight rendering and fast data transfers. I've been looking at Dell and MSI as contenders. Price is not a factor...Can you help

Regards

Evan Wright

 

[Sergei Franklin]

Thunderbolt 3 will let you add external GPU

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Hey everyone,

I've been doing data work on set for a numbers of years now. I'm trying to figure out my next portable laptop that can do on sight rendering and fast data transfers. I've been looking at Dell and MSI as contenders. Price is not a factor...Can you help

Regards

Evan Wright

If this is for on site work, I'd consider a mini tower. A lot of people bring their trash cans around (mac pro) and a lot of others bring something of a mini-atx box with them packed into a pelican. I actually know a few people who build monitors into the lids of pelicans and quickly pop open the case and boot right up when connected to power. There are also some serious pre-built production based solutions that are built into pelicans and other cases -- I'm having trouble finding them now but I did see them linked recently on other threads in this section.

Are you specifically looking for laptop?

 

[Mike Halper]

... a lot of others bring something of a mini-atx box with them packed into a pelican. I actually know a few people who build monitors into the lids of pelicans and quickly pop open the case and boot right up when connected to power. There are also some serious pre-built production based solutions that are built into pelicans and other cases -- I'm having trouble finding them now but I did see them linked recently on other threads in this section.

I have never seen anything like that, and I've been looking for something for about the past year. And I've never seen anything like that mentioned here. If you could find the references to it that you're talking about that would be great. I just did another Google search for something like this and still couldn't find anything. As far as I can tell it would need to be custom made, though I'd prefer to buy something already purpose-made that I could drop the components into.

 

[Todd T]

I have never seen anything like that, and I've been looking for something for about the past year. And I've never seen anything like that mentioned here. If you could find the references to it that you're talking about that would be great. I just did another Google search for something like this and still couldn't find anything. As far as I can tell it would need to be custom made, though I'd prefer to buy something already purpose-made that I could drop the components into.

Something like this?: StormDragon

 

[Mike Halper]

That's the closest thing to what I've been looking for. It doesn't appear to be exactly what I had in mind, but I'll email them for more info and pricing. Thanks!

If you know of any others please let us know.

EDIT: I think they are no longer in business. The email gets bounced and the phone number goes to someone's personal voicemail.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

I have never seen anything like that, and I've been looking for something for about the past year. And I've never seen anything like that mentioned here. If you could find the references to it that you're talking about that would be great. I just did another Google search for something like this and still couldn't find anything. As far as I can tell it would need to be custom made, though I'd prefer to buy something already purpose-made that I could drop the components into.

I've got some free time later tonight and will search my history for it. That's actually a problem I've had before -- all the terms are loose enough where searching will just give you a whole bunch of almost the right thing. I was working with 2 DITs on a big job about 3 weeks ago and forgot to ask their setup, though it was most likely custom. Sonnet Tech was making the ROGUE DIT stations but that seemed to go under.

Alternatively you could build a mini-atx computer and just whip it out of a padded pelican on set.

If I can find it, I'll link back here.

 

[Elsie N]

Money being no object, you may want to check out these guys. IIRC, they can build a laptop with workstation processors.

 

[Mike Halper]

I've got some free time later tonight and will search my history for it. That's actually a problem I've had before -- all the terms are loose enough where searching will just give you a whole bunch of almost the right thing. I was working with 2 DITs on a big job about 3 weeks ago and forgot to ask their setup, though it was most likely custom. Sonnet Tech was making the ROGUE DIT stations but that seemed to go under.

Alternatively you could build a mini-atx computer and just whip it out of a padded pelican on set.

If I can find it, I'll link back here.

Yeah, I've tried all the search terms and always come up with a lot of things that aren't even close to what I'm looking for or everything that is exactly what I'm looking for is completely custom. If eGPU works well on these new MBP's and Nvidia releases MacOS drivers for Pascal then it may not be necessary, but it would still be nice to have portable real monster of a computer that I can carry around and set almost anywhere and turn on right away without having to hook up monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. Just open the lid, connect drives, and power on. Done.