Looking for High-End Laptop

[astrohip]

Just pulled the trigger on a Thinkpad P16 Gen 2. Should be here in about two weeks.

 

I appreciate everyone's feedback and help on this!

[1610ftw]

Solid choice - let us know how you like it!

[Bullit]

On 3/4/2025 at 11:06 PM, astrohip said:

I'm also looking at a Lenovo Thinkpad P16 Gen 2. I customized it to:

 

• i9 13950HX
• 64GB DDR5
• (2) 4 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Opal
• 16" WQUXGA OLED touch, etc etc
• Nvidia RTX 2000

The rest is pretty much std.

 

Thoughts? Is this a good laptop? Is there anything else in the Lenovo line I should be looking at?

 

My criticism of this is the CPU and GPU. The CPU is overpower for chassis - i don't think any laptop can exploit the performance of an I-9.

RTX2000 has generally the performance of a RTX3060 with 8GB VRAM instead of 6GB. For your use it seems non justifiable.

[Bullit]

Duplicated.

[astrohip]

20 hours ago, Bullit said:

 

My criticism of this is the CPU and GPU. The CPU is overpower for chassis - i don't think any laptop can exploit the performance of an I-9.

RTX2000 has generally the performance of a RTX3060 with 8GB VRAM instead of 6GB. For your use it seems non justifiable.

 

You're almost certainly correct. In reality, the entire laptop is probably overkill. But I like a really fast machine, with lots of RAM, and blazing hard drive speed (and space) to spare. I don't have many vices in life, but a supersonic laptop is one.

[1610ftw]

On 3/9/2025 at 2:39 AM, Bullit said:

 

My criticism of this is the CPU and GPU. The CPU is overpower for chassis - i don't think any laptop can exploit the performance of an I-9.

RTX2000 has generally the performance of a RTX3060 with 8GB VRAM instead of 6GB. For your use it seems non justifiable.

 

The CPU is great as he can always run it at lower clock speeds where he will need a lot less power and the GPU will be chugging along.

 

It gives him a nice vapor chamber heatsink and great cooling for his mostly CPU focused use case that obviously includes some degree of multitasking for which it is nice to have lots of cores and it is not like he could save a lot of money while getting the same cooling by going with a lesser CPU/GPU combo.

[Bullit]

The lower clock do not prevent more heat from being a high performance CPU. Maybe the OP have an use case that i-9 would be necessary. If not he will only have laptop with fans working longer or always.

That said I am curious about astrochip review.

[astrohip]

I will post a review when it arrives. I got excited, I rec'd a shipping notice. But then I saw it was for the extra power cord/brick. Still no ship date on the laptop itself, although I expect it will not be long.

 

Use case for an i9? Debatable. But I do a few things that probably take all the CPU I can get, even if it's just for a few seconds. And if it speeds it up by a few split seconds, I'll take it. Much of what I do is also dependent on disk speed, hence my desire for fast SSDs.

 

Sometimes I load 30,000 MP3+ files into a tagger (Mp3tag), all at once. I'm probably using everything the system has--disk, CPU, RAM.  Or I might filter a Quicken report from 200MB of data (250,000+ transactions). Convert video and audio files from format to format. And on and on. Speed helps!

 

But I'm not doing anything like some people, with graphics intensive programs, whether games or 3D modeling. Or huge multi-GB databases. I respect they truly need speed.

[1610ftw]

1 hour ago, Bullit said:

The lower clock do not prevent more heat from being a high performance CPU. Maybe the OP have an use case that i-9 would be necessary. If not he will only have laptop with fans working longer or always.

That said I am curious about astrochip review.

 

Lower clocks result in lower power consumption and at some point we have a 125W CPU that can be handled quite well by the cooling solution provided by Lenovo.

 

Of course you are right that one should make some use of a specific CPU or else save the money and from what @astrohip says he has such a use case where he can complete some of the stuff he does faster while also being able to do other things on the side.

[astrohip]

Shipped! On that slow boat from China...

 

 

[astrohip]

Wow, less than 48 hours after I posted it was on the way from Shanghai, it was just delivered. Sadly, I'm not going to be home until Sunday, so the official unboxing will have to wait...

[1610ftw]

That's pretty impressive - won't be a boring Sunday it seems 👍

[astrohip]

Quick question: Can I take the second SSD drive out of my old Dell, put it in some kind of external housing, hook it up via USB to the new Lenovo, and transfer data that way? If so, any recommendations on what to use? It's an M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD, 4TB (about 2.5TB full). SSDR,4TB,G44,80D2,KIOXIA,XG7

 

The new laptop is great, I'll write up a detailed review soon. But first, I need to get the data transferred. I can't do it any normal methods, because this Dell only runs about an hour before it BSOD on me (that was one of the reasons I bought a new one). So I'm thinking if I could pull the SSD, I could do it that way. Otherwise, doing it an hour at a time will take me the rest of my life.

[Aaron44126]

14 minutes ago, astrohip said:

Quick question: Can I take the second SSD drive out of my old Dell, put it in some kind of external housing, hook it up via USB to the new Lenovo, and transfer data that way? If so, any recommendations on what to use? It's an M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD, 4TB (about 2.5TB full). SSDR,4TB,G44,80D2,KIOXIA,XG7

 

Yes, the easiest/cheapest would just to be to get a USB 3 NVMe enclosure, stick the drive in it, and hook it up to your new laptop. (Thunderbolt ones are faster but also more expensive, probably not needed for a one-time transfer.)

 

Plenty of choices...https://www.amazon.com/s?k=usb nvme enclosure

[Bullit]

Yes, i bought a Beikell in Amazon with a Crucial NVMe and put it in exFAT formating to be able to save also my phone and tablet data.

 

https://www.amazon.es/Carcasa-Beikell-Herramientas-Adaptador-Soporte/dp/B0BGS3NZ4C/

[astrohip]

Thanks, ordered!

[1610ftw]

21 hours ago, astrohip said:

Quick question: Can I take the second SSD drive out of my old Dell, put it in some kind of external housing, hook it up via USB to the new Lenovo, and transfer data that way? If so, any recommendations on what to use? It's an M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD, 4TB (about 2.5TB full). SSDR,4TB,G44,80D2,KIOXIA,XG7

 

The new laptop is great, I'll write up a detailed review soon. But first, I need to get the data transferred. I can't do it any normal methods, because this Dell only runs about an hour before it BSOD on me (that was one of the reasons I bought a new one). So I'm thinking if I could pull the SSD, I could do it that way. Otherwise, doing it an hour at a time will take me the rest of my life.

 

Great it has arrived!

 

Why did you not just order the Lenovo with one SSD and then reuse the Kioxia as a second drive?

I always try to order as little memory and storage as possible unless there is some kind of sale of course that is too good to pass on so I am curious about your reason(s).

[astrohip]

On 3/19/2025 at 8:04 AM, 1610ftw said:

 

Great it has arrived!

 

Why did you not just order the Lenovo with one SSD and then reuse the Kioxia as a second drive?

I always try to order as little memory and storage as possible unless there is some kind of sale of course that is too good to pass on so I am curious about your reason(s).

Is stupidity allowed as a reason? 😬

 

I wanted to have both machines fully working as I transferred programs, settings, & data between them. But in reality, I could have done what you suggested.

[1610ftw]

8 hours ago, astrohip said:

Is stupidity allowed as a reason? 😬

 

I wanted to have both machines fully working as I transferred programs, settings, & data between them. But in reality, I could have done what you suggested.

 

That is indeed a bit of a costly approach 🙂 I switch laptops more often so I have a data and backup drive that I move from device to device and I can even move its Macrium backup routine with it which makes life a lot easier as I do not have to start from scratch each time I move my data. In any case I guess you can splurge a little bit once every five years 🤜

 

By the way: In case you want / need something external that is very fast then I can recommend this one:

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Enclosure-Anti-Drop-Compatible-Thunderbolt/dp/B0CLV3D3H6/ref=sr_1_1?

It does not get very hot as it has a fan but also not very loud and it has a silicone protector that is very welcome as it prevents you from accidentally bumping into your laptop and causing nasty scratches. It also helps to make it stay put. I am using it with a TB4 cable and get sustained writes beyond 2 GB/s - at least as long as the SSDs allow for it which sadly is not very long in most cases.

 

They also have a 20G box that is relatively cheap and I got two of those, too as they hardly cost more than the 10G variant but I expect to get to use supported 20G connectors in the future so that will be nice.