# Modern Supported Laptop

## sparks

Pardon the nescience of my question.  I've been away from the community for awhile but now I'm back and looking for a recommendation on purchasing a new laptop with the intent of installing Gentoo.  This will be my daily driver for quite some time so I'm not adverse to a large investment.  

Ideally I will be purchasing a well built laptop with as many of the features available below as possible.

-13 or 15 inch high res screen

-SSD(s)

-back-lit keyboard

-Intel i5 or i7

-16gb to 32gb RAM

-biometric scanner

-TPM chip

-HDMI/Display Port/DVI

-discrete graphics

-802.11ac

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## Roman_Gruber

 *sparks wrote:*   

> Pardon the nescience of my question.  I've been away from the community for awhile but now I'm back and looking for a recommendation on purchasing a new laptop with the intent of installing Gentoo.  This will be my daily driver for quite some time so I'm not adverse to a large investment.  
> 
> Ideally I will be purchasing a well built laptop with as many of the features available below as possible.
> 
> -13 or 15 inch high res screen
> ...

 

Hard to say.

gpu wise it is most often wise to use the binary drivers form the vendor. works usually.

screen => gpu

cpu => gcc compiler flags => make.conf

biometic scanner => exotic hardware => hard to tell whats in a laptop at time of purchase => purchase somewhere check it out and send it back, so do not buy it in a shop than ...

-802.11ac => wifi => should be supported, afaik intel usually is no problem => others may have issues, => usually works as it is widely used hardware => except exotic vendors, which may not exist for wifi ...

-discrete graphics => see gpu above

-HDMI/Display Port/DVI => see gpu above

-TPM chip => could be exotic hardware also depends on the vendor.

when you want encryption => lvm container with luks is the better, smart choice.

-16gb to 32gb RAM

=> check intel datasheets, i think skylake desctop proesseos supports now 32gb, other architecture only up to 16gb.

every cpu has its intel datasheet and there is quite on top, the max supported cpus, ram and such.

well as there are even newer models every 6 months, and the old models are removed, you are better off, to check pages like notebookcheck.com / net (one is english other is german with same contents usually=) and read about 

issues about throttling down, how the display is (quite interessting), how the thermal management, 

careful not every gpu uses GDDR ram but the slower DDR ram.

i would never buy any lenovo hardware as they have spyware / crapware in their bios these days, see notebookcheck for articles regarding lenovo.

Biometic scanners are somehow can be tricked, when you talk about that finger print sensor, check hack pages about it, ... not worht in my eyes.

and that tpm, what i remembe,r too lazy to check google, is about encryption right? than you are better off with lvm + luks, or just luks...

high resoltuion depeneds if you want retina like resolution of double of 1920x1080 ?=> 3840x2040 is the resultuion afaik, or just blueray 1920x1080 resoltuion ...

anyway i highly recommend you read those ntoebook related test sites, good insight, than you get also

top 10 business notebook

10 gamer

10 notebooks for a budget for 500 euros and such....

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## Buffoon

I'm trying to figure out what could fill 32 GiB of RAM on a laptop. Server, I could understand. Lots of virtual machines run concurrently?

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## Roman_Gruber

tmpfs for something. in the old days we called it ramdisk.

also what i read on those overclock pages, is that 4gb of video ram is a minimum. 2gb is too less for blueray resolution 1920x1080. Its just nuts considering i have

1gb ram on my gpu with higher resolution of 1920x1200. 6 years old.

also considering gentoo, 4gb of ram is far too less. my box hangs regularly because google chrome has memory issues. 

just like always in the past, the ram requirements doubles every few years. i still remeber the days where 128mb of ram of a pentium 120 you were a king. usually you had around 16 or 32mb of ram on these hardware. 4mb of video ram on a matrox g400, was kinda pro hardware.

SAdly those skylake cpus, for the low voltage cpus, which ends with the letter u, are not that much better as the previous generation. just a relabeling of previous devices.

like nvidia did with their gpus in the past and probably still do.

I think for games in one year or two, 32gb will be standard for the ram, and 8gb for gpu recommendation.

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## sparks

 *Buffoon wrote:*   

> I'm trying to figure out what could fill 32 GiB of RAM on a laptop. Server, I could understand. Lots of virtual machines run concurrently?

 

Yes, many VM's for testing/dev.  Also, these days Chrome tends to need about 4gb all to itself.

Thank you all for your recommendations, I will check out the links provided.

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## Fitzcarraldo

I know someone who recently bought one of these 15.6" laptops:

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/VortexIV-15/

It's a badged Clevo, but I cannot recall the Clevo model number off the top of my head. Anyway, it matches your wish-list as far as I know (you'll need to check about TPM, but I know Clevo does have models with TPM) and runs Linux (he's using Ubuntu on it). A very nice machine. He opted for 32 GB RAM too.

Back in April I bought one of these 13.3" notebooks and installed Gentoo:

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusVI-13/

which is a badged Clevo W230SS. I am pleased with it.

Both Clevo and Compal are large OEM manufacturers and I can recommend their machines. The build quality of my Compal and Clevo machines is very high (much better than e.g. Acer, HP etc.) and the internal designs are better from a maintenance point of view. I also like the ability to mix-and-match certain components. The PC supplier we both used installed the RAM, GPU, CPU, wireless adapter etc. we specified.

You'll quite often come across Clevo models that are rebadged. Suppliers such as Sager etc. give them a different name and model number and offer them with different options, but they're a Clevo under the hood.

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## snkmoorthy

 *Quote:*   

> 32GB RAM

 

Usually only supported on laptop with i7 and screen size > 15.6 1080p with 4 memory slots each with 8GB SO-DIMMS. Most i5s won't support 32GB RAM

 *Quote:*   

> Video out

 

Anything Nvidia 970 or up now support Nvidia Surround.

AMD GPUs as add-in MXM boards are very rare these days.

 *Quote:*   

> demographic

 

The demographic for these machines are gaming or video rendering, not running VMs, so you will end up paying for better sound, 1080p screens...

Brands to look at;

1. Clevo/Sager

2. MSI

3. Alienware 

4. ASUS

(price range $1000 - $3500)

 *Quote:*   

> some alternative

 

Professional series(Nvidia Quadro/AMD Firepro graphics);

1. Dell precision series

2. HP laptop workstation series (don't recall the name)

(price range $1400 - $2500)

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## roarinelk

I suggest a Dell Precision M6800:

Mine has a 17" screen, but otherwise has all the features you want.

However the fingerprint reader doesn't work on Linux, it's a custom Dell

thingie with no drivers or documentation available. The other stuff 

(even the nfc/rfid reader) all works.

It's very pricey, though.

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## Roman_Gruber

careful on those gamer notebooks, aka clevo and such

those usually do not support optimus, so they need a lot of energy for basic web surfing while optimus notebooks use the integrated gpu in the intel cpu also.

This will result in lower mobility time and more hoter and louder notebook in overall.

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## Fitzcarraldo

tw04l124, I'm not sure where you got that information about Clevo notebooks from, because both the Clevo laptops I mentioned in my previous post have NVIDIA Optimus hardware and work with Bumblebee or the nvidia and Intel drivers all the time, as the user chooses. In my case I opted not to use Bumblebee but to switch between the nvidia and Intel drivers myself, depending on what I am doing (e.g. if I'm using a CAD application then I switch to the nvidia driver). The owner of the other Clevo model I mentioned decided to use Bumblebee with his, and again he only uses the nvidia driver when he wants to. Neither of the laptops uses "a lot of energy for basic Web surfing". My CPU typically runs at 45 to 50 degrees Celsius (49 degrees Celsius as I type this into Firefox in a warm hotel room in which the hotel's a/c is struggling to cool the outside temperature of 37 degrees Celsius). In fact, laptop retailers such as System76 who specialise in selling Linux laptops rebadge Clevo laptops and preload Linux.

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## Roman_Gruber

well i regularly read notebookcheck.com / net that in german, and the same content is on the other domain in english.

and well yes and no

for example Schenker noteboks in germany, do even sell gamer notebooks without optimus as of now, i checked them yesterday. 

desctop cpu => i prefer the intel xeon one with 80 watts

970m => no idea if i really want gsync ..

and because it does not support optimus the xeon is the best cpu to choose. 

you have your opinion, i have mine

and i just gave a warning, that some do not support optimus and thats important to check before buying

3 years ago, all htose gamer notebooks including asus g73 or g74 series afaik did not had optimus. and do not be picky if i am wrong, it was in these years that optimus was kinda disabled on most any brand in central europe ..

on some other notebooks recently you have to reboot and switch the gpu in bios.

so you can not switch from intel gpu to nvidia gpu during usage, no you have to reboot and do it through the bios

The original topic poster asked for general advise and I just gave general reply, you need to think in a bigger scope sometimes. And may write additional content which was not covered in the orignal question when you get the feeling the audience may find the additional information useful.

as said opinions are different, everyone sees thigns different, 

And afaik those clevo barebones, are just rebranded for many things.

also msi are rebranded. 

and those gigabyte / aurorus are also rebranded.

even asus itself rebrand the same hardware for different series => you only see it later when you serach for a bios / or a motherboard or parts when you realize that asus just rebrands the notebooks to have bigger products for sale, but it is only a few hardware models basically.

the worst are these days soldered mainboards where gpu / cpu / ram are soldered all on board, when the mainboard dies you have to pay much more as in the old days where you could reuse the exisisting cpu / ram from the old mainboard. 

sadly those gpus do not have offical a standard, yes the MXM II or what it is called exists, but asus uses an inverted layout and even so, you need to verify where the gpu bios is, when it should be in the bios you are out of luck anyway.

It may be wise, as already written above by myself, to read those test pages and especially ones who look at the repairability, and how to do the maintenance.

some notebooks are hard to clean the dust. a notebook is basically a hoover over the time and sucks up all the dust in your room ...

Feel free to disagree with me. I do not need ot proof that i may know something or not in the first place.

```
The owner of the other Clevo model I mentioned decided to use Bumblebee with his, and again he only uses the nvidia driver when he wants to. Neither of the laptops uses "a lot of energy for basic Web surfing"
```

If you had read any hardware review sites, than you may have already known that the intel gpu needs much less juice as any exisiting nvidia card in the lowest power state. => reference notebookcheck ...

They have from time to time a comparision chart or table, about hte power consumption and it is a bit different for all the gamer notebooks and those who can not switch to the intel gpu have at least a higher power consumption of 10 watts or more in comparision to the intel gpu.

Feel free to read also in overclocking sites than you may also konw that the amd cards need less juice compared to the nvidia ones in the lowest power state...

I think (opinion!!) that the nividia cards are made for high calculation power and do not focus really on power consumption, that has changed a bit with maxwell ...

Were the intel cards are just made for basic functionaliy 

The smaller die size of the intel gpu just is an easy explanation that it needs less juice anyway..

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## Roman_Gruber

Skylake is around the corner.

I am also now in the market for a new notebook.

But I think i will go for a 950m gpu, those 970m 980m 980gtx are far too expensive for the value.

Any quadcore from intel will do for myself ...

and 16gb or 32gb ram ..

It seems intel is waiting till xmas to sell those skylake stuff.

i saw a few skylake models for purchase but they vanished now, ...

And those second hand laptops in my countries, teh peeps ask for far more cash, as the used rubbish is worth, when you only take benchmark / cash in comparision with these days hardware.

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## dalu

I'm also thinking about buying a new one since the MSI one is annoying with its reboot to switch thing and MSI support being stubborn insisting I use Windows.

For a pure Linux laptop I'd not take anything beside Intel graphics, because they are really well supported under Linux and they're not power-hungry.

So currently I'm eyeballing

http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks/10-14-Zoll/TUXEDO-Book-BU1403-14-matt-Full-HD-AHVA-Ultrabook-Intel-Core-i7-4770HQ-Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200-zwei-HDD-SSD-bis-16GB-RAM.geek

German language site.

Looks like it's a rebranded Clevo.

But it without drives and save a few currency-units  :Wink: 

16GB RAM

The base version without drives and 16GB RAM and i7-4770HQ (note: not MQ) and Iris Pro Graphics 5200 and AC7260 Wifi (you never know) costs 1182,90€.

However compared to a desktop PC that's ~600€ more for the additional display and keyboard and camera and the mobility.

But it does not have a fingerprint sensor.

Not sure about TPM.

Not sure about backlit keyboard or the keyboard quality.

Apparently 1920x1200 displays aren't produced in China.

There are 2880x1800 displays but for 15.4" laptops, aka Macbooks. (imho perfect resolution for the work environment).

The 5xxxU Intels can't support larger than 2560x1600 resolution. But their TDP is 15W as opposed to 47W of the 4xxx.

The 4xxx Intels are better in regards to the supported resolution.

5xxxU Intels PCIe version is 2.0 only where the 4xxx is 3.0.

MacBooks are too expensive. Period.

Then there's this baby

```

    1 x bluechip TRAVELline B15W28 mit FHD (1920 x 1080) non-glare Display

    1 x DVD±RW Laufwerk

    1 x Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260

    1 x Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ Quad-Core, 2.8 GHz

    1 x 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3L-1600 MHz KVR CL11 1,35V SODIMM

    1 x 512 GB SSD 2,5" Samsung 850 Pro SATA-III

    1 x 256 GB mSATA PCI Express Mini Card Sandisk X110

    1 x kein Betriebssystem vorinstalliert

    1 x kein Office

    1 x Vollgarantie 24 Monate Bring-In (Akku 6 Monate)

```

with Fingerprint sensor and TPM.

not sure if the keyboard is backlit. (update: it's not, on the other hand, the display is bright enough to light the keys)

For roundabout 1400€ incl. 19% VAT

or less if you want less.

For instance 60GB Kingston mSATA SSD instead of the 256GB PCIe Sandisk X110

or single band wireless

I wish there were mobile chips or laptops that supported ECC RAM.

And then there are the Lenovo Thinkpads and their selling point is the red knob in the middle of the keyboard, apparently it's pretty nice,

and their case design is also pretty nice and apparently support for Thinkpads is good as opposed to Ideapads or other.

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## Roman_Gruber

are you sure you only want an intel gpu.

my pentium t43oo wiht integrated intel sucked since the first day. adn those intel gpus suck even tehse days when you read those notebook sites.

An intel gpu maybe worth when you work with libreoffice writer but else...

even flash is an issue on such low power gpus.

I personally just want to warn you taht you are better off with any entry gpu like 920m from invidia instead of built in intel gpu.

And be careful to check if its an gpu or chipset graphics. the nividia chipset graphics on the other notebook i have is as bad as the integrated intel one.

920-940m from nvidia seems to be a good choice these days, very power efficent. amd is rare these days for gpus in notebooks. 

and when you buy those amd apu notebooks you may have a better gpu but a cpu which is not that decent in comparision with intel.

edit:

You better wait until the skylake is for sale, that means that the previous platform may be cheaper.

I also look at those mysn / schenker noteobooks. one of those have desctop cpus in their barebones. and it costs not htat much more than the average gamer notebook

http://www.mysn.eu/shop/xmg-gaming-notebooks-and-pcs/xmg-gaming-notebooks-with-17-inch-display/xmg-u705-gamingnotebook.html

The xeon cpu is quite an option, and without integrated intel graphics, that sucks anyway.

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## kirk9

You could try a ASUS laptop. What's the budget?

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## kirk9

You pretty much need to look at a few mid-range models and see if any work http://pc4u.org/best-laptop-under-500-dollars

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