How much RAM can i install on a laptop?

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kiwipawl

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# 175063 16-Jun-2015 10:28

Hi All,

I want to run a high res pro quality 3D scanner on a laptop and I need alot of ram. What is the max RAM I can run on a laptop?

Cheers Paul.

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# 1325595 16-Jun-2015 10:29

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Depends on the laptop. More details required!

kiwipawl

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# 1325599 16-Jun-2015 10:35

We haven't purchased the laptop yet. We will buy one that lets us use the max amout of RAM we can. any suggestions?

wasabi2k

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# 1325604 16-Jun-2015 10:38

most laptops will have 1 or 2 SODIMM slots.

you can buy up to 16GB SO-DIMMs so your theoretical max is 32GB (assuming hardware compatibility - which you need to verify.).

Obviously you will need a 64 bit OS and if they come with 8GB already you will probably have to throw that away (as it will likely be 2 x 4GB).

Jase2985

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# 1325605 16-Jun-2015 10:38

most mid to high end ones allow you to run 8GB per slot and have 2 slots, there are some high end gaming ones which have 4 slots and you can use 8GB in each slot

have not seen one that takes 16GB ram sticks per slot

kiwipawl

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# 1325611 16-Jun-2015 10:42

Any recommendations on high end gaminng laptops in NZ? It also needs to have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics card. THe company recommends Sager laptops. Are these available in NZ?

wasabi2k

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# 1325618 16-Jun-2015 10:49

kiwipawl: Any recommendations on high end gaminng laptops in NZ? It also needs to have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics card. THe company recommends Sager laptops. Are these available in NZ?

No, you will not get Sager (similar to Clevo) - nearest place is AU.

In NZ you are really looking at MSI and ASUS for gaming laptops, possibly Acer.

What level are you looking?

GTX960 is currently a good sweet spot (roughly 2200-2600) but won't play everything at high in 1080, but is available in slimmer setups (MSI GE62/72 is really nice - $2500)
GTX970 is best performance for dollar but you will pay around 3k (MSI GT72 - $2700)
GTX980 is an absolute monster but carries at least a $500 premium over the 970 (MSI GT72 Dominator - $4000!!!).

Anything below 960 I don't consider a gaming laptop.

I have had nothing but horrible experiences with AMD's mobility products.

Computer Lounge sell Asus and MSI, PBTech sell Asus, JustLaptops sell MSI and some others.

Edit, RAM wise - if you are gaming 16GB is fine.

Edit Edit - make sure you get an SSD. Cannot stress this enough.

toyonut

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# 1325628 16-Jun-2015 10:54

It sounds pretty specialized. Is it using something to do with CUDA for processing? Is that the reason for the Nvidia card? if so, check what cards they support and go limit your laptop by that.
Alienware is always a good bet - http://www.alienware.co.nz/ otherwise have a look at Asus ROG machines or Acer Nitro. Some of the Nitro's come with 16GB RAM and an SSD+HDD combo already.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

Oblivian

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# 1325648 16-Jun-2015 11:17

http://duo.co.nz/configurator-memory.aspx

Rough guide if you know the model you are looking at

kiwipawl

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# 1325655 16-Jun-2015 11:23

It is for one of these

http://www.artec3d.com/hardware/artec-spider/

and one of these

http://www.artec3d.com/hardware/artec-eva/

I also needs to have a usb 2 connector and yes KUDA is a important part of the requirements.

We already have the scanners and they struggle at times with our Toshiba SatPro L50, with an Intel Haswell i7-4700MQ 2.4 GHz, 12 gb RAM , with a GT740m 2GB NVidia graphics, so we were at looking at upgrading our laptop.

Cheers Paul

macuser

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# 1325660 16-Jun-2015 11:26

You can't get 16GB so-dimms yet, well not any real way. One company sells them in the US and they're $365 each.

There hasn't been a real increase in so-dimm size for years, which is annoying because I'd really love 32GB ram in my machine.

There are some laptops that do have 4 SO-DIMM slots, that's going to be OP's best bet.

macuser

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# 1325667 16-Jun-2015 11:32

Dell Precision M6800 has 4 DIMMs, so that's a good bet. It's expensive but will be a powerful workstation replacement.

You can also improve performance by having an SSD as scratch disk (if your software allows it)

nathan

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# 1325669 16-Jun-2015 11:34

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I have a Dell M6800 with 32GB of RAM, and 3 SSDs, 1 boot OS, and then 2 SSDs striped as RAID 0

It flies

timmmay

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# 1325692 16-Jun-2015 12:16

Why on a laptop? If you're doing 3D modelling get a desktop, it'll be cheaper and faster.

kiwipawl

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# 1325695 16-Jun-2015 12:18

We need a laptop so we can take the scanners out on loaction. The majority of our scanning is off site.

Jase2985

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# 1325815 16-Jun-2015 14:51

is a laptop with a Quadro card going to be better than one with a 960/980 for this sort of stuff? as there are a few profession CAD laptops out there with the quadro graphics cards

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