Thanks Roger! Great tip on the external water cooler. I don't go mobile much with my laptop but I'm currently working from home where I need to often switch between a work Laptop and my NLE/DAW laptop setup. I currently have that setup with an external Dell dock with multiple USB hubs which connects all my peripherals such as external monitors, wireless mouse/key pads, external MCU controllers and I invested quite a bit in external USB HDD/SSD storage.

So I have that setup where I plug my laptop into a single USB-C connector and everything gets connected and powered through that single connection where I am able to easily swap between my work laptop and personal laptop through a single USB-C interface connection.

I was wondering how convenient that cooler would connect/disconnect in my day to day of swapping between work/home PC laptops. Will definitely need to check more into that and reconsider if that's something I want to deal with on an almost daily basis.

That setup is reason I want at least a USB3.2 2x2 connection, preferably Thunderbolt 4. Want to get more speed out of my external SSDs as well as handle the dual monitors and other peripherals communicating through that single port. It's working fine on my USB-C Gen 3.1 port connection but know I can get more speed than the 450MB/Sec I'm seeing from my external USB SSDs.

It's unique but I wouldn't want to deal with moving this system with a water cooler. This is the I watched on the laptop.

I understand your approach and also want to do something similar- just use my XPS 15 for work and then have a second computer for media work. They'll share monitors and peripherals. I ended up deciding on the desktop route to get the full performance out of components as it's not power and heat limited. I also don't really need two laptops and a desktop can sit under the desk without bothering me. I'm waiting for parts to come down in price now.

Thanks for posting the video. It's definitely an interesting and simple concept, yet I could see some of the inconvenience which comes with it. I think how I would use it would be to not use the external water cooling the majority of the time except for the times where I'm sitting down to work on a longer session of audio/video editing. I think that would reduce the continued maintenance and potential cleanup aspects of the water connect/disconnect.

On a side note, if you're shopping for deals. I feel I've been getting some pretty killer deals on PC components through Amazon. When I'm not in an urgent need, I add items to a shopping list and browse through those lists as I'm having my morning coffee. I look for the "used" and sold through Amazon Warehouse deals. I also have Keepa installed in my browser which shows the price trends of items on Amazon, so I know if I'm getting a good deal or not. I just purchased my 3rd Samsung M.2 2TB 970 Evo Plus SSD today through an Amazon Warehouse deal for $135. I've made quite a few Amazon warehouse deal purchases now and a majority of the times I have found the items are new but the packaging has a dent, scrape, or tear in it. So far I've only received a Seagate 5TB HDD purchased for $60 which I had to return which I found was running at slower transfer speeds than expected, but it was a no hassle return within 30 days of dropping it off at a nearby UPS store. The risks have been worth the savings in my experience so far. Heck, I may even make this new laptop purchase via an Amazon warehouse deal if the savings are significant enough.

Here's what Keepa shows me for price trends of the 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD. I have one of these in my laptop as we speak and have been putting the others in external USB enclosures for external SSD usage.

P.S. Forum won't seem to let me upload a .JPG

https://ibb.co/KrZbb0S

Picked up an Asus Zenbook Pro 16x OLED with 4k touchscreen. Particularly like the keyboard, air cooled design, and 3060 gpu. Not much bigger than my old Dell xps-15 and battery life is sufficient to get me through 4 to 5 hour shoots unplugged.

How has the 3060 GPU doing when working on projects? Most I’ve been looking at have a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. Hoping that GPU is enough in a laptop.

Would recommend firstly for you to wait for coming INTEL 13th generation CPUs literally being launched in a few hours (desktops):
https://www.pcguide.com/cpu/intel-13th-gen-raptor-lake-rumored-specs-release-date-price/
This will allow for DDR5 RAM, support for PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs and better specs (Intel claims that Raptor Lake will have a 15% gain in single-threaded performance and a 41% gain in multi-threaded compared to Alder Lake) plus more balanced power use by the utilization of more P (performance) and E (efficient) cores. Furthermore it is expected to come with more L3 Cache (20% increase).

All the above might be quite relevant since gen 12th marked the start of thermal versus performance balance. Until there CPUs had to be extra, exxtra cooled in order to utilize its specified top limit, so very frequently laptops were automatically throttled down. Gen 13th is expected to offer very good performance in all relevant metrics while staying cooler meaning longer and safer life service and performance, including longer battery usage.

That stated, I would adhere to RogerS suggestion to go for Alienware family, simply put this DELL line has better cooling and laptop hardware design (coming from the demanding gaming world).
Be aware of possible soldered RAM at 15inch models. Actual X15, both R1 and R2 versions offer ONLY soldered RAM up to 32 GB. This could very well change for coming X15 R3 version, but has to be verified firstly.
X17 R1 and R2 versions have socketted RAM and better cooling allowance.

Intel gen 13th laptop CPUs and coming laptop lines are expected to launch at 2023 Q1, possibly early on.
 

Thanks for the tip @Cielspacing . My only concern with something like that is the prices of those CPUs tend to be on the high-end due to being latest/greatest cutting-edge tech available where it will likely be 2 years before they start to come down in price. However, the good thing is since Gen 13 will be coming out as you stated, then that does entice me to wait since once laptops start coming out with the Gen 13 CPUs, the Gen 12 will start dropping in price. I'm at a point in my life where having the latest/greatest is a nice perk to have but am no longer interested in chasing after that top of the technology curve. I'm ok with being a generation behind where things cost less and the initial kinks have been worked out. I tend to maintain my laptops well, where I typically get at least 6 years use out of them before I'm ready to update, so by the next upgrade I'll likely be looking at Gen 15+ while Gen 16+ is coming out. 😉 Now if Intel stated Gen 13th is going to have all those great wiz-bang improvements as well as cost less than the current Gen 12, then sign me up but I haven't ever seen that happen. 😄

With current CPU and GPU prices dropping, DDR5 ram continuing to fall in price dramatically from a year ago, and SSD prices also coming back down, it's a great time to wait a bit : )

Thanks for the Amazon Warehouse tip, btw, I was unaware of that.

I'll definitely, add the Dell Alienware to the shopping list. I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 series now which has been a good solid laptop. Still runs great after maxing out the RAM, SSD upgrades, replacing the battery but the Inspiron series typically don't come with higher end GPUs or cooling offerings, so plan to correct that with next purchase. Just started noticing some of my KB keys need some extra harder love taps to activate and likely need to replace the keypad. Plan to hand that Dell down to the wife who wants a laptop for web browsing and office work. I typically put a feature comparison vs price matrix together and widdle down my selection which all takes a good 2-3 months. So this isn't a I have to have it now type of shopping spree since this will be a purchase I plan to live with for the next 4 years+.

The Amazon warehouse deals are great. You can often save 20-50% off on the already low Amazon prices. For my external backup storage, I've been purchasing USB dual drive RAID enclosures and putting dual Seagate 5TB 2.5in HDD drives in them, configured as RAID0. The dual 2.5in raid case by Oyen Digital has been one of my faves, regular price is $100. Have picked up 4 of those cases now, watching out for Amazon warehouse deals and purchased each of them between $45-$55. The Seagate 2.5in 5TB HDDs, regular price around $120 been grabbing for $55-$60 through warehouse deals. Been a great solution for all my backup needs, where I've been getting 280MB/sec transfer speeds out of those USB/HDD setups. So 10TB of backup storage at a total cost of about $170, providing transfer speeds of 280MB/sec from a USB HDD....not too bad. Also built a 36TB big backup USB RAID0 drive, using dual Seagate 3.5in 7200rpm HDD Enterprise drives through warehouse deals. That drive rivals the speeds of some of my external USB SSDs reaching 440MB/sec.

How has the 3060 GPU doing when working on projects? Most I’ve been looking at have a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. Hoping that GPU is enough in a laptop.

@Rednroll I think it's ok but probably not as zippy as a 3070. But easier on the battery. Just backed up a big project in the process of YouTube upload to a 2tb SanDisk Ultra 3D. Took about 7 min to render one song clip on my desktop (6900xt+ArcA380) from internal m.2, but from the backup media: 14 min on my Nuc8 road machine, and 16 min on the Zenbook. Not quite as fast but I think I can get by now on road trips with the Zenbook in carry-on without the Nuc which is what I was hoping for.

EDIT: actual render times with the 6900xt/Arc: 6:26 (m.2) and 6:42 (Sandisk 3D sata ssd)

Thanks Howard, sounds good to me. Render times and battery life are not big concerns for me but of course the faster the better. Hoping to just not run into any real-time preview of FX bottleneck concerns. Admittedly, I get confused on how the GPU performance comes into play between rendering and real-time previews, just know what I have currently with a Nvidia 940MX isn't up to the tasks of editing video with FXs applied.

Well, I took the plunge and placed my order today for a new laptop. I ended up being enticed into the new 13th Gen Intel CPU's and Nvidia 4000 series GPU combo. When I compared prices between the Gen 12 CPU's with Nvidia 3080i GPU's the price savings vs performance weren't attractive enough at this time.

I decided for my needs and hoping to get 4-6 years of longevity from this laptop, these were my top criteria items.

1. Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU or better

2. Nvidia GeForce RTX-4080 GPU or better

3. 15-16in screen size

4. Thunderbolt 4 USB

5. Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD slots

I narrowed down my shopping list to the following options.

And the winner is..........<drum roll>

I ended up going with the Eluktronics Mech-16 GP with these key items being the deciding factors.

- I love the liquid cooling option where they improved the associated drawbacks with their newly released 2023 G2 series cooler and magnetic connection. I did a lot of research and found with many gaming laptops that while they tend to run cool today using heat pipes and fans, over time as media/gaming/software processes become more demanding, they tend to eventually run hot in their later part of life and as such life expectancy then tends to diminish quickly in the later years. So I see it as a good longevity feature in being able to future proof the laptop. Additionally, since I'm an audio guy, annoying fan noise from a laptop is a concern where the liquid cooling will keep the laptop running for hours at a time without having to be deal with distracting fan noises kicking on.

- It came with most everything I wanted and I could custom configure order it and eliminate paying for items I wasn't trilled with out of the box thus making it the best value option when I took into consideration planned future upgrades of RAM, and Storage. For example, all these laptops max out at 64GB of DDR5 memory capacities with 2 memory slots. If I ordered any of them with 64GB of ram pre-installed their associated prices went through the roof as compared to if I purchased 64GB of DDR5 RAM separately. If I went with their bare min offerings of 16GB or 32GB of memory pre-installed they all shipped with 2x8GB or 2x16GB ram dimms which I would be paying for now and end up throwing them away later since every laptop I've owned I've ran across that experience where I have always ended up eventually installing the max RAM allowed. It's also the same experience on the pre-installed SSD storage options. Eluktronics was the only manufacture who provided me a purchase configuration options of NO ram, NO SSD storage and additionally without an OS pre-installed. I already have a Win10 Pro license available with free update offerings to Win 11 Pro, so I saved $150 on paying for another Win11 Pro license I didn't really need and I additionally saved $ by not over paying for RAM or Storage upgrades or paying for reduced RAM/Storage I would throw away or have to try and sell after the fact.

After eliminating those items from my purchase, I was able to separately purchase 64GB of RAM and a 2TB Gen4 Samsung 980 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD. In doing so, I calculated I saved well over $1K if I had tried to purchase any of the other options with a 2TB SSD and 64GB of memory pre-installed.

- Everything you need, nothing you don't (ie no software bloat pre-installed!) Every Dell or Asus laptop I purchased in the past always came with a bunch of bloatware apps running in the background where I would end up spending a lot of time trying to uninstall or turn that garbage off in an effort to optimize performance for Audio and Video work. Eluktronics pre-installed OS comes with none of that, they provide just the drivers to make everything run along with a Bios configuration/tuning app. It seems they're all about the no nonsense focus on performance while not trying to sell you a bunch of bloatware add-on stuff hooked into the OS and running in the background, through ongoing future advertising. "Hey, your warranty/service tag is about to expire would you like to purchase an extended service plan for continued support?" No Dell and Asus, if your product doesn't last me over a year without tech failure issues.....I will be purchasing another brand in the future to replace it.

End configuration specs.

CPU: Intel Core i9-13900HX (24 cores, 8 performance + 16 efficiency cores).

GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX-4080 (12GB DDR6) with Mux Switch

Memory: 64GB Crucial 4800Mhz DDR5

Storage: (4TB Total) Slot 1(OS/Programs): 2TB M.2 NVMe Samsung 980 Pro, Slot 2: 2TB M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 Evo Plus

Cooling: CPU and GPU heat pipes, (2) Fans, G2 Liquid Cooler.

Total Price: $3.1K

Hopefully, it all works out. Can't wait to get it, set it all up and run some Vegas benchmark tests with it and see how it does.

Nice, I look forward to see your benchmark performance! Curious how it compares to similar spec'd desktops. For reference 2 benchmarks are in my signature.

This is the 1st I've heard of PC's with a GPU "Mux" switch. I can understand the benefit of this switch for gaming. Definitely, am curious to learn if this feature would have any kind of benefits for Vegas when working with video having it configured one way or the other. The Dell Alienware was in a close 2nd place for having a lot of bang for the buck but was the only option in consideration which didn't seem to include a GPU mux switch. That and the Dell was the only one not to include a num pad with it's built-in keyboard and I've found that to be really annoying with my current laptop having to rely on an external keyboard or numeric keypad since I use that keypad often when editing in Vegas.

Doesn't that bypass the iGPU? I think it would improve latency but be counterproductive in VEGAS where the iGPU can do decoding. That said I don't think anyone's tested that in VEGAS.

Doesn't that bypass the iGPU? I think it would improve latency but be counterproductive in VEGAS where the iGPU can do decoding. That said I don't think anyone's tested that in VEGAS.

Exactly! It's a switch which allows the GPU to be configured so it bypasses the iGPU and connects it directly to the display port or standard mode of routing it through the CPU/iGPU. Apparently, you use the provided Bios tuning/adjustment app to configure it one way or the other followed by a reboot. Going to have to run the benchmark tests in your signature in both configurations and see which way provides the best benefits. Seemed like a nice option to be able to experiment around with. ☺️

@Rednroll I don't know if the mux switch actually disables the igpu... I think it's intended to rewire the connection to the screen. My laptop doesn't let me do that, even in bios. On my desktops, when I change it in bios, it physically disables the igpu and the motherboard hdmi port. You'll have to try it and see if the Intel igpu becomes unavailable as a decoding choice on the Vegas i/o screen. If it doesn't, you might get better playback performance letting the Nvidia do the displaying. If it actually disappears the igpu for all purposes, Vegas may only benefit with easily decoded camera footage, like ProRes, and suffer with hevc and maybe even with avc.

I think it has the GPU directly output to the screen so assume the iGPU wouldn't work for decoding. I'd like to see how it really works in VEGAS.

I have that so called mux switch on my laptop (MSI GT77).

Disabling the igpu disable the intel I/O and video processing options in Vegas.

Oddly qsv hevc encoding is still available but not the qsv avc one.

Like @Howard-Vigorita wrote, the play back performance is better with the igpu for long gop hevc or avc footage, so there is no benefit with disabling the igpu if you edit such footage.

Thanks for your insight! Sounds like I'll be keeping that switch running through the CPU/iGPU when working with Vegas and I don't do any gaming on my PC's so likely an unused feature for myself but always good to know and have options if ever needed. However, including the RTX-4080 in my laptop build does provide me the ability to take advantage of a free game offer promotion through Nvidia called "Redfall Bite Back Edition", whatever that is.. So will have my 1st PC game available to play around with that switch and see what it does. :D

Well, unfortunately instead of performing Vegas benchmarking tests to see how well the new laptop performs with Vegas, I've been in communications with Eluktronics tech support troubleshooting overall performance issues.

I set it up with Win10 Pro, drivers installed, performance preference adjustments, etc and ran some initial benchmarking tests. Glad I did that because the results were way below expectations.

Here's one of those benchmarks showing the CPU, GPU, SSDs and RAM all performing below expectations of comparative system components which seemed very odd to me. Although the laptop seemed to be functioning fine, it was like something was capping the overall system performance.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/60252524

CineBench Benchmark scores were hovering around 11K points, where others with the same laptop were showing scores in the 25K-31K ranges.

So reached out to Eluktronics Tech support who have been very responsive, responding within minutes to each email I've sent. They initially suspected driver related issues due to me installing Win10 instead of Win11. So I went ahead and installed Win11 and ran the same benchmarking tests and observed no improvements.

As I was performing the Win11 installs I noticed the laptop battery was at 0%, it showed power was connected but no battery charging. Trying to start the laptop just on battery was a no go. Today their tech support had me taking pictures of the inside connections, disconnect/reconnect the battery connector.

I already know the likely problem at this point, since I did some Google research on the topic. The likely scenario seems to be it has come with a faulty AC power adapter out of the box according to a few others with a similar experience.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eluktronics/comments/qx2szo/brand_new_max_17_not_charging/

Now waiting for Eluktronics tech support to come to that same likely conclusion after my response to their troubleshooting requests.

Definitely, a disappointing situation currently but can speak highly to their tech support. They're located in the U.S., respond quickly, and speak clear technical English. They haven't been walking me through a script of "Have you tried turning the laptop off and back on?" long drawn out type of Q&A. I ran some requested benchmarks for them and they responded back immediately stating, "Yes, something definitely doesn't seem right. No problem, let's get this figured out for you."

The faulty power supply adapter seems to make sense to me. It likely means the adapter isn't able to provide adequate power to the laptop under benchmark stress tests and thus may be the reason the system seems to be underperforming across the board for each component and also isn't charging the battery. Hope to get this all sorted out, so I can start having some fun with this new laptop. Will keep everyone posted.

Afterwards, need to decide if I want to continue with Windows 11 or go back to Win10 as I had originally planned.

Without power supply, I see from my laptop a significant performance drop too.

I work here with Win11.