Disappointed with Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, considering ThinkPad X1 Carbon or other ThinkPad

I'm a data scientist that is looking for a better personal laptop - something to use for personal experiments with machine learning, neural networks, and computer science / math stuff in general. I know that, for the most part, I will eventually focus on training machine learning models in the cloud (like Google Cloud or AWS). For cloud computing, it doesn't matter which computer I use. Still, I want a modern, capable laptop where I can do some smaller prototyping and testing.

Current laptops: Up until 2 weeks ago, these were my only laptops.

- ThinkPad T420. I've owned this since 2015. It has served me well, but it's quite heavy, barely holds a charge, only has a screen resolution of 1600 x 900, and is getting old.

- Acer Swift 1. I've owned this for a few months. It's nice and light, but it has a dim screen, and its weak Pentium processor isn't compatible with TensorFlow past version 1.5.

- ThinkPad X260. This is actually my work laptop. It's decent, but I don't own it, and I associate it with work (unfortunately).


Last week, I bought a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 from the Dell outlet store online. I originally wanted the regular XPS 13, but the 2-in-1 was on sale at a great discount. It's small, has a great looking screen, and I managed to dual-boot it with Windows 10 and Fedora (someone on a forum warned against Ubuntu on this machine). The main issue with the Dell: core temperature. I would routinely see the core temps spike up to 91 C while doing trivial tasks like downloading large files. And if I tried to train a simple neural network on the MNIST data set, the temperature would stay between 80-90 C the entire time.

I know that the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is passively cooled (no fan), but these core temps seem unacceptable. I'm planning on sending this laptop back, but I wanted advice on what to get next.

I've been debating between:

- ThinkPad X1 Carbon
- ThinkPad T470
- Any other laptop you might suggest?

Attached: x1_carbon.jpg (810x456, 91K)

Other urls found in this thread:

psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad A485/ThinkPad_A485_Platform_Specifications.pdf
psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen)/ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_6th_Gen_Platform_Specifications.pdf
anyforums.com/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

OP here, with the rest of my post.

Main things I'm looking for in a laptop:
- Reasonable core temps
- At least i5 processor from the past 2-3 years
- At least 1920 x 1080 screen resolution
- At least 8 GB RAM
- At least 256 GB SSD
- Lower weight would be nice (but not totally necessary)
- Ability to handle machine learning tasks (but that doesn't mean it needs a GPU).
- Good compatibility with Ubuntu, and can be dual-booted with Windows 10
- Preferably refurbished from an online outlet store (to save cost)
- Price hopefully under $1000, though that is slightly flexible.

T480s has better cooling than the X1C. It's a little bigger, but not much.

Buy a mbp w/o touchpad. Ive been running heavy nn on tensorflow, docker and even MATLAB. If youl'll use it with clouds services on mind itw the best combo and can run ubuntu (and ROS on top of it) without problems.

HP Envy x360

you need a good gpu for that forget about doing those things in a laptop unless you will only use it for small toy projects

>in a laptop
It's perfectly reasonable to be doing these things in a laptop. As long as you're not trying to train resnet you'll be fine.

You want a laptop with a Thunderbolt 3 port in it. This means you'll be able to plug in a GPU if you need one.

Good to know! I'll take that into consideration when shopping. Hopefully the Lenovo outlet store has some good deals on the T480s.

Like I said above, I will probably be doing most of my training using cloud services like Google Cloud or AWS. I would mostly use the laptop's internal computing power for prototyping smaller things.

lmao this makes no sense

>I'm a data scientist
>doing ML and NN on your laptop

lmao your company should be providing you with server access for this stuff

It's certainly a viable option, but I've been shying away from Mac lately, esp hearing things from Louis Rossman and Linus Sebastian.

i have a X1C6
>8gb ram
>256 ssd
>8250U proccessor

if i were you i would wait for the A485 and get the 2500U cpu, 16gb ram version, youll love it believe me. I like my X1C6 but i dont LOVE it mostly because I like thicker and heavier laptops (workstations like P51). if i were you i would goto costco and try out all the laptops i wish i did before i bought it lmfao

if interested:
>a485
psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad A485/ThinkPad_A485_Platform_Specifications.pdf
>x1c6
psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen)/ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_6th_Gen_Platform_Specifications.pdf

This is for personal projects. I already have work servers for work bullshit.

Interesting. I'd rather save costs by buying something refurbished, and I'm not sure how well the A485 will play with Ubuntu, but it's probably worth considering. I'll look into it!

How are the core temps on the HP Envy X360?

It depends what you care more about and what your budget is

I currently own the thinkpad X1 carbon 5th gen and my brother owns the Surfacebook 1st gen

I highly recommend both laptops, I honestly don't think you should even consider others.

The gen 6 thinkpad is made of a different material than older models, and I like it much more - it's a soft to the touch, matte plastic, which covers fingerprints quite well.

I think the keyboard on the thinkpad is better than the one on the surface book, and I also can't live without the trackpoint which is another plus in my book for thinkpad.

That being said, specs wise the surface book is the better machine. (however, my laptop handles machine learning or downloading large files easily. I'm not a data scientist but I've played around with tensorflow and MNIST in scikit learn before and had no issues with heat)

The surface book will be more expensive for most configurations but includes a dedicated GPU in higher end models, unlike any X1 carbon. The screen is fantastic, and using the stylus on the touch screen feels *right* - it's smooth and the response is immediate and accurate. It's a very polished product.

The surface book isn't as strong as the thinkpad - it can and will break easily if dropped or something else happens. It can't be fixed - at all. My brother had his surface book in a soft case in his backpack a few months back, on a plane ride - after storing in the overhead bin the screen on his laptop was shattered. This should be a consideration, no matter how careful you are imo. The laptop is beautiful, don't get me wrong - and the keyboard is very nice as well - but it simply isn't as tough.

In my opinion, between these two laptops, it comes down to how important the design of the laptop is versus the specs.

If you do anything related to graphics or need the GPU the surface book is your only option - if you prefer a trackpoint or thinkpad design then go with thinkpad.

ALL ABORT
THINKPAD SHILL THREAD DETECTED

>machine learning

jesus fucking christ

Great to hear your firsthand experience! I am leaning towards the ThinkPad X1 Carbon based on this. If I run models in the cloud, an internal GPU won't be necessary, and I certainly appreciate ThinkPad durability.

No, you cannot find what you want for 1000 bucks or less. Or maybe there is some chinkshit with decent specs but squeaky plastic build that will break in less than a year.

If you want performance and build quality, you'll have to pay more than 1500.

basically what he said honestly its really sad but i didnt realize this until i spent the money, but that extra ram and better gpu is WORTH IT

yet another thinkpad shill thread

im also a data scientist btw

There are refurbished ThinkPad X1 Carbons available at the Lenovo outlet store for less than $1000 USD.

well, what laptop do you use?

So what?
OP is probably a harder worker than you. I was going to make this thread for myself until I found it here.

AMD Zen so cool

*stabs you in the back*

Attached: mxp2.jpg (3328x1698, 421K)

not telling you to keep it but just wanted to let you know that you won't find THAT big of a difference in cooling compared to others. Trust me, I was surprised with how high the XPS 13 temps were like at first, so I took the time to check others out, some of those which you're looking at right now and they weren't far off.

I have the normal XPS-13 (had a lenovo 2-in-1 and never used the touchscreen) and do development work on it with a CentOS distro. Avg core temp is around 50-70C, depending on the workload. Use it mainly to VNC into various servers and gen'l BS.

if you're going to get a T480/T480s, opt for the T480s with the weaker MX150 because the cooling on either one cannot handle a full power MX150. The T480 throttles to hell unless you take a shit ton of effort optimize it, mainly because the GPU and CPU throttle at different temps and irrc, there's no way to actually undervolt the GPU right now (at least with Windows?) other than overclocking it to indirectly undervolt it.

the MX150 on the T480s won't throttle under battery either since it's already a measly 10 watts either way. *But If you're going to be plugged in for whatever you're going to do, then you might as well forgo the eGPU entirely and stick with eGPU. Dunno if you necesarilly need TB3 with 4 lanes for your purposes, then X1 Carbon with no ethernet port is your best bet.

or, wait and see if the X1 Extreme or P1 is any good. A485 is never going to come out, forget about that.

T540P friend

Bought mine recently.
>i7 4810MQ
>8GB of RAM with expandability
>250GB Samsung SSD
>1080p screen with the option of a 2880x1620 upgrade
>13 hours of battery life with no Wi-fi etc., just word processing
>Good compatibility with Linux and W10
>Room for a 2nd SSD if you don't want the optical bay

I paid £300 for mine.

Going to need a uni laptop as I can't lug my pc and monitor there. Got around £1000

Lenovo 730. 4 cores i5, 8 GB.

Just remember they shill for Pajeetsoft and Goolag to get YouTube money by clickbait bashing Apple

get lucky and find a $300 w541 with a new 9 cell battery and 60 days of warranty remaining.

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Its pretty average, the computer has a vent right on the backside so your fingers wont get burned but next to the trackpad it gets quite hot if you are doing some very cpu intensive tasks or are just using alot of the graphics. It usually doesnt require to turn on the fan and is pretty cool for normal use browser, text editor, programing, but any other thing that requires editing or hard video rendering will make it hot af.

I have this model and its a pretty good ultra book for the price.

I am using it for university and my coursework requires me to use some programs that aren't really heavy on graphics or processing power yet it does make it go hot suddenly or make the fans go crazy. Its usually not very loud so you can work with them on and not be bothered but its crazy having Firefox or chrome with 10+tabs makes the fans go nuts sometimes.

Its very portable ill give it that and has a good graphics option to run some games on my free time or intense programs which i don't use personally.

Other than that its sturdy enough body made of metal although the touchscreen is glossy as shit and fingerprint magnet and if you're not careful the screen will get scratched just like phones its a shit.

Some variety of the laptop got some bug issues the screen will go blank and completely freeze the computer needed a full boot and then chrome will act up on you tube videos because of some graphics card issue but it can all be fixed by letting your computer do windows update and get the drivers it need to stop fucking up.

Why do you need a laptop? Kys

Take a look at the Dell Latitude 7480 with a Thinkpad USB-C dock. Latest Ubuntu on it is really comfy. It's more expensive than you asked for me but let me tell you this thing is a beauty.

fuck you CIA botnet