[Qgis-user] minimum and recommended specs for a laptop?

[Patrick Dunford]

Good afternoon

An i7 CPU is very powerful and will have more than enough capability but 
it depends on the exact tasks. I carry out all my mapping with Pentium G 
CPUs in my computers (i1 equivalent) with Debian as the OS.

I would think the amount of RAM you have is probably of more 
significance than different models of i7. You can also choose a distro 
or desktop environment that is resource efficient, currently I prefer 
XFCE compared to some of the other resource hungry environments.

You could also consider an SSD as being faster than a regular HDD if 
disk swapping may occur.

If your laptop gets too hot it may not be designed for intensive work 
and this is probably a factor of the laptop itself not the workload. It 
is simply very difficult to fit a cooling solution within most laptop 
chassis and a more powerful CPU will need more cooling. A less powerful 
CPU may take longer but have less heat output working at full power for 
long periods.


On 19/07/18 21:32, Steven Drake wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm thinking of buying a laptop and wondering about the minimum and 
> recommended specs for a laptop to run QGIS 3.x? The plan is to use 
> Ubuntu as the OS and the laptop for writing scripts, working on 
> Process Models, etc... with occasional full blown tests using 'large' 
> (+500,000 polygon) shapefiles. My desktop is more than sufficient for 
> this but I'm looking for something to use when travelling.
>
> I used to have a somewhat decent laptop but it is older and gets crazy 
> hot... and does not do well with larger shapefiles. The old laptop 
> case actually deformed slightly in the hot areas which screams to me 
> "fire hazard!" and therefore is no longer used.I'd like to avoid those 
> issues with the new laptop.
>
> The laptops on the market seem to be mainly 7th generation Intel 
> processors with a wide variation in performance. Just to keep this 
> simple, let's consider i7 types. There are designations ending with a 
> "U" which use less power, create less heat and used in lower 
> performing computers. Then there are the "H" and "HQ" processors in 
> higher end computers which sound more capable and use more power.
>
> I'm guessing a "U" processor will be overtaxed by the scenario in the 
> first paragraph. So *if* it does not crash it will run to the design 
> limit and heat up. If using the "H" or "HQ" processors it will likely 
> not crash, produce lots of heat but maybe not too much since it is 
> designed for such intensive applications?
>
> Am I understanding the situation correctly? What else might play a 
> significant role in the heat issue? What about laptops with built in 
> cooling systems beyond the normal fans and heat sinks? And most 
> importantly... how to pick a computer / processor / other items 
> capable of running QGIS with large datasets? How to find a reasonable 
> middle between performance and heat? ...and of course not cost too 
> much? Gaming computers????
>
> Thank you,
>
> --S
>
>
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