Best laptop for Premiere Pro CC 2015?

[Moxtelling]

Hi

I have a nice system at my homeoffice, but now I need a laptop too, for when I´m working at another office in town. I´m in a bit of a hurry, and have not catched up lately on all the new laptops and stuff, so I hope some of you guys will give it a try and help me with this one 😉

I allready have an 4 year old laptop with only 4 GB RAM and even though it did a reasonable job years ago in Photoshop CS4 etc. it really doesn´t work for anything else than Word and internetbrowsing anymore.

So I need a laptop that will do nice, but not a 10.000$ workstation laptop...

I mostly edit AVCHD files and nothing above 1080 50P, but who knows if I will not have to deal with 4K within a year. But the 4K is not a real dealbreaker - 1080 will be just fine for a while I guess, as I mostly edit videos for online use. Besides from Premiere I use Indesign, Photoshop. Illustrator and Lightroom a lot.

As I ám going to be sitting in a small office with two other persons, I really need a laptop that does not make to much noise when idle or during normal use (like photoshop, etc.) I can live with a bit of noise when encoding/exporting video, but not while I am edditing in Premiere...

I have thought about the ASUS ROG G751JT-T7018H - wich comes with 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD / 7200 rpm,

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M - 3 GB GDDR5 and thunderbolt....

So the pricetag would about 2500 $ I guess - don´t want to spend more. Anyone having experiences with this laptop - especially concerning noiselevel?

My questions is (and these question are general questions - not only concerning the the ASUS mentioned above):

1. Is 16 GB RAM sufficient - or will 32 make a huge difference? I did not see much improvements when I upgraded my desktop from 24 to 64 GB RAM...

2. Wich Geforce xxxM cards should be avoided - if any? Is the 970M supported?

3. Would it be better with one 1 TB SSD disk instead of 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD? Heat- and noisewise?

4. Think I read somewhere that an external disk (RAID) with Thunderbolt could speed up things - make editing smoother - any thought about the Thunderbolt?

If you have any suggestions or experiences with running Adobe CC on any of the newer laptops from 2014/2015 please share them.

Thx in advance - and sorry for the long post...

Cheers

[John T Smith]

I don't use a laptop, but I have a couple saved links that may help

Laptop Video Editing PC - http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1369220?tstart=0

-Laptop to edit 4k red video http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1108124

[Bill Gehrke]

I made my move to a laptop just one year ago.  I have a G750JW and am absolutely delighted with it, but you might make me jealous with a G751.  But I did have to upgrade mine from 8 GB to 24 GB and I pulled the single 5400 rpm drive and installed two SSD's.  I have only AVCHD 1080 to edit currently.  But I can easily edit three camera shoots with it.  Upgrading is very easy if you later want change out the hard drive I have found that with the USB 3 computer interface and very fast USB 3 flash drives I can have the media and the project on the flash drive with the great read speeds..  Unfortunately the 128 GB  PNY flash drive I found to be great now is just mediocre, they found a way to cut costs.  The use of the USB flash drives allows me to comfortably edit on the laptop and then plug it into my USB 3 desktop for final export.  Just remember you really need to have it AC powered to get full power out of it for editing.

[Moxtelling]

HI Bill

THank you for the quick reply..

I have read a few reviews of the Asus Rog today, and it seems to be the best choice right now. At least for me. So I am very glad to hear, that you have had so good experience with the Asus as well.

My biggest concern is noise from the coolers, because I need to have a very lownoise laptop when I sit in the new office. The room is small and we need to work with some kind of noise reduction because the walls and floor is quite hard and kind of amplify all sounds in there 🙂

Another thing: the one I plan to buy gomes with 16 GB Ram (2 x 8) a 256 Gb SSD and a 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD. I might be able to live with this setup - at least for some time. i guess I could just put in another 16 Gb ram and change the HDD some day in the future when my needs eventually changes. SSDs comes in 1 TB now - could that be the way to go? Keep the 256 and change the 1 TB from HDD to SSD...

I also read a bit more about Thunderbolt. Seems to me, that with fx. a LaCie extermal  Thunderboltbased raid system I would be able to edit fluid 4K directly from the external disk???

The only thing I reslly dont like with theAsus Rog series is the gamer design. I can almost smell the rubber. i would rather have an aluminium/carbon cased monster instead. But I can live with that as long as the specs looks so good.

Anyone else having any comments on the Asus? Please share 😉

/ Morten

[JFPhoton]

Yes...I agree with everything Bill said.....I have the same laptop as his and also did the memory and ssd upgrades myself. I was able to find it " refurbished" for only $850. It arrived in like new condition with all the plastic still on it, and has been perfect. Mine came with 8 GB of memory that was installed in two INACCESSIBLE slots under the keyboard. The other two slots were empty and easily accessible from the back cover....meaning that adding two 8 GB sticks brought the memory up to 24 GB.  This seems to be an adequate amount..... I certainly would NOT use less, as I have seen memory usage go up to over 20 GB during certain tasks involving a 1080p timeline with multiple video tracks. With your new machine, you would want to ascertain EXACTLY how the supplied memory is installed BEFORE you buy it. It could be all four slots are filled with 4 GB sticks, or, maybe the two inaccessible slots have 8 GB sticks in them....allowing you to easily increase the memory yourself to 32 GB!

   Be aware that many newer gaming laptops are offering exciting options regarding storage. MSI has a " superspeed" option that allows up to three mSATA SSDs to be paired in a RAID 0 configuration....so, you can imagine three Crucial M550s linked together running at over 1.5 GB per second read and write....using the 512 GB model,or, even three 1 TB SSDs would be ideal to place all your media and everything else except what goes on your 2.5" boot drive.....which can be ANOTHER Crucial M550, with just OS, programs, and pagefile on it.

     External thunderbolt options are expensive and not well developed....better to use any external ports for backing up and archiving, though you can do as Bill has mentioned, putting media and project files on a portable higher speed USB device. Then, you can easily plug that into a desktop to edit further.

[Bill Gehrke]

JF

Talking about new SSD's, my Samsung XP941 m.2 drive in my new x99 build is doing the PPBM8 Disk I/O export with a write rate of over 900 MB/second!

Bill

[Moxtelling]

Thx - I will order the G751 - BUT I stille need to know how noisy it is when its running - both idle and when fx. encoding a video. Could any of you tell me more about the noise-level?

I think I will order this one: http://www.wupti.com/produkter/computer-og-it/baerbar-computer/baerbar-pc/asus-g751jy-t7004h?cid=pc_...

It has 16 GB ram (2 x 8GB - and is updgradable to 32 GB), 256 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD (7200 rpm) annd a nVidia 980 with 4 GB....guess this will be a nice laptop. I will consider upgrading to 32 GB ram and maybe invest in an external HDD USB3 or Tunderbolt for data/archiving.

Morten

[Bill Gehrke · Accepted solution]

Well I do not find it at all objectionable in my family room with it during very high usage of the GPU and/or the CPU during running full load during the PPBM benchmark, but I would not compare that to a quite office.  But then how often would you see those extremes during a real editing session.when it is real almost completely silent and my usage is 100% AC powered and I am running the GPU at 50% memory clock overclocked.  This is a G750, I have not seen a G751 but I doubt they have changed that aspect of the design.

[Moxtelling]

It sounds like this is the laptop fo me 🙂

I have been reading a lot of reviews now and a lot of them mention the low noise from the G751 - even during heavy load.

I don´t think I can get a laptop with the same amazing specs for the same price. The Lenovo, MSI and others I have seen all have smaller SSDs, older Graphiccards etc. So I will buy the G751 for sure...

Thank you so much for taking your time to give me some very usefull answers!!!! I will return and write about my experiences in this post.

Morten

[Bill Gehrke]

Morten

If you have not seen this yet on upgrading and help in the selection process

http://rog.asus.com/375732014/g-series-gaming-laptops/gallery-g751-upgrade-guide/

Now knowing that the G751 is really available with the m.2 SSD PCIE slot is really making me jealous.  That m.2 SSD shown is the Samsung XP941 if I am not mistaken.  I have one in a new X99-E WS build and with our disk intensive PPBM8 Disk I/O test it is writing at >900 MB/second.  Now just that it is there does not mean that ASUS implementation is a full PCIe x4 implementation but it sure is possible.  I imagine that in a SSD plus hard drive version they probably put the OS and applications on the SSD.  If that is the case and I were to have a G751 I would pull the hard drive, install another standard 2.5" SSD and clone the OS/Applications to the new SSD and take full advantage for the project files of the (potentially) higher read/write rate for the m.2 SSD 

[Moxtelling]

Hi Bill

I will certainly consider upgrading the HDD to a SSD as soon as I can afford it. But for a start, I think I will see how things goes with the HDD. Maybe I will install the RAM upgrade before the HDD...that depends.

I have a powerfull desktop PC at my homeoffce and I think i will continue to use that for most of my video-editing, but I just want to be able to edit video to some degree at the out-house office as well. I will be using the ASUS mostly for indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and stuff like that. i can´t wait to get my hands on this laptop 😉

Thx a lot 🙂

Morten

[Bill Gehrke]

Morten

Since you are going from laptop to desktop and back.  Find the best (fastest) USB3 Flash Drive you can.  I have several with various projects and I have the Project and the Media files on the USB drive.  If your desktop is not USB3 yet then get a upgrade card for it.  I find this to be easily usable and highly mobile between the two computers. I am using USB 3 Flash Drives with 180 MB/sec read rates (much faster than even the front end of the 7200 RPM hard drive in your target G751).  Unfortunately the 128 GB PNY Turbo drive now has been cheapened with lower cost materials so that the last ones I purchased are much slower so I do not recommend them.  I was lucky enough to get 3 good ones before they changed components with no change in part numbers so the last couple I got are really unsatisfactory.  It may not be a solution for more complex media but I am editing three tracks of 1080 AVCHD without any problems

Bill

[Moxtelling]

‌hi Bill

i actually thought about getting the 8 TB thunderbolt from WD.

In Denmark it only costs about 750$. In tests it moved data even faster than ssd. look here: Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo Review & Rating | PCMag.com

[Bill Gehrke]

Morten.

That is a good price if you need lots of storage, but: "The Thunderbolt Duo is capable of good scores: 257MBps read and 263MBps write scores" is nowhere near current SSD's

Bill

[Moxtelling]

‌sorry - I did not read the test/review to the end.  I did only read the part with the disk being faster in Some points. I will certainly study this further and try to find the best solution. Thankd for the advice 🙂