My biggest bottleneck is waiting on renderings to complete. I am looking for a backup machine and something I can work on when I have a rendering churning. BOXX has always been more expensive and with my Renderbox Pro, I am extremely underwhelmed. Are the BOXX laptops worth it? They say they are built for V-Ray, but that is probably puffing. Is the Alienware Area 51m a better choice?
https://www.boxx.com/quick-ship/quic…--1tb-7200-w10
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/gami…/wnser7cr5104h
or
Bobby a laptop isn’t going to solve your overload problem. You need a decent sized farm, its the reality of business that’s growing. You probably have to invest into several render nodes so that you can render your images and continue working on your workstation, laptop isn’t a solution imho.
If you want to expand your rendering power - why you are looking into laptops, and expecially BOXX laptops ??
Wait a bit for Threadripper 3 to come out and get yourself 1-2 rendering nodes based on that beast.
checked the price - OMG, $4k ?!
So you’re not happy with your BOXX. You state that it’s more expensive. And then you ask if their laptops (who are generally weaker or more expensive than a similar desktop) are worth it? Logic…
Just buy yourself 2 AMD threadripper machines. They eat through renders like it’s nothing. 45 minutes for a very detailed 5K render. Those will get you going for a while. If you can work faster than they can render, then you’d have to figure something else out.
I have been buying computers for 25 years and every time I ask, someone says wait. I have learned, there isn’t a reason to wait because there will always be a reason to wait. I purchased a used BOXX RenderPro, which sells for $4500 new; I picked it up for $2000. I don’t think it has paid for itself yet, after two years. Laptops are different than desktops, which is why I ask. I would love to stack these Render Pro’s up, but I don’t think it is worth it. My main machine is going on four years now, so it is time to start looking. If this goes down, I am stuck, because this is my only computer. If I had a good laptop I could pick up where I left off without losing time, while I replace my main workstation.
You are probably much better off getting a new workstation and using old workstation as a render node and backup. I had this happen several times where my primary workstation, which was also my storage failed. This put me dead in the water for days. In one case the CMOS battery has died and it would not boot at all. Good learning curve 
and lots of stress… So having a second workstation is a MUST HAVE.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I don’t think it’s ready for the graveyard yet, but I want to be prepared.
Surely a secondary PC is the right choice, to run backburner etc so it can render away while you work?
For 4K you can build a couple of render nodes quite easily
The only problem with building a couple render nodes are all the software license I’ll need to maintain.
nobody considering chaos cloud? we do live in the future you know. but than I heard internet speeds in the states are not there yet. is that an issue?
I would rather have everything in house, it is good to have a chaos cloud but I would use it as a backup plan. Of course big players might have different perspective.
I think the cloud is cost-prohibitive with most projects. The animation I just finished would have cost around $1500 to render online. I couldn’t do it locally, so I found someone who has enough horsepower in-house to do it for 1/4 of the price. As far as uploading assets, upload speeds are ridiculously slow. I have 200 down an 8 up.
I always had great experiences with used Dell Workstation Laptops
I like my Dell desktop, so I was thinking of a Dell laptop. Currently, I am having issues with my warranty. I have the information from who I purchased it from, but they say that it isn’t what they have on file, so I can’t transfer ownership. They have replaced the motherboard twice so far, so I am not sure why the problem now, four years later.
its probably because they don’t want to pay for it anymore Honestly though, just get a second workstation and don’t get a dell, if you are worried about software license or whatever you would have to have that on a laptop or workstation regardless. I have bunch of dells, they fail a lot. Every dell I had fixed at least twice, $250 per fix, maybe spent few thousand dollars on the repair. Recently though I just built regular desktops using configs from what people post online about their systems, and they are much more stable and reliable and also a lot cheaper then the brand name counter parts like dell or whatever. I actually had better luck with supermicro blades, but not dell for sure.
Just get a couple of these laptops:
Stop feeding the troll.
i know you dont like the idea of waiting, but the current threadripper is the best performing cpu you can get for vray, but has some issues with memory intensive applications and performance can be patchy. the new version that is due out any month now seems to have adressed those issues and should be an absolute beast. i suggest, in this case, waiting is a good idea. get a new threadripper based workstation, and use your old one as a renderbox. forget laptops, too many compromises. and forget big brands like BOXX. you pay another 50% just for the name.
I am not sure what that means
I have about six months before this warranty is up, which is when I have to start getting serious about a replacement.