hi guys welcome back to our channel the number one place for people who love design art and
all things creative i'm jacqueline and i'm an interior architect and designer here at D+B
in today's video i want to share with you how to choose which computer to buy for architecture or
interior design maybe you're an architect or interior designer looking to level up the current
computer you have or maybe you're a student who is about to start your studies in which case you're
probably buying your first computer or laptop specifically for design i know that when i was
a student going into university i thought that the laptop i had was good enough and bless it
i worked that thing to the core but looking back that one was not suitable for rendering and a
whole bunch of other stuff and because of that in this video i'll be walking you through some things
i wish i knew back then and also giving you guys like a checklist of specifications to look out for
so that you can buy the best computer for you so if you're interested let's jump in
now just to give you guys some context i have the lenovo thinkpad p51 laptop
which i've had since mid 2018. of course as time goes on the laptop has become a little
bit slower than it was when i first got it but it works really well and it's perfect for me
i personally chose this laptop because my other one could just not handle doing rendering work so
i was looking specifically for one that was really good at producing rendered visualizations quickly
although you know it's worth saying that years ago when i started my university degree i had no idea
how much i'd be rendering in interior architecture which maybe was a bit dumb of me but honestly i
had no freaking clue what rendering even meant but after learning about it and doing it i knew that
it was time to level up from my asus laptop the keyboard on the thinkpad is also very ergonomic
and i feel like it's perfectly designed apart from the control and fn keys but i've actually switched
those by the settings anyway the lenovo thinkpad series in case you're not aware is kind of a
staple in the design world and you'll find a lot of architects and interior designers using them
in fact you'll almost always see it rank when you type in best computers for architects and interior
designers but i think that's because it's a really good all-rounder of course it's not the only brand
and i'll talk about brands a bit later on and whilst it's got great specifications i didn't
really think about when getting it that all these specifications have to be housed somewhere right
and compared to other laptops it is quite heavy to carry around especially if you have to carry
it from client meetings across london or even if you're a student and bringing it to and from class
every day you'll absolutely have an imprint in your shoulder by the end of the day so the
actual weight of your computer might be something you want to consider it's not really something i
considered at the time and it is a negative but that doesn't mean that i would choose a chromebook
or macbook air over it because really that's like comparing hulk to spider-man no offense now that
i'm working from our studio and not travelling so much it makes sense for me to have a monitor and
pc combo rather than a laptop so you know i've been eyeing out a few and to be honest with you
i just like lenovo i'm so used to it now so i probably would buy something from lenovo in the
future but if you're moving around a lot then of course the best option for you would be a laptop
of course there are other options like tablets or interchangeable devices like the microsoft surface
book but if i'm being completely honest you will be doing most of your designing on a computer
to this day common design software is more user friendly on computers as opposed to ipads anyway
i have an ipad and i of course have experimented with lots of different design apps on there to
produce work but really nowadays i only use it for research and communication i find
that if you're trying to do 3d work it can just be pernickety to achieve that on a tablet and it will
take 10 times as long by all means try but i just can't see why anyone would prefer it to a computer
now let's move on to hardware spec and four things that are absolutely crucial when choosing a laptop
if you're an interior design or architecture student or if you're a professional first off is
the computer's processor which is arguably one of the most important aspects you'll be looking out
for otherwise known as cpu the processor is kind of like the heart of your laptop and it determines
how fast your computer can complete tasks by getting a more powerful processor you're going to
help your laptop think and work faster my laptop at the moment has the intel i7 core processor
which i believe is one of the fastest ones you can get at the moment but each computer brand
uses different ones and i think apple now use the m1 processor which is their best one and usually
the more willing you are to spend on one the better they're gonna be unfortunately next up is
ram or random access memory which is essentially short-term memory where data is stored as the
processor needs it i kind of like to think of it as the brains of the computer ram allows your
computer to perform everyday tasks such as loading apps browsing the internet experiencing the latest
games memory also allows you to switch quickly amongst these tasks and it will remember where
you are in one task when you switch to another one my laptop has 16 gigabytes of ram which is pretty
normal and honestly the right amount 32 gigabytes is just too much and one is expensive and two if
you're a student the likelihood is that you're not even going to use that much anyway so don't really
worry about that however i would say that eight gigabytes of ram is not enough and you will really
struggle on rendering programs playing games and even using adobe creative cloud so rule of thumb
16 gigabytes there is also a computer's graphics card to think about which is also referred to as
gpu a graphics card is essentially an expansion card for your pc that is responsible for rendering
images to the display gpus are used for gaming ray tracing graphics production rendering and even
mining cryptocurrency so as designers it's pretty crucial that we have one and also a good one
all computers have one built in already for example i have the intel hd graphics 360.
but the one that's the really good one and the one i've had added is the nvidia quadro m 1200
which also has four gigabytes video memory again just like the processor the more you're
willing to spend on one and the better it will be for your use for example a good graphics card
could take about five minutes to render an image a less advanced one could take an hour plus to
render a still image and one that doesn't even have a graphics card or a really really crap one
might not even render at all and you might just find that your program just keeps on crashing
in case you're wondering what the best gpus are i've included a list in the description of lots of
interesting links i think will be really helpful for you guys i don't think i can just shout out
one specific brand or version because all the hardware specs are going to be individual to you
in terms of what you need and also of course your price range and of course there is also storage
space known as ssd or hdd a hard drive is a hardware component that stores all of your digital
content for example your music your images your documents your operating system absolutely all of
your digital content is stored onto a hard drive the two different types to choose from are hdd
hard disk drive and ssd solid state drive i would say that the preferred one is ssd because
it really makes the laptop quick to use ssds use less power and therefore have a longer battery
life because the data access is much faster whilst hdds have spinning disks and require
more power when they start up i have a hard disk drive and i can absolutely agree with that my
laptop takes so much longer to start up compared to laszlo's msi laptop that's really quick because
of the ssd but of course you do pay more for an ssd and also the amount of storage space you want
i have one terabyte on my hdd which would have cost three times that amount if i had got an ssd
so that's just some food for thought let's also talk about the big question apple or microsoft
well there are lots of different factors to think about when it comes to answering the great debates
a lot of design software is actually produced using a windows operating system which is why
sometimes mac users can struggle with certain programs on their computer but of course it just
depends on which program you're using in terms of screen quality i would say apple win that round
hands down in my opinion macs have much brighter and appealing monitors compared to windows laptops
however one thing to bear in mind is usb ports that you'll be using if you have a graphics
tablet a wireless mouse a wireless keyboard a lot of the times you are going to need a usb a port
which apple stupidly decided to get rid of and they only have usb c ports instead now
and if you have to share memory sticks or plug your computer into a presentation you will need
a usb adapter and all of that stuff can just be so hassly and annoying i would say though
if you have an iphone and ipad and you're used to using all that kind of stuff and you like it then
a mac could be a good option because everything is interlinked with one another where i think apple
really fails unfortunately is when it comes to rendering power windows devices when hands down
every time i would say that the only mac that's actually good for rendering are the big imacs
and there's a reason that when you look up best laptops for architects and interior designers
the macbooks are hardly ever there that's just something to think about guys i think that mainly
because their appeal is in the appearance of them and their mobility and not so much in the hardware
components they use the lightest smallest most energy efficient parts which obviously fails
when you're trying to do a beast of a task like rendering 3d buildings when choosing a computer
i think a big part of it is the look of them we can't deny that we all want something that looks
good right back in the day when i was researching what laptop to buy i have to admit i wanted
a macbook because they were the sleekest ones around and to be honest they probably still are
the sleekest ones around but when i found out that the macbooks are actually pretty useless
other than the aesthetic side i then obviously changed my mind also macbooks were and still are
the most popular choice around everyone i knew had one but i have to admit when it came to the actual
designing side and not just the researching side their laptops would crash left right and center
and i'm not gonna lie and tell you that the lenovo thinkpad is the sexiest laptop because let's face
it it is a chunky brick but it works really well and that's what really matters always remember
that the inside of your computer is what you should be thinking about another growing trend
within the architecture and design professions is the adoption of using gaming laptops because
of their really powerful specifications which are built to handle incredibly detailed graphics and
demanding streaming requirements the processing power of gaming laptops make them ideal for bim
and architectural visualization tasks and often cost less than top-of-the-range mobile
workstations i also looked at gaming laptops and they just weren't my thing in terms of the look
especially with these light up keyboards but if you're a gamer or you like the look of them
then i would absolutely say that's a route you could go down and just in general some
computer brands to look out for for architecture and interior design are ones like msi razer
alienware and lenovo's legion line those are all gaming brands also lenovo just in general
like i said apple imacs dell inspiron dell xps microsoft surface book and the hp z book but of
course there are just so many out there and in the description below i've linked down some links that
i think will be really useful for you guys i hope that you learned something in this video and i'd
love to know which computer you have your eye on if you're new to the channel then i just want to
say welcome on this channel we talk about interior design architecture illustration content creation
graphic design and all that cool creative stuff in between so if any of that interests you make
sure to subscribe to see videos just like this one leave me a desktop emoji down below to let
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reach even more people okay guys thank you so much for watching and i'll see in the next video bye
you