Recommend Laptops for Uni study

[DeBracko]

Hello guys! My university is starting in July so I thought this current PC show would be a good time to take a look around to see what notebook I should get. I need some recommendation from you guys so I can narrow my search down when I'm there.

My course is an Engineering course so I'll be using some semi-heavy 3D software such as "AutoCad" , "Solidworks" and "Siemens NX".

What I'm looking for:
intel i5 or above
at least 8gb RAM
at least 1 SDD for windows and software so that it will load faster and 1 HDD for storage (music, movies, microsoft documents etc)
last for at least 3 - 4 years (curious to know which brand is durable?)
Budget is about 1 - 1.8k

Thanks in advance for helping me guys, I really have no clue which laptops are good as I hardly use them.

 

[Intrinion]

Hello guys! My university is starting in July so I thought this current PC show would be a good time to take a look around to see what notebook I should get. I need some recommendation from you guys so I can narrow my search down when I'm there.

My course is an Engineering course so I'll be using some semi-heavy 3D software such as "AutoCad" , "Solidworks" and "Siemens NX".

What I'm looking for:
intel i5 or above
at least 8gb RAM
at least 1 SDD for windows and software so that it will load faster and 1 HDD for storage (music, movies, microsoft documents etc)
last for at least 3 - 4 years (curious to know which brand is durable?)
Budget is about 1 - 1.8k

Thanks in advance for helping me guys, I really have no clue which laptops are good as I hardly use them.

Do look at Aftershock's offerings.

 

[DeBracko]

Do look at Aftershock's offerings.

Hey thanks for the suggestion! I went to browse through their flyers but for my price range the notebooks uses SSHD which I'm not really a fan of. I prefer to separate them out between SSD and HDD haha.


What do you think of these two model that I've found?

Asus vivobook k401UQ-FA074T
i7-7500U 2.7GHz
Windows 10
GT 940MX with 2GB DDR3
14.0" LED 1920 x 1080 display
8GB DDR4 RAM
1TB HDD + 24GB SSD
1.65kg
$1,298

HP Pavilion Notebook 15-au101TX
i7-7500U 2.7GHz
Windows 10
GT 940mx with 4GB DDR3
15.6 IPS 1920 x 1080
8GB DDR4 RAM
1TB HDD + 128GB SSD
$1,199

Right now the HP seems to be the better choice but would like to know more about its durability because I don't really want to spent so much money getting another new laptop if it spoils halfway during my uni studies

 

[Intrinion]

Hey thanks for the suggestion! I went to browse through their flyers but for my price range the notebooks uses SSHD which I'm not really a fan of. I prefer to separate them out between SSD and HDD haha.


What do you think of these two model that I've found?

Asus vivobook k401UQ-FA074T
i7-7500U 2.7GHz
Windows 10
GT 940MX with 2GB DDR3
14.0" LED 1920 x 1080 display
8GB DDR4 RAM
1TB HDD + 24GB SSD
1.65kg
$1,298

HP Pavilion Notebook 15-au101TX
i7-7500U 2.7GHz
Windows 10
GT 940mx with 4GB DDR3
15.6 IPS 1920 x 1080
8GB DDR4 RAM
1TB HDD + 128GB SSD
$1,199

Right now the HP seems to be the better choice but would like to know more about its durability because I don't really want to spent so much money getting another new laptop if it spoils halfway during my uni studies

SSHD are in a performance range between SSDs and HDDs - which is good imo compared to say a 1TB 5400rpm.

As a tertiary student to a fellow student, I can understand the pain and the anxiety of laptop downtimes.

Background: My course of studies requires me to deal with computer aided design drawings, simulation softwares and building information modelling (2D & 3D) - sometimes for tens of hours at end. Having a slim form factor isn't good for thermals nor the longevity components in the laptop.
Based on my observations, it seems that gaming laptops performs the best due to better specifications on the whole due to the following factors:

a HQ processor (quad core) compared to a U processor (dual core)

better internal thermal dissipation and in general having more fans, compared to a single fan

and in particular, better graphics. Prior to the introduction of the GTX10xx series, there exists a parallel line up of mobile discrete graphics with a "m" suffix at the rear. Those are often 1 - 2 generations behind their non M counterparts in terms of performance.

GTX10xx series of gpus are comparable to their desktop counterparts in terms of performance.

As for the 2 models listed by you,

I am apprehensive to recommend any Asus models - even though they are priced attractively based on personal experiences from my fellow course mates who have experienced hinge failures, hard disk failures and general unexplained system sluggishness after prolonged usage (year or so)

As a personal user of a HP Envy 15 myself, I did not have good experiences with mine - from screen defects, to motherboard failures. Hence in my personal and frank opinion, I would not go for either.