CAD Laptop Mechanical Engineering Student (Thinkpad P1 Gen 8)
Hello guys,
As a mechanical engineering student who has worked in development departments before, I know CAD quite well and manage larger assemblies. Would you say the following ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 configuration is fine for me?
My budget is around 3,000 CHF—if it's premium and reliable, I am willing to pay a bit more, but my budget has a hard ceiling. Pricing here in Switzerland is tough compared to the US, and going with an older generation (Gen 7) isn't a big price difference, which is why I'm looking at the newest model.
The Specs:
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 255H
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell (8GB GDDR7)
- RAM: 32 GB LPDDR5X (CAMM2)
- Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen5 SSD
- Display: 16" 3.2K OLED Touch
- Current price : 2771.24 CHF (swiss francs)
The price includes my Lenovo education discount and 3-year Premier warranty.
My concern: I saw a review for a similar model claiming that 32 GB RAM repeatedly triggers low-memory warnings in SolidWorks.
Normally I'd just configure it with 64 GB, but Lenovo charges around 1,000 CHF more for the 64 GB upgrade here, which is way too expensive for my budget. Plus, since this uses the new CAMM2 memory standard, upgrading it myself later seems incredibly expensive and difficult to source.
My questions for heavy CAD users:
- Is 32 GB actually a hard bottleneck for large assemblies on this chassis, or is that review an outlier? (i mean i have worked with dell precisions with 32gb Ram and that seemed to work)
- If 64 GB is truly mandatory for my use case, am I looking at the wrong laptop? Is there a better workstation in this price bracket I should consider instead?
Appreciate the time and responses!
