Laptop Spec for ZWO camera?

[BlueAstra]

I have a ZWO 178M USB2/3 camera, and I'm finding the frame rate a bit disappointing with my old USB2 laptop. What laptop spec (processor, speed, memory, battery, etc) would you recommend to get the best out of the camera? I guess I'm looking for one which is fast enough with USB3 to handle the full frame data at the fastest frame rate, has enough storage for the data, and has a long battery life. Are there any specific laptops recommended?

[Alien 13]

Its a difficult one because decent specs and good battery life dont normally go together but you would be looking at something with a I5 processor with dual SSD and HDD, some laptops with this kind of spec might only have 1 USB 3 with the others being USB 2 so you need to be careful. Another valuable asset is lots of RAM, I would go for a minimum of 8Gb and of course a Win 10 OS.

Alan

[Merlin66]

I agree with Alan...

I ended up with a fast sexy MSI gaming machine. No issues, no drama but the USB2 doesn’t play well with my DMK 51 camera. It seems to see the port as a USB3 rather than the USB2......

 

[martinl]

For capture you really don’t need very high specs beyond USB 3 and plenty of hard drive space. I still use a 2011 Lenovo X220, i5, 8GB, 500GB SSD, and have no performance issues. If your laptop has an express card slot you can get a USB 3 adapter off eBay for about £5. That’s what I did and my ASI185MC now achieves the full frame rate advertised by ZWO.

It is worth noting that the progress in computer performance has slowed down a lot in recent years - if I were to replace my X220 the best I could hope for is about a 40-100% improvement, not exactly earth shattering. 

[John78]

I've been looking for the answer to this question, I tend to agree with Martini...  I've been pondering this but it's a bit of a beast - thought the illuminated keyboard would be good at night....

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/132382333658 

That said a HP 2570p looks like the ticket - small, light, decent battery, decent cpu and screen and 1 USB 3, refurbs are only 10 or so brown beer drinking tokens.

[zicklurky]

Make sure you get an SSD. With a traditional hard-drive my laptop couldn't write the data to disk quick enough (over USB3) which killed the frame rate. An upgrade to an SSD fixed this.

[spillage]

On 11/4/2017 at 07:28, Merlin66 said:

I ended up with a fast sexy MSI gaming machine. No issues, no drama but the USB2 doesn’t play well with my DMK 51 camera. It seems to see the port as a USB3 rather than the USB2......

Have you tried changing the way you connect the lead. Plug in the camera and then into the computer and vice versa?

[Merlin66]

Yes,

tried all the variations...it seems that the driver settings for the USB3 don’t give an accurate version of USB2 and the DMK51 thinks it’s a USB3.

only affects the DMK51, my  DMK41 and other cameras are OK.

 

[kirkster501]

I tried numerous systems and USB3 is the way to go with a SSD.  It is the writer speed to the disk that slows the capture rate down.

I have ASI1174M and can capture 150fps on an i5, 8Gig, SSD computer with Windows 7 x64 bit.