As a current Apple user with similar needs, I've been looking into alternatives myself. The Lenovo ThinkPad P50 [1] is looking great. Can be configured with a X

As a current Apple user with similar needs, I've been looking into alternatives myself. The Lenovo ThinkPad P50 [1] is looking great. Can be configured with a Xeon quad-core CPU, up to 64GB of ECC (!) RAM, 2 x 1TB PCIe-NVMe SSD and an NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (performance similar to a GTX 960M or 950M [2]). I've been considering to get a Xeon/64GB non-ECC RAM/512GB PCIe-NVMe SSD/Quadro M2000M configuration myself for around $2,600 (before taxes), which is much cheaper than Apple's offerings. The Dell Inspiron 7510 can be specced similarly [3] and looks also interesting but apparently throttles the GPU under load [4], which is a huge no-go for me (I had a laptop that throttled under load at some point and it was a pain). [1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/ [2] http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-M2000M.151581.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-M2000M.151581.0.h... [3] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstation/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstatio... [4] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO-Mobile-Workstation-Review.167586.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO-Mob...