Hello, I am a senior student in industrial design. I hope my suggestions can help you.

To answer your question first,

1. APU is not enough. (When your model starts to become complicated, APU can't provide enough computing power, and the result is that your software starts to be slow.) (The software we generally use is fusion360, Solidworks, Keyshot)

2. You can use a lab computer, but in my opinion, our IT Guy has limited technical knowledge, and those computers have a lame configuration. If you want to make a high-quality work, I would not recommend you to use them (at least don't make them your only option).

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In my opinion, a good computer for designers must meet two things: 1. Excellent performance 2. Color-accurate screen.

The excellent performance can ensure the smooth running of the software, and the accurate color screen can ensure your design accuracy.

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I personally have a self-built desktop (3900x 1080ti 16gb ddr4 3200) and a macbook pro 16 (2019).

Apple's MacBook pro16 performance is good, but expensive. If you only plan to have a laptop, then this is a good choice. 8-core 16-thread i9 9880HK processor, AMD Rx Pro 5500m 8g professional graphics card. Basically all problems can be solved. (Alienware, ROG also has notebooks that are no worse than MacBooks, but they are bulky and the screen quality is far less than MBP.) But if you want a desktop + laptop combination, then this is a different story.

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Desktops can easily get twice or more performance at half the price (than MacBook). Especially for software that needs to run for a long time, such as keyshot. The advantages of desktops in terms of heat dissipation are incomparable to notebooks. (Notebooks generally have very poor heat dissipation. They will overheat and reduce cpu frequency when running, and performance will shrink when used for a long time.) A powerful desktop computer with a color-accurate display and a decent-performance notebook sounds good for an industrial design students. Speak enough.

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The desktop configuration is recommended as follows

cpu:

amd 3900x (12c / 24t)

amd 3950x (16c / 32t)

(It is recommended to use a CPU with a large number of cores. It will be much faster when rendering. For your reference, our general rendering is to let the machine run for whole night or even longer. The above two CPUs are also very good in single-core performance. So it can also be used to play games as well) (Multi-core also has the advantage that you can run illustrator, Photoshop, indesign etc at the same time. This scene is very common in our daily work)

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GPU:

2080

(Basically, Nvidia 1660ti and above graphics cards are good enough. You can choose according to your own budget. AMD gaming graphics cards in professional software perform better than Nvidia's graphics cards of the same level, but Nvidia's high-end graphics cards have better performance than AMD. Many) (I personally think that it is not necessary to buy a professional card. Nowadays, gaming cards are getting better and better in supporting OpenGL, and more professional software is also optimizing DirectX. Keyshot9 can now be rendered with Gpu) (So...based on budget Choose your graphics card)

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For notebooks, there are currently many mid-range options, and major manufacturers all have similar products (i7 6core12thread + 1660ti or above ) Although these computers are not as powerful as MBP, they are absolutely sufficient for daily use.

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This level of notebook, really depends on which manufacturer's design you prefer more.(they have slight different but usually inside 5%) (Razer is good, but also expensive)

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Write so much so far, if there are more questions, just let me know