Can I comfortably run UE4 on my laptop?

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A little background, I recently got interested in game dev. I’m a 19 yo student majoring in business management, and I guess I just have kept myself pretty busy since the lockdown started. Prior to that, I had zero technical background, but since I’ve started being home all day, I took about 3 months to get a foundational understanding of programming with languages like C and Python. And I spent another month picking up unity and c#. I was just starting to get comfortable with unity but learning more about the different engines available and the games it has produced ( I found bright memory by FYQD particularly inspiring and made me realize what one person can do with something as powerful as UE), I figured UE is more in tune with the kind of games I’d like to make someday. So I quickly decided to make the switch.

I downloaded and installed the launcher and the engine and everything and I also got an unreal introductory course ready to go. Today was supposed to be my first day learning unreal and I woke up excited to start, but about a half-hour in, I get an error ‘Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost’, I also noticed my laptop fan gets pretty loud when running UE4. I tried to ignore it and restarted the engine, but every 15 minutes or so, the editor kept crashing and the same error kept popping up. Now I did know that UE is a little processor intensive but my system specs are reasonable (i think ?) compared to the minimum system requirements specified in the documentation. And if it’s relevant, because my laptop is prone to heating up very quickly, I have Intel Turbo boost disabled and I’ve also slightly undervolted my system.

My Laptop Specs :
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Intel core i7 @ 1.8GHz

AMD Radeon 530

16 GB RAM

It is a little disheartening because I don’t think I can afford a new computer for a while. I also tried updating the GPU drivers, defaulting UE to use the dedicated GPU and everything.

Sometimes the editor does go a little while longer before it crashes. I just wanna definitively know if I can comfortably use my current laptop at least till I’ve learned unreal to a good extend and I can actually start making games.

Excuse me if this is not the right place for this post, and thanks in advance !

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Can I comfortably run UE4 on my laptop
?

tl;dr: No. But that depends on what creature comforts you’re after, though.

my system specs are reasonable

Not really. While the CPU and RAM are fine (ish - that cpu will run HOT), the video card is not - as suggested by the now infamous and, frankly, quite unfriendly message:

Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D
device being lost

The 530 was an entry-tier laptop-grade gpu 3 years ago. When UE4 was released 6-7 years ago, the video adapter required to work with the engine (somewhat comfortably) was roughly 3x faster than what we’re dealing with here. And the engine has moved on and bloated over the years, too. (admittedly, some other kinks were ironed out).

However, even though the 530 will underperform, from the technical point of view, you should be able to run the engine OK - just do not expect anything too performant. Asset heavy scenes may give you a headache.

Judging by your description, the system is overheating ; this may force it to shut down the GPU and switch to the integrated video chip in your i7, at which point the UE4 will give up. Thermal throttling will also lower the performance of that i7 even further and the whole thing will slowly grind to a halt.

Apart from monitoring the temps to narrow the issue down, there are things you can do:

  • wait for winter and work with open windows :wink:
  • ensure the fans are not obstructed and dust-free
  • give your lappy feet, anything that will allow the air to circulate better around and underneath it
  • procure a laptop rack, fan-assisted if you can get one on the cheap
  • disable any applications that you do not need: Ctrl + Shift + Esc → Start-Up
  • shut down Epic Games Launcher - on some systems it consumes an unreasonable amount of resources