Engineering degree-Which computer should I get?

[Sandbiter]

Hello,

I am an aspiring engineering student at Virginia Tech (the requirements https://eng.vt.edu/admissions/computer-requirement.html) and need to purchase a new laptop. The only problem is that I don't know which one as I have never properly used an engineering program. I don't know which things to prioritize while keeping the functionality allowing me to use it as my daily driver as a college student. Any and all help would be appreciated. 

Thanks

p.s. trying to keep the price around 2 big ones

[spwath]

Shouldn't matter too much, as long as its decent spec wise. I am a sophomore mechanical engineer, have not had to use any super intensive programs yet. Besides, sometimes there are desktops in the class where you use the programs.

[Tamesh16]

i am a chemical engineer and some of the stuff i use is intensive, but not as much to go all out, for like simulation software, a good quad core laptop is fine, i mainly only use matlab anyways, and a program called Hysys by Aspen and they just use up some of cpu performance, 

edit: i just have a bit of gpu to game on the side, so far havent really seen any programs benefit too much from gpu unless in matlab's case you use parallel processing which i doubt will happen in your degree

[Sandbiter]

ok, thanks for the feedback. 

[Real_PhillBert]

I have a Mechanical Engineering degree, and very rarely did anything intensive on a personal computer. Most of the intensive stuff you'll do in school will be in groups, so doing it in a lab is often times simpler. 

 

FWIW my personal computer when I graduated in 2014 was a Phenom II X4 with a GTX-570, and that was more than enough for the limited stuff I did on my personal PC. 

[Bananasplit_00]

anything that can run some hefty matlab is probably fine

[Ja Krispie]

You probably could get by with a Surface Pro. I had a friend who was in college for Mechanical Engineering and used that

[bimmerman]

Honestly most anything will get you by-- my first 3 years of undergrad (Mech E) were on a Pentium D desktop that I replaced senior year with a then-new X58 machine. My laptop until I got my first job post-graduate school was an old Dell Lattitude with a Centrino M and 32mb quadro (yep!), and it ran Solidworks/matlab well enough for schoolwork. Anything intensive I either did on my desktop or a lab computer.

 

That said, I'd do things differently now if I were back at school, especially since the rate of technology progress is far more stagnant than it was in the 2000s. If you are only bringing one machine to school, I would aim for something like a mobile workstation, but one that skews towards portability. As my work computer I have a Dell Precision 5520 and it's a beast at solidworks and matlab (mobile i7/Xeon + Quadro), has a long-lived battery, can game well enough to get by, and has next-day support courtesy of just being Dell's premier business model line. I'd suggest taking a look at Dell/HP/etc models similar to that kind of a machine. Depending on the type of engineering you're interested in, the non-Quadro variant is the XPS 15.

I'll also say that I have used a Lenovo T440S for years for solidworks and matlab use, and it's slower but I got work done just fine (only has an i-GPU). Don't stress the hardware too much, and don't stretch the budget to buy more machine than you really need. Something cheap and good-enough means more money for beer.

[Sandbiter]

Ok that sounds logical. Thanks for the advice

[Sandbiter]

Do you think a zenbook 14 or a LG gram would work?

 

[Canada EH]

Alienware!

XPS!

[spwath]

15 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

anything that can run some hefty matlab is probably fine

Anything can run some hefty matlab. Its just the time you have to wait for the program to run.