Question for Computer Science Students

[likkanchung]

If you study computer science at university, I have some questions for you:

1. What was your PC Setup before starting to study (high performance, gaming, specs, etc.)?

2. Where are/did you live(ing) now and in your first year? (In Uni accommodation (halls), in rented accommodation, at home?)

3. How much do/did you use computers (in campus facilities) and your own PC while studying?

4. What is/was your personal PC setup (where you lived)? (Did you bring your existing PC or get a new one?)

5. How much is/was your budget for your complete tech setup?

6. Other comments (Did you split your budget with a laptop and PC build? Did you repurpose old PC parts? New PC parts? Do anything special or fancy? Any other comments) 

 

[Please move if this thread is in the wrong place]

 

Background story if you're interested:

I'm going to start studying CS next year, and I don't know how much to save, or what to get next year. 

[Cvdasfg]

This is probably a rare situation but this is what I did.

 

I had a 4 thousand dollar desktop i7, ssd's ect at home. I bought a simple elcrapo netbook to take "notes on" and then just threw them on to the cloud for when I was home to study.  I lived at my parents house. I used the campus computers only when required, aside from that I used my netbook when away and desktop when at home. 

[vorticalbox]

7 minutes ago, likkanchung said:

If you study computer science at university, I have some questions for you:

1. What was your PC Setup before starting to study (high performance, gaming, specs, etc.)?

2. Where are/did you live(ing) now and in your first year? (In Uni accommodation (halls), in rented accommodation, at home?)

3. How much do/did you use computers (in campus facilities) and your own PC while studying?

4. What is/was your personal PC setup (where you lived)? (Did you bring your existing PC or get a new one?)

5. How much is/was your budget for your complete tech setup?

6. Other comments (Did you split your budget with a laptop and PC build? Did you repurpose old PC parts? New PC parts? Do anything special or fancy? Any other comments) 

 

[Please move if this thread is in the wrong place]

 

Background story if you're interested:

I'm going to start studying CS next year, and I don't know how much to save, or what to get next year. 

1. 8350, 8gb ram, 7770, 250 sdd with 500gb storage.
2. my own home
3. computers used every lesson, I did most of my work in uni and very little at home. Anything I did at home were reports or documentation which I did on a chromebook.
4. pc was a home we had computers in university.
5. budget zero
6. pro tip document everything.

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Computing and Systems Development here (completed earlier this year). 

 

1. Gaming setup at first. 

2. I lived at home during my course, though I did move about 150 miles away in my third year, so did most of my work remotely at that point. 

3. Used provided computers for about 3 months before getting fed up and then used my own laptop. Literally everything was done on computers with no paper work. Did the majority of my work on my laptop, but used my desktop when I needed to render something or otherwise needed some more power. 

4. My current PC setup is the one I had during my course (build log is in my signature). Didn't need a new one as I was living at home, but I did upgrade it during my course

5. My PC has been upgraded over time, but the total cost of all of the equipment I used during my course was probably close to about £6000 (completely unnecessary, by the way. I spent that much because I enjoy building PCs)

6. I had a desktop and laptop. If you have to choose between one of them, go for the laptop, it's much more convenient for studying, especially if you have things like coffee shops on your campus where you can work. That's where I did a lot of my work. 

 

Top tip: check with your lecturers to see if they're okay with you video recording their lectures. If they are, do so (even if it's just your phone's camera) and pay attention while you're there, rather than taking notes the entire time. It helps a lot to go over the lecture again on your own if you missed something. 

 

Just a heads up, your course is likely going to be out of date (Uni courses are written years in advance, normally) and involve a lot of theory that's not all that useful. Of course, it's important to study what's in your lecture, but I would advise also doing some additional work on your own involving things you want to do for a career. Take it from someone who is currently in the process of recruitment after coming out of a Computing course, companies want experience more than anything else.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, likkanchung said:

If you study computer science at university, I have some questions for you:

1. What was your PC Setup before starting to study (high performance, gaming, specs, etc.)?

I had a high-end Dell laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) when I started, and switch to the Surface Pro 2. Get a Surface Pro and learn to use OneNote.

 

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2. Where are/did you live(ing) now and in your first year? (In Uni accommodation (halls), in rented accommodation, at home?)

I lived at home, and I took the metro/bus to get to University. My university was downtown (like pretty much all other universities in Montreal's)

 

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3. How much do/did you use computers (in campus facilities) and your own PC while studying?

Very little. I used my laptop. I like to be admin, run my preferred software, and have a faster experience (mostly due to SSD in the system, and not have to load an account through network... unless your university has an insanely good IT where they actually setup things really well, and use high-end equipment, and don't cheap out on computers for students, like what I had in College)

 

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4. What is/was your personal PC setup (where you lived)? (Did you bring your existing PC or get a new one?)

My desktop PC was at home. It was a gaming PC. It was, and still is: a Core i7 930, GeForce 260 (now the 680), 6GB of RAM, running Windows 7, then 8, and now 10.

 

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5. How much is/was your budget for your complete tech setup?

I buy high-end systems (in quality, not specs.. I guess I should say: Premium systems), because I like to keep my systems (desktop and laptop) for around 5 years (so yes, my desktop needs an upgrade). The reason why I upgrade every 5 years or so, is because it allows me to save money to buy premium hardware. I don't buy cheap stuff.. I used to do it, and as a result:

1. I always had problem
2. It was slow, and therefore frustrating
3. I didn't enjoy my computer experience

So my budget was around $2000 after taxes each.

 

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6. Other comments (Did you split your budget with a laptop and PC build? Did you repurpose old PC parts? New PC parts? Do anything special or fancy? Any other comments) 

No my budget isn't shared. Yes, I bought for less: Dell laptop was ~$1630 after negotiation (includes the 3 year warranty next business day on-site service). SSD was purchase a few years later, when SSD became <1$ per GB. I got a 120GB SSD inside. My Surface Pro 2 was ~$1300 with the keyboard cover and 10% student discount (iirc).

My desktop was $1500 if I remember right.Yes, I do upgrade my hardware. I got an SSD on my desktop (256GB OCZ Vertex 4), got a monitor (Dell UltraSharp U2410), upgraded my GPU, and on my Dell laptop, I've got the SSD mentioned above.

 

As a computer science student, you don't need a powerful GPU (unless you go into gaming... and even then.. Intel graphics might be fine these days, unlike back then where you wished Intel solution was fast enougth for smooth DVD playback). You don't need a fancy CPU. Whatever you'll be coding won't be complex enough. It will all compile super fast, even if you do Java or use MathLab or Maple. That said, I would recommend a decently fast SSD (no need some crazy PCIe one, but not the cheapest money can buy either, where the performance matches a normal HDD... yes I have seen those in OEM systems, just to check the box "SSD").

 

Dell Latitude E6400 specs:

• Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz (P8600)
• 4GB of RAM DDR2 800MHz
• 160GB 5400RPM Hitachi HDD (later upgraded to: 120GB Corsair Force 3 GT SSD)
• DVD-Reader/Burner
• Backlit Keyboard
• LED backlight screen (at the time, you had to pay a premium for it. A must buy at the time, to get a much thinner lid and save battery life) - TN panel - 1440x900
• Quadro NVS 160M (a GeForce 9300M, but has 256MB of dedicated memory instead of using the system one)

Surface Pro 2 (revision 2) specs:

• Core i5 4300U - 1.9GHz (2.9GHz Turbo Boost)
• 256 GB SSD
• 8GB of RAM
• TypeCover 2 keyboard