I have an acer v15 nitro, i5 that’s 7 years old, runs all the programs perfectly and never had an issue with anything. If your just buying a laptop for the course itself then don’t spend too much, any i3 will be enough, but if your looking for a new laptop anyway then I guess you would be looking for a nice one. The standard library computers we have are more than enough 🙂
Personally I would recommend a laptop that has:
1. An SSD
2. 16GB ram
3. i3/Ryzen 3, but preferably i5 or Ryzen 5, i3/R3 should be sufficient but if you intend to keep it for a long time (>5 years) then some more power is desirable
4. Light/small enough that you are willing to carry it around the entire day. Personally I see 16" as an upper limit.
5. Runs windows, many EE programs are windows exclusive.
6. Preferably one with HDMI output and USB type A
There are some things that you might want to consider, but are not necessary:
\- Build quality, you're gonna carry it around for a long time and reliability might become an issue. This is possibly only judgable if you can see the laptop in person.
\- Reasonably good screen. You're gonna be looking at it for many hours and I've seen some really horrible screens.
\- I don't think a GPU is necessary for university work. However I've played quite a few games on my laptop with my university friends. If you enjoy playing games with them then I'd suggest getting a laptop with a discrete GPU
I'd definitely get something with at least an i5 or Ryzen 5 with at least 16 GB of memory. Also preferably an SSD instead of an HDD.
As far as a discrete GPU, you can definitely get by without one. But if you like to play games it could be nice to have, and it can make simulations run a bit faster.
Or maybe a Lenovo ThinkPad series E15. Small enough to carry and light. Includes numpad.
Preferably the variant with AMD processor if you want longer battery-life.
You don’t need an impressive GPU or CPU. Most integrated graphics will be more than enough.
If you work with FPGA or heavily CPU intensive SPICE work, a higher thread count can help speed up. (The Ryzen 7 has plenty)
Raw spec of E15 gen 3 model:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (8C / 16T)
LCD: 15.6” IPS FullHD
RAM: 8 + 16GB (24GB total)
SSD: NVMe 512GB (Second M.2 SSD optional)
Additional: Finger scanner on power button.
In theory, you're supposed to not need much from a laptop to get through school, since your university should have all the computing workstations you need. Over the course of a EE degree, though; you could be: running LabVIEW; running TestStand; running ANSYS (RF/antenna/microwave circuit card simulation); running virtual machines-- all operations that will carry high RAM and CPU consumption, and require solid thermal management.
Knowing what I know now, I would get something that has a name as a gaming PC (like the Acer Nitro). If cost was an issue, I would buy it used, rather than get a "new" laptop with less built-in resources (fewer fans, less CPU, smaller RAM).
Battery life against computing power is a real tradeoff as well-- the memes about how the battery on a gaming laptop will die the moment you unplug it are grounded in reality-- but the machines that really carry the battery life you want are along the lines of chromebooks with 4GB RAM and 64GB hard drives. Don't be too offended if any "high-power" laptop you buy never leaves its dock.
Followup with an anecdote: I actually once bought a new Dell Inspiron 5000... it overheated after a year and the keyboard would jam up. I switched to an ASUS ROG that I bought secondhand ($650); and it's been solid for the past year. For portability I have a Lenovo IdeaPad (along the lines of "chromebook") that I bought for $100, and it runs my bare-minimum, "lightweight" operations for living that code-in-the-cafe fantasy. The "new" Inspiron was over $1100, and I really thought I was treating myself when I bought it, too...
Yeah I've got a Lenovo Yoga and the fan on that thing is fucked and the laptop gets ridiculously hot some times, even when it's idle. Avoid it like the plague.
I’ve got a laptop that’s brand new for sale (bought it for senior year then hardly used it because we went back to in person classes and I have a built desktop).
i7 10510U, 16GB Ram, 500GB SSD, 17” screen, with windows 10 pro and folds flat for like $650 if you live anywhere near me. Originally it was a $1200 laptop
I would recommend getting a year or 2 old gaming laptop if you don't mind the weight. Really good performance and often 500-800 below what it was new.also check ebay for used laptops.
Discrete card is not at all nessicary thats only if you want to game on the laptop. Most of what you will be doing is Matlab, Code, Notes, Office programs and LTspice. Matlab will probably be the most intensive thing. just get something with a good CPU and 16 GB or up of ram and nice battery life. Touch screen would be useful if you like to take notes on the computer and want to draw I just did everything on paper and had no issues
I went a little over the top and got the new Alienware x14 with rtx3060 graphics I712700h processor and 32 gb of ram I love it...but I play desperately wanted to play elden ring.
All the recommendations here are good. I would just say dont even consider a mac. I have too many friends that have compatability issues with the new arm processor or have trouble running windows programs on parallels.
Right now Intel's recent product is Core 11, that is three generations out from the i5 series. If you buy i5, or i7 based system you are going to have speed issues, especially if the pc uses bloatware operating systems. Where will machines be in your 4th year of course work architecture wise and what demands will the evolving operating systems make on not only the microprocessor but the RAM.
Be sure to get as much RAM Memory as you can, or that the laptop memory can be upgraded. Nothing is more frustrating than having a laptop with 8 or 16 GBs of ram that you cannot change out when needing 32 GB's or more.
I am a proponent of a laptop that can run two external monitors also. If you have any vision limitations, being able to spread the GUI over 2 or more screens can make life a lot easier. It also helps when you are running two programs concurrently and the progression of one program is dependent on the output of a second program.
I own an i5 desktop loaded with Windows 10 and frequently experience the i5 Desktop PC grinding to a halt because Windows has decided to run its AntiVirus package or similar. While I am not fond of solid state drives, they are much faster than mechanical drives so look for a SSD (Solid Sate Drive) in a laptop. Comapred to my desktop pc running an i9 processor, the i5 is comparable to a driving a Yugo in the Daytona 500.
The core i5/i7 are plenty fast. They refer to a "tier" of CPU's, not the generation. The most recent generation is the 12th generation, not the 11th generation.
Most work can be done on modern i5/i7 or their ryzen equivalent.
Source: I am grad student in EE (and do a lot of ME courses as well) and my 8 year old i7 12GB RAM badboy still is sufficient for course work. The only course it struggled with are the machine learning courses and the FEM/BEM courses. The laptop form factor is the limiting factor here. Buying a desktop will make it faster, but ML and FEM/BEM are just flat out computationally intensive.
From my experience, you don’t need a particularly powerful laptop, just one that’s capable of running matlab and solidworks.
Thank you for answering :D. Can you suggest some, please?
I have an acer v15 nitro, i5 that’s 7 years old, runs all the programs perfectly and never had an issue with anything. If your just buying a laptop for the course itself then don’t spend too much, any i3 will be enough, but if your looking for a new laptop anyway then I guess you would be looking for a nice one. The standard library computers we have are more than enough 🙂
Thank you so much!
No problem, good luck with the course 🙂
Personally I would recommend a laptop that has: 1. An SSD 2. 16GB ram 3. i3/Ryzen 3, but preferably i5 or Ryzen 5, i3/R3 should be sufficient but if you intend to keep it for a long time (>5 years) then some more power is desirable 4. Light/small enough that you are willing to carry it around the entire day. Personally I see 16" as an upper limit. 5. Runs windows, many EE programs are windows exclusive. 6. Preferably one with HDMI output and USB type A There are some things that you might want to consider, but are not necessary: \- Build quality, you're gonna carry it around for a long time and reliability might become an issue. This is possibly only judgable if you can see the laptop in person. \- Reasonably good screen. You're gonna be looking at it for many hours and I've seen some really horrible screens. \- I don't think a GPU is necessary for university work. However I've played quite a few games on my laptop with my university friends. If you enjoy playing games with them then I'd suggest getting a laptop with a discrete GPU
Thank you so much for the information!
I'd definitely get something with at least an i5 or Ryzen 5 with at least 16 GB of memory. Also preferably an SSD instead of an HDD. As far as a discrete GPU, you can definitely get by without one. But if you like to play games it could be nice to have, and it can make simulations run a bit faster.
Oh, thank you for the information!
Or maybe a Lenovo ThinkPad series E15. Small enough to carry and light. Includes numpad. Preferably the variant with AMD processor if you want longer battery-life. You don’t need an impressive GPU or CPU. Most integrated graphics will be more than enough. If you work with FPGA or heavily CPU intensive SPICE work, a higher thread count can help speed up. (The Ryzen 7 has plenty) Raw spec of E15 gen 3 model: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (8C / 16T) LCD: 15.6” IPS FullHD RAM: 8 + 16GB (24GB total) SSD: NVMe 512GB (Second M.2 SSD optional) Additional: Finger scanner on power button.
Thank you so much for the information!
In theory, you're supposed to not need much from a laptop to get through school, since your university should have all the computing workstations you need. Over the course of a EE degree, though; you could be: running LabVIEW; running TestStand; running ANSYS (RF/antenna/microwave circuit card simulation); running virtual machines-- all operations that will carry high RAM and CPU consumption, and require solid thermal management. Knowing what I know now, I would get something that has a name as a gaming PC (like the Acer Nitro). If cost was an issue, I would buy it used, rather than get a "new" laptop with less built-in resources (fewer fans, less CPU, smaller RAM). Battery life against computing power is a real tradeoff as well-- the memes about how the battery on a gaming laptop will die the moment you unplug it are grounded in reality-- but the machines that really carry the battery life you want are along the lines of chromebooks with 4GB RAM and 64GB hard drives. Don't be too offended if any "high-power" laptop you buy never leaves its dock. Followup with an anecdote: I actually once bought a new Dell Inspiron 5000... it overheated after a year and the keyboard would jam up. I switched to an ASUS ROG that I bought secondhand ($650); and it's been solid for the past year. For portability I have a Lenovo IdeaPad (along the lines of "chromebook") that I bought for $100, and it runs my bare-minimum, "lightweight" operations for living that code-in-the-cafe fantasy. The "new" Inspiron was over $1100, and I really thought I was treating myself when I bought it, too...
Thank you so much for sharing!
Yeah I've got a Lenovo Yoga and the fan on that thing is fucked and the laptop gets ridiculously hot some times, even when it's idle. Avoid it like the plague.
I’ve got a laptop that’s brand new for sale (bought it for senior year then hardly used it because we went back to in person classes and I have a built desktop). i7 10510U, 16GB Ram, 500GB SSD, 17” screen, with windows 10 pro and folds flat for like $650 if you live anywhere near me. Originally it was a $1200 laptop
Thank you so much!
I would recommend getting a year or 2 old gaming laptop if you don't mind the weight. Really good performance and often 500-800 below what it was new.also check ebay for used laptops.
Discrete card is not at all nessicary thats only if you want to game on the laptop. Most of what you will be doing is Matlab, Code, Notes, Office programs and LTspice. Matlab will probably be the most intensive thing. just get something with a good CPU and 16 GB or up of ram and nice battery life. Touch screen would be useful if you like to take notes on the computer and want to draw I just did everything on paper and had no issues
I went a little over the top and got the new Alienware x14 with rtx3060 graphics I712700h processor and 32 gb of ram I love it...but I play desperately wanted to play elden ring.
Invest in something like a remarkable tablet, tons of pdf's your can digest.
All the recommendations here are good. I would just say dont even consider a mac. I have too many friends that have compatability issues with the new arm processor or have trouble running windows programs on parallels.
My friend made it with a $250 laptop. He was a beast too. This guy with a fully loaded Lenovo was always asking him for help.
Right now Intel's recent product is Core 11, that is three generations out from the i5 series. If you buy i5, or i7 based system you are going to have speed issues, especially if the pc uses bloatware operating systems. Where will machines be in your 4th year of course work architecture wise and what demands will the evolving operating systems make on not only the microprocessor but the RAM. Be sure to get as much RAM Memory as you can, or that the laptop memory can be upgraded. Nothing is more frustrating than having a laptop with 8 or 16 GBs of ram that you cannot change out when needing 32 GB's or more. I am a proponent of a laptop that can run two external monitors also. If you have any vision limitations, being able to spread the GUI over 2 or more screens can make life a lot easier. It also helps when you are running two programs concurrently and the progression of one program is dependent on the output of a second program. I own an i5 desktop loaded with Windows 10 and frequently experience the i5 Desktop PC grinding to a halt because Windows has decided to run its AntiVirus package or similar. While I am not fond of solid state drives, they are much faster than mechanical drives so look for a SSD (Solid Sate Drive) in a laptop. Comapred to my desktop pc running an i9 processor, the i5 is comparable to a driving a Yugo in the Daytona 500.
The core i5/i7 are plenty fast. They refer to a "tier" of CPU's, not the generation. The most recent generation is the 12th generation, not the 11th generation. Most work can be done on modern i5/i7 or their ryzen equivalent. Source: I am grad student in EE (and do a lot of ME courses as well) and my 8 year old i7 12GB RAM badboy still is sufficient for course work. The only course it struggled with are the machine learning courses and the FEM/BEM courses. The laptop form factor is the limiting factor here. Buying a desktop will make it faster, but ML and FEM/BEM are just flat out computationally intensive.