Laptop for engineering student

[Deep]

Hi
One of my kids will hopefully be starting an engineering degree later this year. It might be Aerospace or Integrated Mechanical and Electrical depending on how things go.
From what I can gather the laptop needs to be carefully specced to ensure it can handle the kind of software that will be used for engineering ie CAD etc.

The University of Bath says this :

Laptop minimum specifications
Intel laptop i5 or i7
8Gb of RAM, preferably 16Gb
A hard drive capacity minimum of 512 GB and preferably SSD
if possible a dedicated graphics card for Inventor Pro
HDMI/DisplayPort adapter to connect to external monitors
conventional mouse with central wheel

I think this info might be a little out of date because other sources say the RAM should be a minimum of 32Gbs.

I'd prefer to over spec slightly so that we are future proofed.

Lenovo seems to come up a lot in my searches but it's Trustpilot reviews are atrocious. Mostly people complaining about after sales support when there are hardware issues. On the other hand my wife has a Lenovo from work and she says it's been faultless for the last 4 years.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful, bonus points if you're an engineer yourself!

Thank you

[Tickle]

Deep said:

Hi
One of my kids will hopefully be starting an engineering degree later this year. It might be Aerospace or Integrated Mechanical and Electrical depending on how things go.
From what I can gather the laptop needs to be carefully specced to ensure it can handle the kind of software that will be used for engineering ie CAD etc.

The University of Bath says this :

Laptop minimum specifications
Intel laptop i5 or i7
8Gb of RAM, preferably 16Gb
A hard drive capacity minimum of 512 GB and preferably SSD
if possible a dedicated graphics card for Inventor Pro
HDMI/DisplayPort adapter to connect to external monitors
conventional mouse with central wheel

I think this info might be a little out of date because other sources say the RAM should be a minimum of 32Gbs.

I'd prefer to over spec slightly so that we are future proofed.

Lenovo seems to come up a lot in my searches but it's Trustpilot reviews are atrocious. Mostly people complaining about after sales support when there are hardware issues. On the other hand my wife has a Lenovo from work and she says it's been faultless for the last 4 years.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful, bonus points if you're an engineer yourself!

Thank you

I have a few grads and degree apprentices (Mech and Civil) - I'll see what we spec for them after the break.

[Deep]

Tickle said:

I have a few grads and degree apprentices (Mech and Civil) - I'll see what we spec for them after the break.

That would be great, thank you very much!

[Suspicious_user]

I assume the software in Autodesk Inventor?

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article...

there are also some GPUs that can handle Ray Tracing

https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2024/ENU/?g...

[Deep]

Tickle said:

I have a few grads and degree apprentices (Mech and Civil) - I'll see what we spec for them after the break.

That would be great, thank you very much!

[Mr Pointy]

What is your budget? It can make a significant difference to what people suggest.

[Sporky]

Deep said:

Lenovo seems to come up a lot in my searches but it's Trustpilot reviews are atrocious. Mostly people complaining about after sales support when there are hardware issues. On the other hand my wife has a Lenovo from work and she says it's been faultless for the last 4 years.

The low end Lenovos are as crap as any other cheapo. The better ones are still good.

I'm a design engineer (MEng in Electronic Engineering with Music Technology Systems), but I run modest software - Visio and Office mostly. I have a boggo Dell laptop from work and that's good enough. Think it's an i5 with 16Gb of RAM. Definitely get at least a 512Gb SSD though, mine has 256Gb and even though most of our files are on server/Sharepoint etc it still fills up all the time (mostly OneDrive syncing irrelevant stuff I think).

I'd be minded to get at least 16Gb of RAM, but not to spend a lot more on 32Gb as I think that'd be more for future proofing than any short/mid term need. If it's a sensibly priced upgrade then certainly consider it.

[Sporky]

Also I'd consider a higher than full HD resolution screen for most engineering work.

[Deep]

Mr Pointy said:

What is your budget? It can make a significant difference to what people suggest.

Yes, I know it's difficult without a budget but I didn't mention it because I am prepared to spend what is needed to get something that ticks all the boxes.

Thanks

[esuuv]

I'm an engineer - for major oil companies (freelance) and the laptops I get from work are generally terrible - I currently have a dell, it's grey - that's what I know about it!!

I believe the designers get better ones.

Autodesk lists this for inventor

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article...

Remember that's to run it on a commercial level - they mention in the ram section that you need more than 16 gigs for more than 500 part assemblies - it's pretty unlikely an undergrad project is going to need to design something with more than 500 parts.

you can download a trial and I'm sure there is a student license - Autodesk are really good at those, so whatever you buy - you can try it.

[Deep]

Sporky said:

The low end Lenovos are as crap as any other cheapo. The better ones are still good.

I'm a design engineer (MEng in Electronic Engineering with Music Technology Systems), but I run modest software - Visio and Office mostly. I have a boggo Dell laptop from work and that's good enough. Think it's an i5 with 16Gb of RAM. Definitely get at least a 512Gb SSD though, mine has 256Gb and even though most of our files are on server/Sharepoint etc it still fills up all the time (mostly OneDrive syncing irrelevant stuff I think).

I'd be minded to get at least 16Gb of RAM, but not to spend a lot more on 32Gb as I think that'd be more for future proofing than any short/mid term need. If it's a sensibly priced upgrade then certainly consider it.

Thanks.
I'm not an engineer but from what I can tell he needs to run CAD and 3d modelling software.
Also a good graphics card, high quality screen resolution with a certain refresh rate to make motion stable? Then it needs to be robust, have good battery life, have a comfortable keyboard etc etc. And of course reliability!

Advice on spec is very helpful but advice on specific models or model lines would be even better.

Thanks

[Sporky]

You don't need over a 60Hz display for engineering. If what you're designing needs faster, you model it slower.

[Tickle]

Deep said:

Tickle said:

I have a few grads and degree apprentices (Mech and Civil) - I'll see what we spec for them after the break.

That would be great, thank you very much!

The last lot we ordered were:

Ultra 9 Core processors

Memory 64GB

Storage 1TB SSD

Memory 64GB

Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell 8GB GDDR7 (there are several that would be good enough, but probably stick to NVIDIA RTX)

From our IT dept.

[dxg]

Suspicious_user said:

I assume the software in Autodesk Inventor?

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article...

there are also some GPUs that can handle Ray Tracing

https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2024/ENU/?g...

Once he's registered as a student he'll be able to get whatever Autodesk product he wants through Autodesk University - for free.

So I would look at specifications of anything that might be relevant.

[Deep]

Tickle said:

The last lot we ordered were:

Ultra 9 Core processors

Memory 64GB

Storage 1TB SSD

Memory 64GB

Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell 8GB GDDR7 (there are several that would be good enough, but probably stick to NVIDIA RTX)

From our IT dept.

That's really helpful, thank you!
Would you know which make of computer your company buys?

[zbc]

My son has a https://frame.work/de/en laptop and he's studying physics. He loves the fact that it's easy to upgrade, repair and customise. It's a bit heavier and more expensive as a result but if needs change it's very easy to follow without replacing.

[Tickle]

Deep said:

That's really helpful, thank you!
Would you know which make of computer your company buys?

No worries, Dell are what we use

[spitfire-ian]

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 16 Plus for my CAD work.

[redrabbit29]

Deep said:

Laptop minimum specifications
Intel laptop i5 or i7
8Gb of RAM, preferably 16Gb
A hard drive capacity minimum of 512 GB and preferably SSD
if possible a dedicated graphics card for Inventor Pro
HDMI/DisplayPort adapter to connect to external monitors
conventional mouse with central wheel

I am not an engineer, but I do work in technical cybersecurity - which involves processing, reviewing, analysis agains really complex and sometimes large datasets. This includes software which is really heavy in terms of processing and power.

The specs the university stated as minimum look well below expected to me - 8gb Ram is really way too low these days and even 16gb is pushing it unless all you're doing is lightweight word documents and looking online.

Tickle said:

The last lot we ordered were:

Ultra 9 Core processors

Memory 64GB

Storage 1TB SSD

Memory 64GB

Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell 8GB GDDR7 (there are several that would be good enough, but probably stick to NVIDIA RTX)

From our IT dept.

This looks really good. My own specs are as follows:

Dell Precision 5570
Memory: 64gb
Processor: Intel i9 - 12th Gen - 2.5ghz
Storage: 2TB (you'd likely not need that much)
Graphics: I have two - intel Iris and then a another which is Nvidia RTX A2000 8GB

It was quite pricey though - around £4000 I believe

[MattyD803]

I did a 4 year Mechanical Engineering degree (admittedly 15 years ago now) but we did pretty much all of our more 'power hungry' computer based work (Ranging from Matlab to CAD, Inventor, CFD, simulation and modelling work) on the uni computers, 'in class' effectively. Anything we needed to do as homework (rare), we went back onto campus to complete, more often than not with a couple of others and we helped one another, before possibly heading straight to the union...(rude not to, right?)

Before throwing lots of money at a powerful laptop from the off, I would probably get him a 'cheap' laptop initially for his 'day to day' typical studenty 'light' workload and allow your son to get his feet under the engineering table at uni and see how the land lies first.

If nothing else, it gives him the opportunity to get an understanding of what IT-based work will be coming up (and when), what other students do/don't have and what the campus computer facilities are like etc.

Edited by MattyD803 on Thursday 9th April 15:03