featured image

It’s that time of year when we think about bringing our new and returning students to school. And with that comes the never-ending costs of tuition, books, lab fees, recreation costs, and almost anything a college or university can think of to add to the bill. While this alone is a bit overwhelming, you should consider adding a new high-performance laptop to the list of things your students will need, especially if they’re pursuing a computer-related or other science and technology degree.

If your student is in a computer-related or science, technology, engineering, or math program (commonly referred to as STEM), time is the most valuable thing they have, or should I say they are often lacking. Nothing is more discouraging than having multiple instructors telling you to spend 40 hours or more a week on just one lesson. Add three or four together, which is common in higher-level STEM programs, and there’s little time for other activities, including sleeping. Giving your student a powerful laptop doesn’t guarantee success, but it does give them a critical tool for success and their best chance at managing that valuable and limited resource we call time.

The reason a powerful laptop is so important is that students in STEM and other related fields will spend countless hours on computers writing and testing code, developing designs, running simulations, and/or training neural network models. . And the first rule of thumb is that NOTHING works the first time. This means that the students spend hours, and sometimes days, completing a single project. A powerful computer partly makes this easier, especially when it reduces the time it takes to perform a graphics or computer-intensive task. While the college or university will provide some computing resources, especially servers, and may even require the project to be submitted through an institution’s servers, their servers often offer limited performance due to the age or configuration of the network and equipment and/or because they are overused due to the number of students and teachers trying to use these resources all at the same time. Thus, having a powerful computer is extremely valuable for a STEM student to perform tasks efficiently.

Many students will use two computers: a powerful desktop in their dorm or apartment that doubles as a gaming and entertainment PC, and a separate ultralight laptop with limited performance and long battery life for taking notes. While this will work, it’s still inefficient if the student has to go back and forth between where they live and the college campus for classes, labs, and study groups. Consider that a student can spend 8 to 14 hours a day on or around campus for classes, labs, study groups, and other activities. With a powerful laptop, they can work anywhere and possibly even multitask, doing many things at once, such as compiling code, displaying a diagram or training a neural network while watching class videos, participating in a group activity, or de-stressing with a few minutes of gaming. And yes, many STEM students will tell you that gaming lowers their stress. In addition, a powerful computer allows you to complete tasks faster, which is critical if you have to wait for a task to complete to see if it worked correctly before moving on to another part of the project.

What is a powerful laptop?

The ultimate laptop for a STEM student is one with a relatively powerful CPU (an AMD Ryzen 7 or Intel Core i7 or higher), a discrete AMD Ryzen or Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, 16GB or more RAM, at least 1TB of storage , a minimum battery life of 8 hours in light applications or 4 hours in computer intensive applications, and weighs less than 5 pounds (the lighter, the better). If you’re going to look for a laptop with these specs, they’re classified as “gaming” or “studio” laptops, but you might as well justify them as STEM laptops.

Nvidia recently provided some data on the applications typically required for STEM students and the benefit of a powerful laptop, especially one configured with a discrete GPU. Nvidia found that applications such as Solidworks and Matlab ran 8x and 4x faster on laptops configured with an Nvidia RTX 3070 GPU than on laptops with an Intel Core i7 CPU with integrated graphics. And some applications, such as Enscape, a commercial plug-in for real-time display and virtual reality, wouldn’t even run on some laptops without a discrete GPU. But it doesn’t stop there, as Triple-A games like Borderlands 3, Cyberpunk and Destiny 2 get bigger, employ ray tracing and require higher performance, some won’t run on many laptops at all, if at all without discrete graphics and other competing specs. So having a poorly performing laptop can not only put a strain on your student’s teaching time and performance, but it can also affect other aspects of the college experience. While that may seem a bit exaggerated, I speak from experience.

Learning the hard way

Unfortunately I experienced this firsthand. After the hinges on my son’s laptop broke a few years ago, we rushed to buy a new laptop before classes started. We tried to stick to similar specs I mentioned above for a thin and light laptop. We selected an HP model that met the specs and many others that would be beneficial to my son, such as higher performance audio, as he is also an event and radio DJ. HP offered two versions, one with discrete graphics and one without. Unfortunately, the one with discrete graphics wasn’t available at the time, and HP couldn’t provide a timetable for when it would be available. So we went ahead and bought the version without a discrete GPU. In hindsight, that was a mistake. My son can tell you about spending hours looking at his PC trying to complete a task and nearly overheating, and the inability to perform other tasks or play some of the games he would like to play. To his credit he didn’t complain about it, but as a parent and engineer I feel like I disappointed him by not giving him the best PC for his needs.

While I’m sending my youngest son off to college for a STEM degree, I’m now buying not just for him but a new one for my oldest, who is starting his master’s degree in the fall. The table below lists some of the PCs we found that meet these requirements. Keep in mind that you often have to dig through all possible system configurations to get the PC you want and arrive at a final price, which is usually $1,200 to $2,000. Also note that most STEM applications run on Windows PCs, so we haven’t considered Apple, although many students use MACs for multimedia design applications.

Note that of the major PC vendors, Dell and HP provide all the specifications on their websites necessary to make an informed decision, including the weight and battery capacity of the PC as configured. While some HP PCs are slightly above the target weight of 5 pounds, they’re included because most of the weight difference can be explained by the extra battery capacity. There are many other Lenovo laptops, especially ThinkPads, that are likely to meet the specs, but the Lenovo website doesn’t give any specs on weight or battery capacity. I know many of the Asus PCs like the ROG and TUF gaming PCs also meet the specs but the ASUS website requires configuring each PC to get a price which is too much work was for this evaluation. And most Acer PCs didn’t meet the weight requirement.

Another item that you can consider buying is a multi-terabyte external flash drive. Even at 1 terabyte, the average STEM student and gamer will likely soon exceed that storage limit. While the high-capacity flash drives are more expensive than hard drives (HDD), they are a more robust option for bouncing around in a backpack from day to day. You can often find 1TB flash drives (external SSDs) for around $100 and 4TB flash drives for sale in the $400 to $450 range.

While only the students can determine their success, a powerful laptop is the most valuable tool a STEM student can have, and it can perhaps give them an advantage both in schoolwork and in the overall college experience.

.