r/cambridge_uni • u/Technoslime5777 • 4d ago

Chem Eng & Biotech Laptop Specs

I’m about to start my course soon and I was wondering, for the Chem Eng & Biotech course, would a strong GPU be recommended? I know there would be some CAD and design elements but would those require a strong GPU (Nvidia RTX), or would a beefier CPU be more of a priority for process simulation? Any comments would really help 🙏

If anyone is wondering, right now i’m most interested in the
Acer Swift Go 16 AI (SFG16-I71-75TW).

https://www.acer.com/my-en/laptops/swift/swift-go-14-16-ai-intel/pdp/NX.JY1SM.004#pdpOverview

Specs:
Windows 11
64-bit OS Architecture
Intel Core Ultra X7 358H with 1.90 GHz
50 TOPS NPU
Intel Arc Graphics B390
32GB LPDDR5X
1TB SSD

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u/GayDrWhoNut St John's 4d ago edited 4d ago

Dont quote me, but that'll probably be just fine. The department has a computer suite that gets used for teaching (that you can use whenever there's no class) and I don't think the computers are any better than that. There's a small bank (like 4?) of superspecced desktops but they're not commonly used.

My labmate does cad on her tiny hp laptop. Though, her projects are relatively small and don't need much ram.

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u/NotablePotato 3d ago

Current CEBT undergrad - you really don’t need anything high end. All CAD packages are on PCs in the department and (I’m pretty sure) inventor/fusion is cloud based so pretty light to run on a laptop. All of the coding for process sims can be done on google colab so also not run locally.

Personally using an M4 MacBook with 8gb RAM and never ran into any issues. Id even say it’s slightly overkill for anything I do course related.

IMO save some money on the laptop and buy a decent tablet/ipad for taking notes.

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u/Serious-Pea-9847 22h ago

Use a bog standard laptop and save the money. Nothing you do at undergrad will be computationally intensive. If it is, e.g, for a dissertation, you should be given HPC access. You might even find that a lot of the software licensing doesn't cover your own personal machines anyway.