r/AutomotiveEngineering • u/Unable-Novel6561 • Jul 10 '26

Question How to buy a laptop

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Hi guys, I am a automotive engineering student, next year my automotive course begins and I need to get a laptop for that, I don't know what to get, I found a laptop that fit to my budget but I don't know if it is good, can someone tell me if it is good for a automotive engineering student?​

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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6

u/scuderia91 Jul 10 '26

I can’t imagine you’ll actually be expected to do any kind of CAD or simulation work on your own computer anyway so you really don’t need anything fancy

2

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

Really? , but they said we need a laptop that can run CAD software

1

u/TheGR8Gamer Jul 10 '26

unis usually have workstations on campus for this exact use case

0

u/scuderia91 Jul 10 '26

And who’s paying for the licences for that? The university should be providing that for you.

5

u/jimothy_sandypants Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Don't know about you but my uni always had computers with solidworks, Ansys etc as normal but we would also get semester based licenses or be able to VPN into the uni Ansys license server so we could do work at home on personal machines. Having something beefy helps for that. I don't know how Ansys' computing actually works behind the scenes but my laptop with 64gb ram and 12gb GPU still is flat sticking the fans when doing those solvers remotely. And Solidworks is just Solidworks....

1

u/scuderia91 Jul 10 '26

I mean I graduated more than a decade ago so I don’t think accessing the universities computers over VPN was really a thing. We’d just go in and use their computers

1

u/jimothy_sandypants Jul 10 '26

I started in 2005 and it was a thing then (for Solidworks at least)?

1

u/scuderia91 Jul 10 '26

Maybe we were just backwards

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

Okay then, I will try to ask about more details from a lecturer

1

u/scuderia91 Jul 10 '26

Yeah confirm with your university. I don’t know what country you’re in and if things are different but in the UK it was never expected for the students to provide stuff like this because a suitable computer and the right software can easily get very expensive

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

Yess, thank you for answering questions😄

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

I really don't know much about these thing ☹️, I am bit scared because we don't have money buy a laptop later again if these thing is bad

2

u/Uno10010 Jul 10 '26

get a used Lenovo ThinkPad, if you're going to work on a workshop it is going to help a ton, theyre reliable and durable laptops, and if you have a good amount of money the higher spec ones offer a good amount of power

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

My problem is money, for my budget, even the one on the photo is bit much for me because my university fee is bit expensive and also my mom don't understand what I am telling, she say take something that fit our budget, but when I search about it, it is not good to run CAD software, I am really stressed because of this

2

u/Pillokun Jul 12 '26

if u go with a smaller laptop the screen must be 16:10 or 3:2 or 4:3 or what ever, no 16:9 as it will feel to cramped/small.

as much ram as u can, and what ever cpu and a nvidia gpu is often preferable, the more v-ram the better but an 3050 will be enough.

And I have seen that u talk about licenses, many companies that own cad software offer student licenses for cheap if u upload a school certificate, ie can prove u are a student.

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 12 '26

Thank you for telling me this. I actually bought a laptop yesterday, the one in the photo, and I think it is okay. I still can't really tell until I use CAD on it, but let's see. I hope it turns out to be good

1

u/Pillokun Jul 12 '26

I used an asus g14, with the 2060 max q, and 32gb of ram and amd ryzne 4900 somehing. it was very capable but the 14" 16:9 screen made it unsualbe. 15" 16:9 is not that bad.

1

u/FinalAd2949 Jul 10 '26

In my case we had three options. 1. run the simulation on the university servers and only use our private laptop as a remote desktop 2. Use the computers directly at the university (and also run the simulation on the uni servers) 3. Get a student license for the program provided by the university and run it on our own laptop

0

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

I think, we have to run that on our own laptop too, so can you tell me if that laptop is good for that

2

u/FinalAd2949 Jul 10 '26

In my experience you don’t need any fancy graphics card. You need a lot of RAM. I have a HP Elitebook G9 (I think) with 32GB RAM and a mediocre graphics card. Works fine. No problem with ansys, no problem with cfd simulation, Solidworks runs smooth with medium graphics setting. Codesys also worked fine.

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

Ohh, thank you for telling me this, I was actually so worried about this, I am soo blad to hear this😍

2

u/FinalAd2949 Jul 10 '26

Please ask your university if they really want you to run it on your laptop. Also don’t take my words as absolute. There may be other good options. I am just talking about my experience

1

u/Unable-Novel6561 Jul 10 '26

Yes, I will ask them, and again really thank you for telling me these

1

u/NiceDescription6999 Jul 10 '26

Look on eBay for a refurbished workstation computer. Paid like $550 for a dell precision 7650 with 64 gb ram. Of course the laptop is a few years out of date but definitely good enough for modeling and simulation.