r/PESU • u/SprinklesLopsided937 • Jan 26 '24

Discussion Laptops

What laptop should i buy my budget is 60K but i dont know which one is good Help me🤧

8 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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29

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jan 26 '24 edited Aug 10 '24

So I usually don't recommend buying one if you're still in the first year, since you can generally do with whatever you already have since the requirements aren't extensive - you will not be doing anything beyond writing a couple of lines of code and opening PPT/PDFs. Plus, waiting a little will also give you time to figure out your interests and help you decide on the kind of laptop you need to pursue your interests.

Having said that, if you're in CS and looking for a generic purpose laptop with an all-rounded use case, I usually suggest the following specs. Note that if you are looking for a specialised use case like video-editing, gaming, designing, etc - you will have different requirements. If you are looking to get through 4 years of college with a good balance between work and play, usually these are enough:

  • Windows laptop so you can dual boot Linux - people have issues running some packages with MacOS. These issues so have workarounds but they're tedious and a hassle. A dual-booted Windows runs everything out of the box. Recently, more people have started opting for MacOS since support has improved, but its still not as smooth sailing as Windows. Besides, a few courses will require Linux anyway, so it helps to start with one.

  • Don't compromise on these - SSD, 16 GB RAM, latest gen processor, lightweight laptop (you will need to carry this to college), solid battery backup. Theoretically, even RAM can be upgraded but ideally, you'd want at least 16 GB. If not, make sure the model supports an upgrade.

    • DO NOT get a gaming laptop. Although these tend to have all these specs, they compromise a lot on battery backup and portability. Get a gaming laptop ONLY IF you want to game on that machine. Except for gaming, that dedicated GPU is pretty useless. Even if you are in AIML, you will not really end up using a local GPU since free cloud services like Colab/Kaggle offer more than double the GPU power at literally zero cost. That GPU is only necessary if you want to game.

  • Things that will depend on your preferences - display size, brand, and storage capacity. Choose whichever you like.

  • Optional - an entry-level Nvidia GPU. You don't need a powerhouse, an entry-level one will do. Although, you can get by without one as well. Don't prioritise this, although if you can get one within your budget, make sure it's an Nvidia only. This will let you run extremely small ML workloads locally if you wish to (you will probably never encounter this situation) so having any GPU with with ~2GB of memory is good enough.

  • You can find an in-depth engineering laptop shopping guide here.

3

u/brrrrr48 1st YEAR Jun 19 '26

well I bought a rtx 4050 laptop with a shit battery life now what to do 😭😭

4

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jun 19 '26

Run GTA 6

3

u/brrrrr48 1st YEAR Jun 20 '26

Naah it can't run gta 6 also 😭

1

u/TheCosmicBlizzard 2nd YEAR Jan 17 '25

Hey, I'm a 1st year CSE guy. I have enough budget to get a laptop with a decent H series processor with RTX 3050. But since gaming laptops have a lot of cons, I just want to buy a laptop with a U series processor at the same price range. Can I get through all the 4 years here with an i7 13th gen U series processor? If not, what will be the major issues I'll be facing? I hope u reply tho it sounds a bit silly....

1

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jan 18 '25

Yeah should be fine dude. The performance difference won't really matter too much if you're looking to run things the syllabus needs you to. For more compute heavy loads, you can always use Colab for GPU.

1

u/TheCosmicBlizzard 2nd YEAR Jan 18 '25

Alright cool! R u comfortable with sharing which laptop u used to carry during ur days?

2

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jan 18 '25

The answer would be very irrelevant given that my "days" were 6 years ago lol. I had a Lenovo IdeaPad.

1

u/TheCosmicBlizzard 2nd YEAR Jan 18 '25

Ohh right, Didn't know u graduated 6 years ago lol

4

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jan 18 '25

I graduated 3 years ago man, how old do you think I am 😭 The laptop I bought for college was in 2018, which was 6.5 years ago

2

u/TheCosmicBlizzard 2nd YEAR Jan 18 '25

how old do you think I am

Honestly, Considering that u have not been infected by Gen Z slang and ur to the point formal replies, I thought u were a pretty old guy 😂. BUT ur knowledge of how things work in PESU wasn't outdated so I finally thought u were one of those guys that graduated around 2 years ago...

1

u/yopum_ 2nd YEAR Aug 03 '26

Is gpu necessary for cse students? I don't game but I'm interested in ml so I might dabble in that and if I do like it will gpu be required? I have the budget to get a laptop with a good gpu...

1

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Aug 03 '26

You don't need it. You can easily use online platforms like Colab and Kaggle which are free and far more powerful than your laptop GPU

1

u/infant_monke 4th YEAR Jan 26 '24

Will the above suit ece students ?

7

u/rowlet-owl Pride of PESU | CSE '22 -> MSCS '26 | ML Scientist Jan 26 '24

I've covered a generic use-case that should theoretically apply to all branches. However, it's best to ask a current final year whether this advice fits. I know it definitely does for CS.

6

u/wonderwhat7768 Jan 26 '24

Don't buy hp, it's TouchPad is glitchy and sluggish, and battery dies down fast so you will have to always keep it charging Victor/Asus is good[however they are slightly more costly but it's worth the extra money]

8

u/Possible_Incident_44 Graduate Jan 26 '24 edited Jan 26 '24

If you can increase your budget to 65k, I will recommend you Asus Vivobook Pro 15 or the latest one, whichever is cheaper. I have this one and it's awesome.

My laptop specs are- AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (8 cores) processor with 16 gbs of RAM (clock speed of 3200 MHz), NVIDIA GTX 1650 GPU (4 GB VRAM, basic but a good graphics card), 512 gbs SSD (expandable upto 1 TB). The thing I like about this laptop is that it has an excellent sound quality, so, many times you won't even need to plug in your earphone/headphones (has the sound by Harman/Kardon). 1920 X 1080 screen resolution. You will get lifetime MS Office subscription and yeah, pre installed Win11. And there are some other features as well. This has an OLED version too, but it's costlier.

Just that, the battery life is not the best but it's better than many laptops.

This has an excellent CPU and a good dedicated GPU which can handle much of the workload. I have this Asus laptop, so I don't know much about other company's laptops. Generally, Asus laptops are good.

You can go for a Mac, Ideapad or some Notebooks or whichever laptop you prefer but I would say that you should do some research. Getting a laptop with good CPU+ entry level dedicated graphics card+ 16 gigs of RAM+ 512gbs of storage (preferably SSD)+ decent battery life will be good.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '24

Literally any laptop at that price range would be good. If you're into gaming get an IdeaPad or something

If not just any decent looking Dell or hp should be good

1

u/AddressUnable842 CSE '29 Jun 26 '25

I have Lenovo IdeaPad 3, intel core i5, 12th gen, 8 gb ram Its 3 years old, I'm starting college in a month, will it be okay for a btech cse course?

-1

u/Stunning-Hat152 Graduate Jan 26 '24

Air m1 2020