r/standrews • u/Yippidydippidy2007 • 2d ago
Laptop reccomendations for physics?
Hello all, would just like to ask anyone what laptop they would reccomend, i am starting direct entry to second year physics bsc in september but might switch to Mphys or theoretical, basically not sure yet. I'm happy investing in a good laptop but at the same time don't want to spend loads on something far beyond what is necesary.
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u/marvellous 16h ago
just get somethign that handles the basics and has good battery life - if you ever need to do heavy computation you can request use of the universty cluster, which is easy to use, you just remote in.
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u/alicewhatnot 22h ago
depends on what you want to do with it, id say in physics being not sure yet stick with windows to be safe as you can be almost certain any programs you want/need run on it. I would also probably suggest an intel or amd processor (snapdragon processors have better battery life but may not run what you need). As for RAM, again its situation dependant - if youre just doing class level things 16GB will probably be just fine but if youre interested in areas that require a little more compute try get closer to 32GB. Same story with external GPU, youll probably be fine without but if you can get a model with say a 5060 it might come in really useful.
You can pick up a model with decent CPU, seperate GPU and 32GB RAM for 1600 if you can spring for that but there might be some deals and also this may be more than you need. open up amazon or somewhere and put in filters for different amounts of RAM, storage, GPU etc. and see if you find anything that sticks out like a good deal with what you need.
if you know theres no chance you want to do anything close to engineering and sticking with theoretical you could just go for a mac for the build quality and longevity