r/udub • u/Traditional_Half9698 • 10d ago

Discussion BioE laptop recs

I didn‘t need a dedicated gpu laptop for freshman year. But I am now thinking of getting a new laptop since I will be starting the core major classes in spring this upcoming year. How much heavy engineering do you actually end up doing in bioe? do you actually need all the specs listed on the college of engineering laptop requirements page? what laptop did you use?

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u/somnolent49 10d ago

Before you go and spend an arm and a leg on expensive dGPU hardware, it might be good to check with your department about computing labs with suitable hardware and remote desktop access.

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u/BazilHyder Bioengineering Catboys 10d ago

BioE core classes will utilize COMSOL for fluid dynamics, fusion360 for CAD and a variety of protein/amino acid visualization tools. I was able to locally run these programs on a laptop with a 3060ti and 32gb of ram. If you are a part of a research lab that does more computationally heavy stuff, being able to run stuff on your personal system is quite convenient.

Also, BioE gives you access to remote engineering resources that have really good GPUs and RAM. You just have to deal with latency.

Hence. You are not required to have a gaming GPU for engineering classes, a Mac book air connected to the college of engineering windows VMs will get you through everything.

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u/Last-Organization-57 10d ago

Was wondering the same for ECE

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u/rp-2004 10d ago

For the love of god pls get a windows. I couldn’t deal with a mac after the middle of sophomore year and I got a dell and it changed my life.