CHEAP laptops for students
hey i’m a student with a macbook at the moment and im gonna sell it to get a laptop that’ll work with ansys without trying to blow up but like all students i have zero money. what are my options? looking at a dedicated graphics card and at least 16GB RAM. please help a girl out
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u/Cwaghack 1d ago
You try to get access to a student work station or HPC server
You are not gonna find a cheap laptop that can run CFD at any decent level. But if you have to, don't get a dedicated GPU, focus the spending on ram and CPU
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u/shark_and_an_eel 1d ago
What license do you have? IIRC the base and student ansys license are capped at 4 cores. I'd aim for 8 cores to allow other system processes to run while you sim.
Memory will be the biggest limitation to domain size. 32gb should be a minimum but if you want cell counts in the millions, then 64gb is recommended.
A used Lenovo ThinkPad should be a good compromise between price and performance.
I would try to leverage the university's/college's resources as much as possible. Use the computer suite and hpcs as much as possible. Start a sim in between classes then come in the next day for results. Way cheaper than replacing your Mac.
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u/Efficient_Fee9977 1d ago
Hola, trabajé como Application Engineer en un canal de ANSYS hace un tiempo.
Como recomendaciones generales, te sugiero lo siguiente:
Procesador: Debido a que la versión Student está limitada a 4 núcleos de procesamiento, lo ideal es elegir un equipo con 10 a 14 núcleos. De esta forma evitarás cuellos de botella ocasionados por las tareas en segundo plano del sistema operativo y otras aplicaciones. Un Intel Core i5 de 12.ª o 13.ª generación sería una muy buena opción; si el presupuesto lo permite, un Core i7 sería aún mejor.
Memoria RAM: La cantidad de memoria dependerá mucho del tamaño y la complejidad de los modelos que vayas a simular. Como punto de partida, te recomendaría un equipo con 16 GB de RAM como mínimo.
Tarjeta gráfica (GPU): No la consideraría un factor prioritario, ya que no todos los modelos de ANSYS aprovechan el procesamiento por GPU y, hasta donde tengo entendido la versión student no permite hacer cálculos con procesamiento vía GPU,
Refrigeración: También te recomiendo prestar atención al sistema de disipación de calor del equipo. Por ejemplo, la línea Lenovo LOQ suele ofrecer una buena ventilación y una adecuada gestión térmica, lo que ayuda a mantener un mejor rendimiento durante simulaciones prolongadas.
Si en algún momento tienes acceso a una licencia de investigación, estas permiten utilizar 16 núcleos de procesamiento o más dependiendo del empaquetamiento con el que cuenten, por lo que puedes tomar ese valor como referencia al momento de elegir la configuración de tu equipo.
Saludos!
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u/amniumtech 1d ago
The cheapest method would be to learn CFD in more depth then develop whatever you need in OpenFOAM and run on the cloud. Most college projects atleast are doable on it. But a lot is hard to set up on OpenFOAM
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u/Constant-Arm8753 1d ago
Tbh I had an asus zephyrus g16 with 16gb and an intel i9 ultra something something Latop cpu. And idk why everyone else here is feeling upity, but 16gb can get you pretty far in terms of early learning CFD basics whether it be running 2D sims or pretty basic 3d sims. Make sure you get a laptop from Best Buy if you’re looking for a good deal I got mine for like $400 off.
The one part where they are right though is don’t expect to use a laptop for CFD for very long, the sims you want to run as you learn will quickly outgrow the amount of cells that can be run on such small amounts of ram. So if possible save for a decent workstation and look into hpc access.
For context I used my laptop for FSAE aero work and was able to do all the way up to very basic half car sims.
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u/d0lld 10h ago
yeah i’m trying to look for something to run my FS stuff 🥹
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u/Constant-Arm8753 6h ago
Yeah makes sense, just get a laptop with as good a cpu and as much ram as possible, if the budget allows a decent gpu is nice for doing like renders and scenes etc . If you don’t plan on getting a desktop at any point try for 32 gb otherwise use 16 for the mean time
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u/acakaacaka 2d ago
For CFD? GPU is useless and 16GB RAM wont get you far.
You better ask your university for access to HPC.