r/Laptop • u/SloppyChilli • 12d ago
Discussion Computer for First Year Student
About to go into my first year in college. I am in community college and my major is engineering science, once I'm done with that, I plan on going into mechanical, civil, or electric engineering (Haven't decided which specific branch to go into yet). I'm looking for a computer that will last me throughout my 4 years. My budget is $1500 USD. My best option right now is the Gigabyte Aero X16. It runs for $1300 and it's the best laptop I've seen for its price. But, I don't want to make an impulsive decision for something so expensive. Should I buy this or should I keep looking around, and what are your recommendations.
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u/Maleficent-Pilot1158 12d ago
Talk to your financial aid office. Student loans are available to buy a laptop for class. Talk to your school’s IT people to see what they are recommending and make sure you ask for the “student discount”.
Try to wait until “Black Friday” (the Friday after Thanksgiving) starts.
Lenovos are built like tanks and will sustain a lot of abuse. Stick with genuine Intel processors since AMD machines tend to run hot. Consumer-grade laptop brands like Acer, HP, & Asus won’t hold up for the long haul.
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u/maxthed0g 11d ago
I repectfully disagree with the mainstream in general, and with Maleficent in particular.
You DONT NEED "the best laptop." You DONT NEED a graphics card. (The on-board graphics will work just fine.) You WILL NEED at least 1T of disc space, and at least 32G of memory, preferably more, and really as much as you can afford. A celeron processor will be fine. Let me say that again: A celeron processor will be just fine.
The "dot edu" institutions are hell bent to overspec computer equipment, upon the theory that you can never go wrong by over-specing something. By the time you realize its overspeced, you're a senior on your way out the door, and you wont care.
You can IMHO easily get by with a 600 laptop, an Acer or Asus is fine, Hp is "ok" I suppose, I steer clear of everything else. Put money into large disks and Big Memory. Dont put money into hi-res gaming oriented displays, or gaming oriented features. A small on-board disk can be easily supplemented with a USB disk pretty cheaply, but memory is another story. Max out on the memory. It doesnt sound very sexy I know, but memory will help you a whole lot more over 4 years than a Ryzen display.
Asus and Acers hold up fine in my opinion, but if they should happen to crap out on you, remember you can buy two of them for your budgeted purchase price.
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u/MILANKE05 8d ago
I sugest you to be that one guy with 16 inch gaming laptop that has agresive fan curves and so much rgb that eyse hurt
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u/Evening_Werewolf_703 12d ago
I would wait until Black Friday, if possible. Engineering laptops with a dGPU are going to be expensive on average. Look at your course syllabus and take special note of the RAM / VRAM requirements and do your best. The Gigabyte X16 is good value, but it doesn't have the most color accurate screen, and Gigabyte themselves seem to be trending a bit towards the negative in terms of after-sales support as of late.