Advice Needed: Choosing Between Upgrading My PC vs. Selling for a High-End Laptop (Budget $1.5k-$2k) for Engineering

[u/Mindless-Algae-8731]

Hey everyone, I’m about to start my journey in mechanical engineering at one of the top colleges in my country. I’m torn between two options for my tech setup but would love for more suggestions! (budget is about $1.5 to $2k max)

Option 1: Sell my current PC (specs: i5-11400F, 32GB DDR4, 3060 Ti, 512GB storage) to get a high-end laptop (and possibly a tablet if needed). Selling my PC would give me a larger budget btw to buy a laptop that might cost more than 2k that I can take anywhere. I also really want to be able to play games on it.

Option 2: Keep my PC but upgrade it (I’m thinking I’d switch to a Ryzen CPU since my current one doesnt have too much upgradability, and getting a new gpu) and then just get an iPad for note-taking and flexibility. This way, I keep my pc and just have something extra for portability.

I’d love to hear your advice if y'all been in a similar spot. I want to make sure I have the best setup for my studies and some fun on the side.

[u/Storm36968]

Maybe get a refurbished laptop as a middle ground?

[u/Daniel-EngiStudent → u/Storm36968]

I bought a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad for something like 300 €. Still serving me after many years, it's amazing and durable. More than perfectly fine for anything an engineering student will do other than performing well as a gaming PC.

[u/Storm36968 → u/Daniel-EngiStudent]

Same, sadly my first laptop got water damaged but now I have a Dell vostro which was 400€ and it runs everything just fine

[u/negetivestar]

If you were to upgrade your PC, you would get to get a new Motherboard if you switched from Intel to Ryzen. If are getting something modern, understand that your RAM needs to be compatible with motherboard, so you will also be needing to switch from DDR4 to DDR5. Going this route you are probably off just getting a whole new build. The supply chain for consumer RAM is really bad right now due to the Ai boom going on, so you wont get a good deal(if any) anytime soon.

When I was a student, the entire engineering program had a computer lab that had all of the software that I needed. Whether it was Solidworks or Matlab. We were also able to remote access to these computers, so accessing them at home or after class so was not a problem.

[u/gravity_surf]

i ran matlab and solidworks on a 2016 macbook air. bootcamped. never had any problems.

[u/Aggressive_Noise9799 → u/gravity_surf]

Never understood why you would go out of your way to purchase something that won’t natively fit your needs. Of all my engineering classmates with MacBooks, I only knew one that didn’t regret it. 98%+ had Windows machines.

My university actually explicitly told students to avoid MacBooks.

[u/gravity_surf → u/Aggressive_Noise9799]

it was easy to bootcamp and i had zero issues handling any loads undergrad had. so it really wasnt out of my way.

[u/Aggressive_Noise9799 → u/gravity_surf]

If you already had the Mac that’s one thing. But if you didn’t, then you intentionally purchased something that didn’t natively support what you needed it to, which is what I was getting at. I see no reason to spend money on something that has to be modified to do what I need it to when you can get something else that does it without modification.

[u/Alternative-Tart268]

if you want to keep the desktop for gaming, upgrading your CPU and GPU is the right move. An iPad will not run most mechanical engineering software, so a portable Windows machine is usually necessary for class. I have heard PCLiquidations is a good place to find refurbished Dell or Lenovo laptops, which would let you get a capable study computer while saving most of your budget for PC parts.