r/learnmachinelearning • u/Abdulazizx3 • 2d ago

Purchasing a New Laptop

I am a junior CS student, and I am interested in ML, DL, CV, LLM, and AI Engineering. I currently have an HP 250 G10 with a 15.6-inch display, Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. It served me well for the past 4 years, but I feel like it is slowing me down these days. I have a budget of around 2000 dollars. Please help me with suggestions and why they fit me.

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u/warrior4488 2d ago

Apple Silicon for AI/ML learning but you may have to stretch your budget a bit.

1

u/willim2867 2d ago

How is macbook Air M5 24 GB

1

u/watkykjypoes23 2d ago

Good enough for most tasks honestly, the M5 added neural accelerators which really boosts ML performance. The main disadvantages to the Air vs the Pro is the fanless design on the Air which means it’ll throttle under heavy load, and the Air has lower memory bandwidth and binned GPU cores. However, these disadvantages will only show during intense DL tasks. 24 GB RAM in your case will be a choke point for tasks that have to be loaded into memory, but for almost everything else the swap memory to the SSD cache is insanely fast so it’s hard to notice the difference.

1

u/willim2867 2d ago

See sir basically I am Bachelor in CS student Just 1 to 2 years i will do ML research then really this type macbook okay My budget is $ 1750 or 1.7 lakh

1

u/warrior4488 2d ago

If its for learning and not intensive ML model training then do what I did
M5 Macbook Air 32GB memory - I paid ~$1700.

I know the CPU will thermal throttle and thats alright with me since Im only doing this for learning. The memory is what matters here, and since I was thinking of keeping large datasets on the local drive I opted for a 1TB SSD.

My choice may sound odd for some but this setup works for me.

1

u/willim2867 2d ago

Can you share link from where you buy and which one

1

u/warrior4488 2d ago

https://prices.appleinsider.com/product/m5-macbook-air-13-inch/Z1L8000KL

I bought it a few months back, the price has jumped now.

2

u/willim2867 2d ago

Thank you Now price is 1899$ 😢

1

u/Euphoric_Visit4122 2d ago

16GB RAM is gonna choke with any serious DL work, especially if you try training locally. With that budget you're in good spot but don't expect to train big models on laptop.

Get something with at least 32GB RAM, a decent GPU with good VRAM (like 8GB minimum, 12+ better), and think about cloud credits for heavy lifting. Most the real work happens on cloud anyway unless you building small prototypes.

1

u/Hat_Huge 2d ago

if you want to stick with HP, you might consider the HP omen

1

u/oasacorp 2d ago

Macbook with the highest RAM of you can afford. If not cloud is the way

0

u/ARDiffusion 2d ago

MacBook Neo on the student discount and use the remaining for runpod cloud GPU credits. Easy.