Hello,

I’ve recently been gifted a Huawei Matebook 16s (intel i9 processor, 16GB RAM, 8GB GPU, DDR5). I need it for uni/work and for my bachelor thesis (and hopefully my masters etc after that) that I want to write abroad next year (where I won’t have a desktop pc). I haven’t selected a bachelor thesis yet because it’s still a year until I will have to write it, so I don’t know which tasks and software I need to be able to use with my laptop.

I’ve been looking into system requirements for engineering tools like AutoCAD and Matlab and I seem to always fulfill at least the basic requirements, but I’ve read on some blogs that you need 32 GB memory or better 64 GB for engineering tasks like simulations? But I’m not sure if that’s only for some engineers, in certain branches, after university, or if it’d be better to replace my laptop?

  • stiffanys_creek@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I would say your machine is quite far up the spec ladder. Do you have a model number for the GPU? But from the i9 and the 16GB of RAM it must be a decent model. I think you are more than fine. If you do electrical engineering I think you might not do any large/ complex simulations (or at least not as many). So your machine will be more than enough. I know some people that did their electrical engineering undergrads on Intel 3rd gen dual core computers with 8GB of RAM so. And even if you have to run big simulations, I am fairly certain the university will let you access their PC pools for such work.

    • Still-Guava-1338@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for your reply! The thing is that I want to write my bachelor thesis abroad and I’m not sure if I can use PC pools as an exchange student.

      I don’t know where to find the model number, but the GPU is 7,9 GB according to task manager. The graphic card is called Intel Iris Xe Graphics.

      • stiffanys_creek@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Ah, I see. This makes the situation a bit different. I would hope the pools will be available. Iris Xe graphics means that they are integrated into the processor, so they can play some simpler games, but can’t handle complex 3D things. So doing CAD for example may not be as performant as they should be. Do they have a list of software you might have to use? Then you could look into if you need a better GPU or not. I would say you should be fine. If it comes to the worst, and your machine has a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port, you could always get an external GPU. In a pinch you could also rent a cloud PC to run the apps your system can’t, but I think you should be fine.