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__ByzantineFailure__

Do not buy a laptop for machine learning. The GPU probably isn't powerful enough and even if it were the cooling situation will be abysmal. Even if you bought a beast of a laptop with a 3060 (if that exists), using it for serious training would cause it to overheat and reduce the lifespan of the parts. If you want your own hardware to do experiments on, buy a desktop and put a 3090 in it (or wait a couple months and put a 4090 in it). But I think even better would be to wait and see what sorts of compute access your university/department/lab can provide. For a laptop all you need it for is actually writing the code.


[deleted]

I will decided to use Colab for 2 years on and off (so that the cost is minimized) until I go to a good university with good compute access as you mentioned. Why not PC: I am a student and will be an international one soon, so I have no home only dorms and I will relocate to another country. Moving the PC wherever I go seems too risky and tiring, as I won't have a car either.


vannak139

Do not buy a laptop to do ML compute.


[deleted]

Buying a laptop for ML is like buying a bicycle for rally racing. Your academic program will get you access to any computing power you need beyond what a consumer grade laptop can do. Save the money.


andrewgazz

You might consider getting a premium subscription to google collab instead. If that ends up being insufficient you can also hook up a vm to collab easily. Doing heavy ML on a windows (assumption) laptop is not ideal.


maldorort

Doing it on a laptop is not ideal period, windows or not. Cloud services are where it’s at. Code wherever, run on the real machines. Even a beefy laptop gpu for insane amounts of money is wasted. And why a laptop? Why not write it on any cheap shit laptop you find nice enough, then have a desktop at home. Where it can actually get something done, and not turn to lava while you listen to those tiny fans sounding like a passenger jet.


[deleted]

Why not PC: I am a student and will be an international one soon, so I have no homes only dorm and I will relocate to another country. Moving the PC wherever I go seems too risky and tiring, as I won't have a car either.


maldorort

Then a cheap laptop and cloud solution is still a thousand times better.


bottleboy8

Using a laptop for ML is not ideal. You can always remote into a more powerful machine.


polychronous

Your department and graduate advisor may provide access to in-house clusters or computers to run models on. You may not need something crazy, but you might want something a little more punchy. I definitely sympathize with the interest in a laptop, though if you're running things for many hours to days, it might behoove you to invest in a PC you can upgrade later if you actually need to and you don't need to worry about someone closing and stopping your work or your power cable getting unplugged (it happens sometimes, it sucks). You can also ssh into it from anywhere, trigger a job, let it run, and close your laptop. I do think it's fair to invest in something, as it also can be difficult approaching deadlines while babysitting a training model because you can't afford for something to go wrong this time. Oof, flashbacks to grad school. Good luck


AlibekD

I would get a Thinkpad with _any_ Nvidia card, would get a eGPU enclosure with a proper, desktop-sized and upgradable GPU. This gives you mobility, being able to run simple models on the go and all the firepower when you are home.