Should I buy a new laptop?

Deep Learning
1

Hi guys,
I am using this laptop right now - which is having i5 8th generation processor and 2GB 940MX dedicated graphic card. Currently I am relying on colab and kaggle to learn and run models, but I am about to complete my UG and will have a lot of free time during my job. Then I might work more on deep learning. And, I should also replace my laptop’s battery with a new one.

Keeping all this in mind, which one do you suggest?

  1. Continue using this laptop and rely on cloud/ build my own DL rig?
  2. Buy a new laptop? (which specs do you suggest - a highly GPU enabled gaming laptop or a smart and easy to portable laptop & again relying on cloud/ owm DL rig)
2

Your question boils down to- “should I build my own DL rig or keep using low to mid-range laptop and rely on cloud GPU, storage providers?”

That highly depends on your current situation.

Although, if you want to get a rig of your own, in my opinion, it should be a rig, i.e. a tower PC. That adds serious portability issues. But it is the only way to get a good value of money.

To get the same configuration in a laptop of that of a PC, you will have to shell out 2x-3x the money compared to the desktop. If that is okay with you, go on.

The main issue is, a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU is enough for DL tasks if you have a decent GPU. Building your own PC will give you this option. But if you choose to buy a gaming laptop, you will have to pay for an i7 or i9 CPU to get decent GPU, thus increasing your price.

So, whether to always depend on cloud computing providers or to build your own PC/laptop, you will have to decide for yourself.

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3

I have two suggestion to you. There are some people buying a laptop with a video card. However, I suggest you to build a desktop with remote control. DL really requires a good video card. Most of ppl say RTX is a good option for video card. For cpu, it does not require a really good cpu. Amd 3300X can do the job.

Another suggestion is colab compairing to cloud. I saw one person says he or she need to pay 100 dollar a month for Google cloud. But Colab shuts down automatically in every 12 or 16 hours with pro.

These two above is for people who don’t have money. However, if you have money, you can do anything you want.

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