Pluripotent Laptop for College Multithreading

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

It's a paste, but when it gets hot it can act funny I guess. In general it's pretty touchy, I wouldn't recommend using it until you get some experience. Great thermal characteristics, but that's worth nothing if it eats through your aluminum....

It's very different to paste, it is liquid and should not cure at least in its useful lifetime. AFAIK it doesn't change properties with heat except extreme cold which will kill its usefulness as a TIM. It's a pain to install because you have to spend time breaking the surface tension and manually distributing it evenly in a very thin layer.

Originally Posted by jvang

So... is it actually straight up liquid, held in place by cohesion/adhesion forces only? How does anyone get it to stay put inside a laptop?

Yes, I lack a deep enough understanding of fluid dynamics to know the proper terms but I believe that's all that is holding it in place. It stays in place because it's a very thin layer, if properly applied normal wear and tear shouldn't shift it but a jolt such as dropping it might. People who use liquid metal in laptops aren't your average bear, they want the best performance and are willing to sacrifice convenience for it.

Originally Posted by jvang

An old post indeed! But I probably won't run Linux on my personal computers because of compatibility and familiarity

Linux is awesome especially for programming tasks. You'll have Windows 10 no doubt so as a half measure I recommend you install WSL, it's a convenient way to use Linux terminal programs on Windows 10 natively. I also recommend buying a raspberry pi to familiarise yourself with Linux and how to connect to and control it over the network, it sounds likely that you'll do that in your course and it's a useful skill to have regardless.

[Uncwilly]

Those are all part of the "Senior Design" program. As it has progressed, all seniors in those fields are required to work on a project. Different teams are formed by the profs such that no team is overloaded with talent. Teams nominally are 6 members and may be cross disciplinary.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

A cheap $150 netbook would be great for college. They have a long battery life and they can run Linux. We have one running Debian and it works great!

https://www.pcmag.com/review/346334/...00-series-3162

Plus, it might be a good idea to focus on your studies rather than games. College is probably going to be a lot more challenging than high school.

[pinhodecarlos]

My challenges at college were how to concentrate on my studies when:

1) I was reading a lot of novels
2) Had to view Tour de France stages live at Eurosport (cycling)
3) Distributed computing

The solution was to make a schedule and optimise my time to do everything giving more weight to studies.

[jvang]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

If you want to go into computer engineering, you should learn to work with linux -- and not just linux, but command-line linux. It will go easier if your main computer is a linux machine, or at least as a second boot option. But it's your call.

Originally Posted by M344587487

Linux is awesome especially for programming tasks. You'll have Windows 10 no doubt so as a half measure I recommend you install WSL, it's a convenient way to use Linux terminal programs on Windows 10 natively. I also recommend buying a raspberry pi to familiarise yourself with Linux and how to connect to and control it over the network, it sounds likely that you'll do that in your course and it's a useful skill to have regardless.

What big Linux-related things have I not covered in the Learning thread? I think that I could figure out how to do the cron automated backups that paulunderwood pointed to, but I'm not sure how good I'd be with managing the whole system adequately...

[jvang]

I saw some very good deals for laptops during Black Friday/Cyber Monday. These were in the $600-900 range, with pretty good specs. I don’t have the money to buy anything now, and don’t plan on buying anything particularly soon. When would another round of decent sales come around? I would assume that there might be some following Christmas/New Year's, but I don’t have much experience with being a sales-conscious consumer

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by jvang

When would another round of decent sales come around?

Right after a new product line launches. All the old stuff -- perfectly good, just the same as it was the day before -- is instantly worth less as people flock to the latest and greatest.

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by M344587487

I also recommend buying a raspberry pi to familiarise yourself with Linux and how to connect to and control it over the network, it sounds likely that you'll do that in your course and it's a useful skill to have regardless.

I second buying a Pi 3B+. It is a fantastic little box. 4 USB ports and wifi/LAN. Plus PIO 40 for hardware gadgets. One need only to download and copy a Linux image to a microSD card and you have the world at your finger tips -- one can even boot from a USB pen/drive with a 3B+. It is also well supported online. I convinced a friend to buy one to try out and now he has two. His pet projects were to set up VPN, VNC and surveillance cameras. For less than 50 bucks, plus a keyboard, video/TV and mouse it is a cheap option, but not as mobile as a laptop/notebook. Of course, you can ssh into to run it headlessly.

[jvang]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Right after a new product line launches. All the old stuff -- perfectly good, just the same as it was the day before -- is instantly worth less as people flock to the latest and greatest.

Hmm, good point! Although I can kinda get on the bandwagon myself, since new stuff is always too cool

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

I second buying a Pi 3B+. It is a fantastic little box. 4 USB ports and wifi/LAN. Plus PIO 40 for hardware gadgets. One need only to download and copy a Linux image to a microSD card and you have the world at your finger tips -- one can even boot from a USB pen/drive with a 3B+. It is also well supported online. I convinced a friend to buy one to try out and now he has two. His pet projects were to set up VPN, VNC and surveillance cameras. For less than 50 bucks, plus a keyboard, video/TV and mouse it is a cheap option, but not as mobile as a laptop/notebook. Of course, you can ssh into to run it headlessly.

It would be pretty cool to have a home server running on Raspberry Pis or something like that. We have a NUC set up that hosts a few files and crunches mprime. I’d want to set up system backups that upload to the server overnight, or downloads files/videos in the background (I’m cursed with abysmally slow internet, DSL).

[jvang]

As mentioned in one of the other blog threads, I got a ASUS TUF FX504G laptop over the holidays. It's very nice and runs well, with a processor equivalent to a low-power desktop CPU, 32 GB of RAM (added after purchase), and a fully capable 1050ti GPU. The only "problem" is that the cooling is slightly sub-par, and the fans kick in for random tasks. They get rather loud compared to other laptop cooling systems, and certain parts of the case get a little too warm for my liking.

So a couple of days ago I ordered a cooling pad (the brand is Havit? never heard of them, but they're the highest rated cooling pad maker on Amazon ) that will help with air flow, and I've downloaded the Intel super-scary-overclocking utility to undervolt the CPU. I don't know much about this sort of thing; the chip's TDP is 45 watts, so how far could/should I take it down for the maximum cooling benefit while not giving up a disproportionate amount of processing power?

I don't expect the cooling pad to make a huge difference. It's just a more streamlined solution for the sticky note pads that I've propped the back of the laptop up on, which have helped a little bit.

[S485122]

A lot of laptops with recent processors have their fans much too noisy.

Disabling the turbo mode in BIOS reverts them to a polite noise.

Jacob