If you are an architectural student trying to figure out the right laptop to buy and just can’t seem to make up your mind on whether you need an intel core with an RTX GPU or AMD setup while juggling between whether or not you need the 17 or 15.6 inch screen size and 16 or 32GB RAM version with a budget that can afford neither of what I’ve just previously mentioned, then this article is not for you. However, if you should make up your mind and are now in the process of summoning the courage to go and blow your sponsor’s mind with a very unfriendly price tag, should the words to explain your situation fail to find you, just show them this article as I do my best to explain to them why you need a portable jet engine and how its ability to play video games determines its capability to use the fancy software, which you talk about, that fly over their heads when you bring it up but has to be functioning at a decent proficiency, for you to finish your course, so let’s get started.
I’m sure in your pursuit to overcome the atrocities that rob you of your sleep and social life (submission deadlines), you have probably felt like your laptop is not your friend and after leaving it to run over 3 demanding software at the same time, without breaks or paying overtime, I’m sure it doesn’t like you either. Woe is you, woe is you, oh how miserable life is, for thy procrastination catches up to thee. No mercy from thy master, you get, for once the clock strikes midnight, thy work must be submitted but always in the last hour, your horse turns back to mice. Yes, always in the last hour, your laptop fights back. Talk about an inappropriate time for a revolution. I mean, what’s its problem? All you did was make it work to its dying breath and let the CPU overheat without turning it off for over 3 days and constantly forgot to clean the cooling fans. Why is it acting like that’s such a big deal? Laptops, right? After a while, you try couples counseling. They tell you to clean the screen a couple of times, and maybe replace the RAM sticks.
Take it somewhere nice where a man or woman you don’t know can open it up and clean the fans. Give it some alone time.
Turn it off and go see your other friends and all seems jolly for a while but still, every time you bring up assignments, they just can’t seem to stand it. And now you’re looking at other laptops wondering what your life could be with them ohh the infidelity, but they left you no choice. You were destined for great things, and you just can’t hold onto people that are letting you down now you download tinder (amazon) and start to check through your options. You deserve better. You deserve someone that supports you and won’t let you get held back a year. I know it’s not easy to let go but you have to move on. While life got hard they gave up. You don’t need weaklings in your corner, you need a real PC so let’s update our standards.
Now, there are about 5 things you need to worry about when getting a PC. The CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage Space, and Size. If we’re being picky, we can go into brands, color, fingerprint sensibility, and a few other useless things you can’t afford to be picky about.
Let’s start with the CPU.
This is the head honcho of your PC system. The Alpha of the pack. The Ying to your laptop’s yang. The Thanos of the Black Order. You get my point. There are 2 major CPU manufacturers when it comes to PCs. Intel and AMD. In most cases, you’ve probably heard about Intel and only noticed AMD when you started looking through your options. I’ll skip the technicalities of the types of chips but just to give you a brief idea, Intel Core i7 and i9 (10th generation and above), good. AMD Ryzen 5000 and higher, is good. Each has its advantages and disadvantages for example though Intel is regarded as the better chip, it tends to need more power, and this causes it to generate more heat compared to its AMD equivalent. But let’s put it in layman’s terms, imagine you have an apartment. It’s your role to make sure all services within that apartment are running smoothly. That makes you the CPU of the apartment. To do your job efficiently, you have to take care of yourself and do things like exercise, go to the gym, eat healthily, and all those other stuff boring people with no social life do. Is the assignment due? You don’t wash the dishes, fatigued? Throw your clothes on the floor and jump into bed. Too lazy to cook? Order food. Does this sound like you? Well, do I have news for you?
In the picture, you were a 12th gen i9 intel chip (chef’s kiss). Coming back home with calves sculpted by Hermes, assignments don’t faze you because you read, walking up the hill to your faculty won’t break you because you break yourself at the gym every day, and summer heat doesn’t shake you because you’re hot all by yourself. You can’t find procrastination in your dictionary because you’re a pro at eating crustaceans for breakfast. Now you wake up realizing you’re a 5th gen i3 intel chip. You don’t want to get out of bed, you’re saying you’ll do it tomorrow for the 5th time this week, and you like your dishes the way you like your room, messy. Is this the kind of chip you want pushing buttons in your life? The same goes for laptops. I9 runs, and functions efficiently, and i3 makes you run mad. I think you get the gist of it. The better your CPU, the better your life, and on that bombshell, let’s move on to the next part.
The GPU. Remember what I said about the CPU and called you an i3 intel chip? Now, you’re an i3 intel chip with a butler.
The GPU is something or someone that helps or simplifies something in your life in any way so that you can focus on other more important things like whether that couple in the romcom you’re watching will get together or whether your Ferrari… no, let’s not talk about Ferrari. The GPU is that dude feeding the roman emperor grapes, your tyres (probably should have used this analogy from the beginning) for your i3 CPU engine car, Freddy Kruger’s claws, a rasengan (for the weebs), your groupmates when you ditch them to party and leave them to do all the work for the assignment. The GPU is what you outsource the graphics work to so that the CPU can focus on executing other tasks. That’s why it’s called the Graphics Processing Unit. It’s like those things people use to outsource sight, what are they called again, oh yeah, glasses.
Now, it’s time to look at the RAM. You have a backpack. Your friends call you and tell you to join them camping. You take your time and think about it trying to see whether there’s something that you need to do which probably needs your time right now. I mean, your work’s only due tomorrow and you’ve barely started but your confidence to perform well under pressure gets the better of you and you decide to tag along on this fun adventure. So, what do you need? A sleeping bag, snacks, a power bank, water, more snacks, insect repellent, comic books, a laptop et cetera. You start packing and realize that the extra snacks, insect repellent, and sleeping bag won’t fit. “Ahh,” you say to yourself, “I need more RAM”. RAM in full is Random Access Memory. To carry out all the tasks you need your laptop to do at the same time while playing music on Spotify, you need more RAM. The less the RAM, the fewer the things your laptop can carry while they’re active. RAM is not to be confused with storage space. RAM is your backpack where you put things that you need to use at a certain or immediate moment in time. Storage space is your home, where you put stuff you might need later but not at the moment. As an architecture student, you’re going to need plenty of RAM. Imagine you agree to go on that camping trip and they ask you to come with about 3 mini fridges, a bicycle, and the moon (rendering software). Again, for the sake of emphasis, this is not a backpack you can carry with your i3 CPU. That’s why as an architecture student, always remember to eat healthily and go to the gym or replace your body parts with cybernetic enhancements. This is why you need the i9 or i7 CPU. If you can all together, get the Nvidia Quadro 5000 GPU at the meager price of your soul. A small price to pay for perfection.
Now, why does size matter? Professionally speaking, despite being great CPUs, they also generate a lot of heat.
If this heat is left unchecked, it affects the performance of the laptop thus the need for cooling fans. A small PC has weak cooling fans and can’t cool the heat generated by the i7 and i9 CPUs efficiently. The fans needed are a bit bigger and therefore a larger body is needed. The recommended screen size is about 15.6 and above. There’s honestly nothing more to say here. Having gone through summer, I probably don’t need to tell you why good fans are necessary.
Now that we’ve curated the perfect Tinder bio requirements and after swiping left for a while, you’ve finally found someone to swipe right to. Everything you ever dreamed of in a PC and all in your favorite color. So glorious, so pristine. There’s just one problem. The parents demand you pay the bride price or groom price. You’d think tradition would be a thing of the past but no, sadly we don’t live in a world where a man/woman and a PC can’t peacefully fall in love without their parents getting in the way. I’m sure you noticed I didn’t bring up Apple. I mean if you can, I’m not stopping you. The heart wants what the heart wants. This is the point where I probably insert some philosophical quote to conclude this love story, but we all watched the Titanic. No hard feelings.
So, if you ever find yourself at some point needing to explain to someone why you need a 2000-dollar laptop, hopefully, this will show them why. They might still say no, but at least they’ll understand. Feel free to watch Linus Tech Tips on YouTube for a bit more detail. I had to cut a lot of the things I could have explained because this was getting unnecessarily lengthy but otherwise, that’s been it. Be nice to your PC. It’s the only one you get for a loooonnnngggggg while. By the way, for those wondering, the notebook is a type of laptop and also the title of a Romance drama hence the title of this tragic love story. It’s not as witty if I have to explain it but otherwise, that’s been it. All the best in your endeavors to find true love.
