Good points .. however, my advice for the cash strapped students on HN: Buying 1 good machine will last you 4+ years easily these days. Buying a system like Ali

Good points .. however, my advice for the cash strapped students on HN: Buying 1 good machine will last you 4+ years easily these days. Buying a system like Alienware with a 3070-3080 was under 2K Canadian over the recent Black Friday shopping event. Over 4 years, that is $500. If you are studying CS, it is absolutely worth buying a decent machine. You don't need a top of the line machine but you need to be able to study your craft on something more powerful than a rasperry pi or junky old machine. I was quite poor growing up, and I recall buying a 3K machine when I started undergrad (that was crap hardware by today's standard). And i have no doubt that having this machine helped me get my first job, and things got better from then. If you are in CS, think of it as an investment, and make it pay off! Btw, I am trying to be positive .. pls don't construe anything here as negative. I appreciate that money is tight for a lot of folks. Paying 10% interest to buy a 3K machine is not a good idea!! I just skimped a lot as a student, and some of it was quite pointless. I wish someone explained this to me, and hence my comment. If you are in a situation where you'd have to take a loan to buy a system, pls don't feel like you need a GPU to do anything useful. I am certain one can make do with just colab and a web browser. Good luck to all the students out there!! Life is hard at that stage .. it gets far easier once you have a paying job in the field.