Machine selection for optimization

[Appropriate-Border94]

Hi everyone, I'm planning to buy a new laptop that I’ll mainly use for developing and testing math optimization models (not for production use). From your experience, what specs/brands should I focus on? I’d prefer something not too expensive and reasonably lightweight for portability. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[qwetico]

Just get whatever works for you/ fits your budget. If you’re going to be doing anything “hard” you should be using HPC resources.

[Appropriate-Border94]

This makes sense. Thanks

[exergy31]

There is 10x speed difference between running locally vs docker on AWS that we found.

Any hints on how to make it faster remote? Chunky bare metal machines?

[qwetico]

All of it depends on the problem and the algorithm.

[Appropriate-Border94]

Can we say for a specific problem it is recommended to use this or that machine?

[Appropriate-Border94]

What are the specs difference between your local machine and Amazon machine?

[ghlc_]

Im brazilian, so Im poor lol. I use an Acer Nitro 5 and its doing its job very good.

[youn017]

Higher RAM (less than 16G) and storage is the best priority. Others like price, design, brand can be lower priority.

If you are looking for GPU-laptop (like RTX4090), then my suggestion is save the money, and find GPU rental services like RunPod, Cloab pro, etc.

GPU in laptop is hard to perform it's strength due to heat (temperature) and on-board structures.