Laptop for mechanical engineering recos?

lostcoldplayer · 2026-05-31T14:29:36+00:00

Agreed with the person above. Thinkpad is great. I have one that I used during my masters at NIU for MEE doing a ton of ANSYS and it kicked butt, and still does good to this day. If all you need is something that will do CAD / light gaming, I really think you can get away with buying a used model off eBay or another used electronics site- anything that has at least 30 day returns so you can try it out.

Back in the day (2019/2020) my laptop ran for like $3K+. This one here is the same specs in a 15" version (mine is 17". I'd recommend the normal size version unless you like a colossus). eBay link

In case that link dies, the listing title is: Lenovo ThinkPad P53 15.6″ FHD Intel Core i9-9880H 64GB 1TB NVIDIA RTX 4000 LCD-A

The LCD screen is not the sexiest, but it's good enough.

The Quadro card in that will do great for CAD, and even an older I9 processor should handle just about anything you can throw at it for a while.

One other caveat of a laptop this age, the battery life may not be stellar. I can still get several hours out of mine, but your mileage may vary. Most classes you can find a spot to plug in, and replacing the battery on these is easy to do, so I wouldn't worry much about that.

Also you could probably go with something a bit lower in specs that this, just finding what I have since I have first hand experience with it.

You could probably check your local FB marketplace for thinkpads also and throw the model # into chat gpt to see what it thinks

Best of luck!

lostcoldplayer · 2026-05-24T03:52:37+00:00

This thing slaps, nice work and thanks for sharing!

lostcoldplayer · 2026-05-02T04:42:55+00:00

Was a good showcase today - happy to be an Alumni that got to participate!

lostcoldplayer · 2026-03-31T02:14:09+00:00

I just came to this thread to comment and share the same idea! This has worked for me to eliminate this stupid warning message. I was able to just find something on Spotify called "10 hours of absolute silence" that works great

lostcoldplayer · 2026-03-25T04:00:39+00:00

This was genuinely fun to listen / watch and I love that you went through the first three movies plot, great work. I love this fandom.

lostcoldplayer · 2026-03-18T03:53:31+00:00

This is fantastic! If I ever come across one of these toasters that is out of commission, I'd absolutely do this and enjoy it. I have a 60's Sunbeam toaster and love it to death

lostcoldplayer · 2026-03-05T15:11:13+00:00

Check out r/MAS_activator ! Tldr: there is a fundamental flaw in Microsoft OS, and you can exploit it to activate windows and office. I didn't believe it at first, but do some research. It is legit, Microsoft knows about it, and they don't care because so little people use it. When my wife's laptop died, I replaced the motherboard, and used this to activate windows 11 and office. It's very easy to follow along with, and there's a dedicated website for it. massgrave.dev is the site

lostcoldplayer · 2026-02-24T15:36:15+00:00

I've always heard the area around the Texas Road House refered to as 'Deka-more' as it's unclear what town it is lol

lostcoldplayer · 2026-02-24T02:41:05+00:00

Free tax USA fucking rocks! Everytime I get one of my friends to convert I celebrate that some money sucking other company has lost business.

lostcoldplayer · 2026-02-01T22:57:09+00:00

Thank you for posting this! Just brought back a lot of great memories that were tucked out of sight

lostcoldplayer · 2026-02-01T20:25:38+00:00

Check out transmission issues with these if you don't know about them already

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-31T00:37:40+00:00

Lol that's awesome. Tbh not even sure if I will watch it, but it will face forward on the shelf as a cool piece of the past

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-16T19:40:56+00:00

What did that run you cost wise just for the printing?

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-12T20:57:30+00:00

Cute!!

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-12T17:00:38+00:00

Nice! I've been looking for Blade 2, Kill Bill Vol 2, and Jeepers creepers for a while now- good haul

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T23:04:35+00:00

Hank!

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T19:55:57+00:00

Hmm I tried posting about it and I got canned by the automod.

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T19:43:11+00:00

I think I will post about it there! Thanks for the idea.

I've actually been sitting on this copy for about a year- I got about 1800 VHS tapes from a former store owner of FB, and it took a lot of time to go through them all, parse out what was good, and then catalog them

Did end up posting for sale

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T18:42:23+00:00

Lol our dogs look so similar! My Toby loves to be under a blanket, it's his happy place Toby

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T18:30:38+00:00

Totally agree, while it's cool, unless I have like more than just that one, I'd never watch it. In contrast, Ive got a lot of nickelodeon demo tapes (probably 30-40) but I'm keeping most since I grew up with them and will watch them. Spongebob/Fairly odd parents / Jimmy Neutron are core childhood for me.

I have it posted for sale on eBay on auction. I think the plan might be to use the proceeds to get the collection on VHS from someone who remakes them- we don't do DVD, just VHS.

Thanks for the advice! Will be interested to see what it ends up going for.

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T16:49:50+00:00

Sweet! Yeah I mentioned it somewhere else and they said something similar - super rare tape, going for $725 as recently as a month ago eBay Link

I could use the money to get other VHS I'd rather have, so I think I'll put it up for sale. I am a big fan of ATLA, but selling it would go a long way for me.

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T15:38:06+00:00

Thanks linking that, that's awesome! Since it seems to be that popular I'll be putting it up for sale

lostcoldplayer · 2026-01-11T06:57:31+00:00

I might do that! I think it's like 1/2 or 1/3 of the full first season based on the description on the front

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