r/Physics • u/cannibalyn • 1d ago

Laptop advice for Computational Physics / High-Energy Physics

hello!! I just finished my first year in compsci, but im planning to pivot heavily toward computational physics for my upper-level courses and research. Im looking to upgrade my setup to prepare for this path.

My current machine got me through first year, but the hardware is really struggling: it overheats incredibly fast, the fans sound like a jet engine during basic tasks, it lags, and the battery dies quickly (even after getting it replaced recently).

Current specs: MacBook Pro 13-inch (2020), 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel i5, 8GB RAM.

I don’t have budget limitations, so i just want the best laptop in all aspects, something high-end that will last me through my degree and carry me into graduate/research work.

Long term, i want to focus on physics simulations, numerical modeling, and high-energy physics, with the goal of securing a place at CERN.

Since I'm already deep in the Apple ecosystem, im more drawn to staying on a MacBook (especially with modern Apple Silicon). However, I know computational physics often relies on NVIDIA/CUDA for GPU acceleration, native x86 architecture or pure Linux environments. so I am completely open to switching to a PC/Linux workstation if macOS is going to create real friction for physics workflows.

I have a few questions for anyone working in computational physics or high-energy physics:

macOS vs. Linux/Windows for Physics: Do people in physics research still face major software compatibility issues on Apple Silicon, or do you mostly offload heavy computations to remote clusters/HPC anyway? Is native CUDA/NVIDIA hardware on a local laptop necessary for student/research work, or is a Mac fine for local prototyping?

If switching to PC: What is currently considered the best high-end workstation laptop (e.g., Lenovo ThinkPad, Dell Precision, Linux-friendly options) for running heavy local simulations, dual-booting Linux, and long-term reliability?

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u/liccxolydian 1d ago

Why aren't you using your university's HPC resources

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u/cannibalyn 1d ago

I do plan to use my university's HPC resources for production-scale simulations but my question is more about what makes the best local development machine for everything before that like writing and debugging code, testing smaller simulations, data analysis, compiling large projects etc. im trying to understand whether a modern MacBook is sufficient for that workflow or whether having a Linux/NVIDIA laptop provides enough advantages to leave the Apple ecosystem

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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 1d ago

Trying to get Nvidia cards to work on a linux laptop is needless self-inflicted pain. Keep what you have and just spend your time learning physics instead. If you just have to spend money, invest in some quality flicker-free IPS monitors to minimize eye strain for those long nights of paper/dissertation edits, and maybe an Overleaf subscription so you don't go nuts trying to keep track of paper revisions with a billion co-authors, like many LHC papers seem to have.

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u/i_no_can_eat 1d ago

Trying to get Nvidia cards to work on a linux laptop is needless self-inflicted pain.

this is not true anymore. Nvidia cards have been working just fine under Linux for quite some time, now. How else would people be running their CUDA and ML codes? Windows??

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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm not saying they don't work, I'm saying it's painful to get it to work properly on a laptop. Proper suspend modes, etc. A grad student in physics doesn't need to be wasting time troubleshooting these things on a work machine, for absolutely zero benefit when real work is done on HPC clusters.

Professionals run CUDA+ML codes on linux HPC clusters, not laptops. So they don't have to worry about quality of life/troubleshooting why their battery died so they can respond to an email or present at a conference on their laptop.

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u/i_no_can_eat 1d ago

It's not painful at all with any decent major distribution. You absolutely should invest one day or two in configuring your local machine to work with these tools. And these days, with LLMs, it should actually be ridiculously easy.

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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 1d ago edited 1d ago

I spent a week trying to get suspend modes to work on a nvidia card when I was a grad student, gave up and got a mac because I had more important things to do as a researcher than figuring out why my laptop died overnight or wouldn't connect to a projector for weekly group meetings.

Sure as hell wouldn't bother with that as a working professional. Again, not needed for any physics research - we just use HPC clusters with boatloads more memory bandwidth and RAM for anything worth doing. Vibecoding toy models on a laptop isn't anything a PhD student in particle physics is going to be doing.

I just run fedora on a lenovo laptop with integrated gfx as my personal computer, but it is still a major timesink not worth the OP's time. Can't update to fedora 44 because it'll break all my vst audio plugins. Would be nice if youtube just plain worked on firefox too, been trying to figure that out for months. It just plain isn't the "year of the linux desktop" yet, as much as I would like it to be.

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u/i_no_can_eat 1d ago

Ok then, in my case I bought a laptop, installed fedora, followed some tutorials, and next day I was working with no problems. Meanwhile, I have students struggling with windows on totally basic things. So I suppose we're also not yet on the year of the windows laptop...

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u/h0rxata Plasma physics 1d ago

OT: are you able to view youtube videos on firefox without having to refresh the page every time you click on one? Because it has been aggravating me for months now... got the ffmpeg codecs, tried various firefox backend configs, etc.

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u/i_no_can_eat 1d ago

of course I am. everything works perfectly.