Desktop vs. Laptop for College

In terms of portability, you can make a desktop work as long as you build for it.

My computer travels with me a fair bit. It's in a Bitfenix Prodigy, which is on the larger side of small cases, but it has handles and is still small enough that I can check it as a carry-on. I have a triple monitor setup, but when I travel, I bring an Acer monitor that was the smallest 1080p monitor I could find that was still affordable. It works just fine for trips back home over christmas, or what have you.

It seems like your best solution is a small form factor computer; just do a little research into the format and take some care with putting your computer together, and it'll treat you right. I'd go with either an i5 or an i7 (or if the programs you're using use it well, an 8350) with a mid-range graphics card and parts to support the small form factor.

Great field to go into I just got my mechanical engineering degree and my physics degree and am going to go to graduate school... anyways I had a very similar problem as you.

When I was a freshman I bought myself an ASUS laptop for $1200 and it sucked it broke on me many times it couldn't handle much of any gaming because of the power consumption would burn out different components in my laptop.

I got a new laptop sophomore year it was a Samsung I spent $1000 on and I still have it with me today zero problems.

This is where I can answer your question as an engineering student you won't need anything heavy or important that a laptop can handle for freshmen and most of sophomore year. I ran into this problem when I put Solidworks on my laptop and it would crash sometimes based on how complex my parts were.

Also my laptop didn't run matlab and mathematica programs very fast at times. So I built myself a very nice desktop my junior year and I had zero problems with any 3d edditing parts or running programs or simulations.

If you buy a laptop there will be limitations on what homework you can do on it as an engineering student especially when it comes to doing any 3d parts. Also laptops won't run certain complex math scripts as fast and you will have to wait several minutes vs getting an answer in 30 seconds.

Building your own desktop will allow you to put in a lot more power so that some of the programs an engineering student needs to use will work with ease. Trust me there were nights I would freak when my laptop would take 5min to load a set of parts. If you have a laptop you will learn that you will have to use the schools computers to run a lot of 3d materials.

Unless you will be traveling a lot or need a computer where not very many of them are found, I would get a laptop a $1200 laptop can still do a lot of stuff but it will be frustrating at times. I would advise a desktop, I rarely use my laptop these days unless I got out of town where I need to bring a computer then it gets used, but my desktop can game and do EVERYTHING better then my laptop can.

Good Luck!!

No worries, I figured that was the case.

But yeah, small form factor seems like the answer here; a decent-size suitcase can easily hold clothes, a computer, and a small monitor. Even if you're more cautious about your computer, a SFF rig can be used as a carry-on.

I literally walk through the airport with it - it's no hassle going through security; they swab it down, throw the swab in a machine that checks for bomb residue, and you're on your way. You get some funny looks, but that's part of the fun!

Then I just put it in the overhead bin and make sure it's not going to slide around. I should throw out there that, just like any time you take a computer a long distance, you should remove the hard drives and bring them separately.

That's what I do with my 24" monitor if I have to transport it, though I use a pillow for padding instead of bubble wrap. It works just fine.

Liquid cooling is fine as long as you can drain the loop - that's what I do, since it coincides with when I should be replacing the liquid anyways. You should avoid all-in-ones, I would think. (I mean, you should avoid them anyways, but doubly so here.)

I used an updraft CPU cooler before I got into liquid cooling and it worked fine in my prodigy. Just make sure you consider where the CPU socket is on the motherboard. (On mine, almost every cooler would block the PCIe slot, so I had to find one that was very flat on one side.)