Minimum requirements for a laptop for RNA-seq

Question

[abdullahrenk]

Dear all,

Would a laptop with the following specs be able to run RNA-seq provided the reference genome is available?

• Graphic Cards: Single 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M
• Processors: Intel Core i7 6700K Quad-Core 4.0GHz (4.2GHz TurboBoost)
• Memory: 64GB ORIGIN PC Approved DDR4 2133MHz (4 X 16GB)
• Hard Drive: 1TB Seagate Solid State Hybrid Drive
• Hard Drive Two: 2TB Seagate 5400RPM Hard Drive

Cheers,
Abdullah

[dina.hesham139]

I'm planning to buy a new one as well, I found a lenovo with the following specs, is it good for RNAseq analysis:

Processor
Brand/Family    Intel 4th gen core i7-4720HQ
CPU Speed       2.6 GHz
Cache Memory    6MB
Turbo Boost     up to 3.50 GHz

"RAM" Memory
RAM Type         DDR3
Installed RAM    16GB
RAM FSB speed    1600 MHz

Drives
Hard Drive Type          HDD
Hard Drive Capacity      1 TB + 8 GB
Rotational speed(RPM)    5400 RPM
Memory card reader       Yes

Graphic Card
VGA Brand               NVIDIA
VGA Model               GeForce 860
VGA Dedicated Memory    4GB
VGA Memory Type         GDDR5

Thank you!

[dina.hesham139]

What's the brand and the model no. please?

[abdullahrenk]

The company is called Origin. You can choose the specifications you require by following this link: https://www.originpc.com/Workstation/laptops/eon15-x-pro/

Answer 1

[Ibrahim Tanyalcin]

Dear,

The specs looks good, but you do not need the GTX980M, that is for gaming :) Onboard GPU will do just fine, or perhaps you can go for GT 900 series instead of GTX which are significantly cheaper. You will save around 500-1000 dollars. But it is up to you,

Good luck!

Regards,

Answer 2

[DG]

The short answer is yes, it will run RNA-Seq analysis on most model organisms. The longer answer is you'll still always get much better performance with more cores and with Xeon workstation/server CPUs (even at lower clock speeds), so if you are planning on doing lots of RNA-seq analysis a good workstation or shared server is a very good investment for a lab. But the laptop will do if you aren't doing much. Keep in mind that to do it in a reasonable amount of time the laptop will be pretty much just doing the RNA-Seq so you may find it difficult to also do any other work on it while the analysis is running. And depending on the software tools and size of your dataset some of the steps may take long enough that you'll need to leave it running overnight. Just some things to keep in mind.

[Danielk]

+1 for server + craptop.

[DG]

Yeah. I'm also partial to a beefy Linux workstation/server + Macbook myself as well. Macbooks are expensive but sturdy for carrying around back and forth everyday plus they OS X is unix based so development work and small-scale experiments can be run on one. And then you have better support for things like Word and Excel. While I like Latex and markdown and the like I collaborate too much with clinicians and bench scientists to go to those workflows. Its a nice intermediate between Windows and Linux all around, and high quality laptop to boot.