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Departmental machines for PhD students
The department will provide a stock PC or laptop for each new PhD student up to a value of £1500 ex-VAT. The student's supervisor should request a machine shortly before they are due to start their PhD, by creating a ticket via the Topdesk system (see https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/comstaffhandbook/technical-services/ticketing-system). Unless Windows is requested Ubuntu Linux will be installed by default (as this is what a large number of researchers and PhDs use).
Where possible, the machine will be of a similar spec to the new PC recommendation below. Upgrades for stock PCs may be purchased from the student's personal cost centre where suitable (see admin team regarding PhD cost centre information).
If the student prefers to use their personal laptop instead, to comply with departmental display screen equipment rules they should use either an external monitor or a laptop stand, or both. Contact Support to discuss your requirements.
* *Standard spec for a new PhD PC The spec below is the minimum recommended for a new PhD machine. * Dell 24“ all-in-one PC with i7/32GB RAM/1TB SSD; 1x 24” monitor + 1x 22“ additional if needed * GPU tower option - Ryzen/i7 32GB RAM/12GB 3060 GPU. Non-standard spec PCs**
If the student requires a higher spec machine than our recommendation, they should liaise with Support. Support will then initiate quotations from the University's preferred suppliers to get the best price.
Cases where a higher spec might be required could include: intensive computation or simulation, graphical processing, media encoding, etc. PhD Students who work with large amounts of data should utilise the the University's dedicated research computing and/or HPC facilities as appropriate rather than specifying high-capacity hard drives. Refer to IT Services pages for details about these facilities: https://staff.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services
When purchasing a new machine, a 3 year warranty is required. A licence is required for any version of Windows, so the cost of purchasing one should be taken into account where the PC will be running Windows.
Apple devices can be requested instead of a PC or laptop but are often over the limit for the PhD budget (unless extra funding is available from a grant or project).We do have some non-new Apple stock to hand and have options available with suppliers to be able to get more (but this is not always guaranteed and these will be older generation Apples such as the Intel or M1 and M2 - not the latest lines).
