You are right that a MacBook with i5 CPU and 16 GB memory and Intel graphics will work fine for ChimeraX including making movies. For large molecules, for example ribosome structures with several hundred thousands atoms, or large cryoEM maps, for example 512 x 512 x 512 and up you could benefit from faster AMD or Nvidia laptop graphics (MacBook Pro), and 32 GB of memory. Another thing to consider is to keep data and ChimeraX on an SSD drive, not a spinning drive. Today's SSD drives are 30 times faster reading data than spinning drives. All Mac laptops only come with SSD drives I believe, but it is good to have enough SSD drive space that your data (like lots of cryoEM maps) does not have to reside on an external drive. Usually 512 GB SSD will do, but again if you work with lots of large data 1 TB SSD could be helpful.

On Oct 21, 2020, at 7:50 AM, Shaun Rawson <rawson@hkl.hms.harvard.edu> wrote:

Hi Tom,

Just a quick question on any hardware recommendations for running ChimeraX (primarily macbook based). We have a user who is particularly interested in generating animations in ChimeraX so I was wondering if you have any specific min/recommended specs for various functionality.

It seems to me like the standard macbook config (i5, 16GB RAM, intel graphics) should be fine for day to day operations but maybe they would need to swap to a more powerful linux workstation for the heavy lifting.

Apologies if this is available online - currently https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/ gives a 403 error for me.

Thanks,

Shaun