Ask HN: Should I invest in a desktop PC in 2017?

I'm freelance. It is a requirement that I am able to take my work to a client's site and work there sometimes. So I have a laptop.

At home (where I work the most) I have 4 monitors, a keyboard and a mouse, so no worries about screen space or laptop touchpads. Most clients are happy for me to borrow a monitor or two.

A laptop can do everything a desktop can, it just might cost you a touch more. My laptop has a 4790K i7 and 32gb or RAM. Note that that's a desktop model CPU because I wanted the better perf, and it doesn't do any of that annoying low power throttling to save battery (as a side effect the battery life is about 90 minutes! But that's still more battery life than any desktop I've ever used). You can get laptops with desktop model GPUs these days too if that's what you need.

There is generally a difference between the CPU and GPU models on laptops and desktops. Don't assume that a nvidia 980m is the same as a 980, they are basically different GPUs. CPU model numbers are more confusing, but similarly, the laptop model CPUs are usually less cores and lower power, so make sure you are comparing like for like. It's possible to buy laptops with desktop components in them these days if you look around.

If you have no requirement to be mobile, buy a desktop, you'll get better performance for the price. If you have to be mobile, get a laptop, and work out the trade offs you can make based on what you can afford.

(Only point this perhaps breaks down is for the extreme top end where laptops might not be an option, but you don't seem to be talking about that)

If on the other hand your question was "should I buy a new computer". If you're working as a dev with that spec machine, I would say the answer is yes. You'll get a significant boost just by jumping to a modern CPU and a decent amount of RAM.

It is fun to look at the new tech coming out and day-dream of pimp-my-pc scenarios. I still think daily work doesn't improve much with CPU/mobo changes for most developers though. Especially if it is web related development since you will likely be running on virtualized servers anyhow.

If you're a serious developer you probably have a permanent work station. With big monitors, a nice chair, a proper keyboard, etc. Sure you can dock a laptop into that, but why not have your cake and eat it too? Use a laptop on the go, and a desktop for the fixed workstation.

This is the git age. It's trivial to share work across a fixed desktop and a laptop. No need to sacrifice power for portability. Go for the superior space/cooling potential of the desktop at your workstation.

You have a very old laptop - while still usable, a modern laptop would be much faster than what you are using now. So you could still get the performance you want without going to a desktop.

Not sure where you live, but in the USA we can get very cheap PC's on Slickdeals, lower end Dell servers for $250 or loaded Dell XPS desktops for $600

> the fastest or second fastest consumer nvidia card

> represents the sweet spot in price/performance, saving money on your axe is a false economy.

Care to explain your reasoning? Going with high-end components seems to be the opposite of the sweet spot. A $200 i5-7600 and $250 GTX 1060 are going to be indistinguishable in non-benchmark settings for most workloads when compared to a $700 GTX 1080 and $350 i7-7700k. Or even a $100 AMD A10-7860K and a $200 RX480.

I have a hard time believing that reaction times to differences of a few milliseconds or one extra frame being painted actually add up to matter. If they do, why not go with the extreme edition processors and triple SLI 1080s?