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Discussion around the Framework mission of building products that last longer by making them upgradeable, customizable, and repairable. Consumer electronics can be better for you and for the environment.

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Any reason not to use my 13 as my only PC? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Just got my 13 with the 7840 and I'm realizing that even the integrated GPU is more powerful than the one in my old PC, which has an i7 4790k and a GTX 970.

Is there any reason I shouldn't just sell that relic and just run the Framework docked at home? I lose a little desk space, but I'm failing to see why I should keep using this desktop.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

- having a second machine (even an old one) can be nice for redundancy

- the desktop can have more internal storage

- desktops don't (usually) get dropped, lost, or stolen, since they mostly stay in one place

- desktops normally support more external monitors than laptops

- you can use the desktop as a backup target for your laptop (and vice-versa)

- desktops have PCIe slots, which are useful for more than just GPUs

That said, if your needs are limited, it's probably fine. But a high-end laptop is usually more expensive and less performant than a high-end desktop plus a basic laptop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

These are all very concise and well-explained reasons to keep your desktop.

You, u/T900Kassem, can also use the old desktop as a media server with the GTX 970 for H264 transcoding (not sure about H265, Intel Arc would be a good upgrade for that), or as a home theater PC for playing games or replacing an array of consoles with emulators. Those systems are also fun to mess around and tinker with using expansion cards. For example, I'm using a cleaned up 2009 Mac Pro with a spare GTX 745 I had lying around to experiment with virtual machines and PCIe passthrough.