I used to have a desktop: E3 1230V2 + 16G DDR3 + GTX 1070. I forget when I put it together. Once I started using a laptop as my main machine I pretty much stopped upgrading it, and honestly the performance was enough for me — I could play through Ori 2, Doom Eternal, even Genshin without issues. Genshin 2.0 even ran at 4K with settings cranked, so I never bothered upgrading. In the first half of last year someone gave me a bunch of spare parts they’d retired, and I pieced together an i7 12700 + 16G DDR5 + 512G NVMe setup. Then I grabbed a cheap motherboard off JD, swapped the whole thing into the case, and installed Fedora 43 as my main system.

Foreword： A while back I got bored and decided I needed a computer, a “tinkering” toy, with two main goals: Try out the latest system updates — an aggressive platform Try out all kinds of new distros After weighing things back and forth, my requirements for this device gradually became clear: It has to be cheap, the cheaper the better, and the specs as high as possible Ideally it supports various form factors — a keyboard, a touchscreen, and Linux-friendly. I mainly use Linux, since I’m already tired of Windows Durable and light, because after testing I’ll usually just toss it in a corner to gather dust Ideally some expandability and serviceability, like a ThinkPad Occasionally usable for emergency work — the kind of thing you can toss anywhere without feeling bad