Finally time to get a PC for SW developement.

[BrianHG]

Well, here I am.  I will unfortunately need to work with VisualStudio.

I will be upgrading my existing C++ code which currently uses OpenGL/FLTK and the system WMaudio to a multi-platform environment.  This may mean translation to C#, with either Avalonia or Qt 6/QML for my UI.

My project is around 3X the size of a sophisticated .mp3 player, or an online realtime DJ software.

This is what I was recommended:  (I will consider a Mac lateron when compiling for iOS and MacOS)
Ryzen 9 9955HX
64GB ram
2tb SSD
Windows 11 Pro with WSL2 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Now, I prefer a laptop and don't need the peak speeds.
Plus, memory today is a killer.

Will 50% of my above specs do?  Such a configuration is already approaching 2k$.
What brands should I look at.  The closest thing I can find on amazon would be the business HP lapstops.  I do not care for screen quality and battery life as I usually use the system on my desktop with a separate screen, keyboard & mouse.

Would I really save on a mini PC with comparable specs?

[ejeffrey]

Yes you should be fine with half of that.

If you get a desktop its possible to leave memory slots open to upgrade if you really need to.  But 32 GB is adequate for a normal development workstation for small to medium projects.

If you were working on chromium or something then i would say go for the most you can get.

[dobsonr741]

Get a Mac Mini once the M5 is available for it. 64GB and 2TB. Perfect dev station and AI ready. And a good Asus 5K or 6K display.

[ejeffrey]

Get a Mac Mini once the M5 is available for it. 64GB and 2TB. Perfect dev station and AI ready. And a good Asus 5K or 6K display.

Great choice for someone who wants to run visual stidio on windows and is concerned about the cost and prefers a laptop!  And didnt say anything about AI!  And needs it for a job so probably can't wait for an unreleased product!

That said: in the past, used desktop mini PCs were a good bargain.  It's worth considering if you are going to be using an external keyboard and mouse and display.  I'm not sure if they are any more.  One problem is that many of them were specced with absolute minimum memory and storage for corporate thin clients.  If you get something you have to upgrade to be usable that may cost more than just buying a laptop.

[ejeffrey]

As for brands, dell, hp, and lenovo are the big three in laptops.  A lot of people have their own preferences but they aren't that different.

The business models have remote management capabilites you probably don't need and usually better build quality.   That is nice if you are travelling with it a lot or using the built in keyboard and display.  For something that is going to spend its life on a desktop with external peripherals its less of an issue

Business machines also have better warranty and usually come with windows Pro while its an upgrade for the consumer lines.  I'm not sure what the difference is now other than domain management.

All versions of windows 11 will require you to have a microsoft account unless you jump through rapidly shrinking hoops or join to a corporate domain.  Thats just the reality of windows these days.

For your description I would probably look for a 15-16" laptop whether consumer or bisiness. These are usually better for performance per dollar.  The smaller laptops are optimized for weight,  portability, and battery life. They aren't cheaper. 

[brucehoult]

Well, here I am.  I will unfortunately need to work with VisualStudio.

I'm confused. What do you currently use for software development?

The few times I've absolutely positively needed to use Windows an emulator has worked fine. In the late 2000s I was using Visual Studio on a Core 2 Duo Mac with ... I can't remember now, maybe VMWare Fusion, maybe already Virtualbox.

I definitely used Virtualbox to run corporate rubbish (not least Lookout!) on x86 Linux in the mid to late 2010s.

As for machines, I have a 2023 Lenovo Legion Pro 5i with 24 core i9-13900HX CPU and 32 GB RAM. 64 GB is possible with aftermarket RAM, but my need to do that disappeared once I switched from developing in WSL2 to running Ubuntu natively. By default Windows gives half the RAM to WSL2 and 16 GB wasn't enough. I tweaked it to 22 GB for Linux and 10 GB for Windows which was little enough to also make Windows a bit janky. I mean, slightly more janky than usual.

Lenovo offer (or offered) exactly the same machine with either the 24 core (8+16) i9 or a 16 core (all P core) AMD. I'm normally sympathetic to AMD but went with the Intel as while all-cores active performance was very even the i9 has better turbo on 1-2 cores and my development workloads are often gated on autoconf or linking performance.

[BrianHG]

Well, here I am.  I will unfortunately need to work with VisualStudio.

I'm confused. What do you currently use for software development?

A 2022 release of MSYS2 Mingw64 on a 10 year old Win7 laptop with 16gb ram.
My 3 main MVPs are Windows Specific .exes.

I've proven my technology works with what I have.
My clients now want to see an Android app and a web service.

Making my project a .net and using modern coding agents means VisualStudio.
Visualstudio means I must use Win11 pro somewhere.

Eventually, I will be handing my work off to a dedicated developer and I want to have everything coded with the latest common tools.

[brucehoult]

I'm confused. What do you currently use for software development?

A 2022 release of MSYS2 Mingw64 on a 10 year old Win7 laptop with 16gb ram.

Ah. Aka "an (x86) PC". You just need a better one.

I kind of assume my 12 year old i7-4790K (built July 2014) would still run modern Windows pretty well, I did only build it with 2x 8 GB DDR3 RAM (for US$99), the Z97X-UD7 TH can support 4x 8 GB modules.

Hard to believe it's more than 7 years since I built my 32 core Threadripper 2990wx with 128 GB RAM ... still a lot today. I hardly ever turn it on now as the i9-13900 laptop is faster in every way (sometimes by a lot, sometimes not by much) and uses 20% as much electricity.

I would recommend the current gen Legion Pro

https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/configurator/cto/?bundleId=83RUCTO1WWCA1

[nctnico]

Well, here I am.  I will unfortunately need to work with VisualStudio.

I will be upgrading my existing C++ code which currently uses OpenGL/FLTK and the system WMaudio to a multi-platform environment.  This may mean translation to C#, with either Avalonia or Qt 6/QML for my UI.

My project is around 3X the size of a sophisticated .mp3 player, or an online realtime DJ software.

This is what I was recommended:  (I will consider a Mac lateron when compiling for iOS and MacOS)
Ryzen 9 9955HX
64GB ram
2tb SSD
Windows 11 Pro with WSL2 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Now, I prefer a laptop and don't need the peak speeds.
Plus, memory today is a killer.

Will 50% of my above specs do?  Such a configuration is already approaching 2k$.
What brands should I look at.  The closest thing I can find on amazon would be the business HP lapstops.  I do not care for screen quality and battery life as I usually use the system on my desktop with a separate screen, keyboard & mouse.

Would I really save on a mini PC with comparable specs?

Seems like overkill. Recently I bought a Dell Pro Max 16 (Intel Core Ultra 5 235H ) with 32GB of memory which is plenty fast for compiling and running several VMs. This laptop can be bought without Windows. I bought the SSD seperately. One of the things to look out for is to get a processor with a high thermal design limit and the cooling capacity of the laptop itself. The Dell Pro Max has quite a bit of cooling capacity so the processor can actually work hard (fast) without being throttled thermally. Whatever laptop you buy: make sure to get a portable workstation (office) laptop. On paper the value for money looks less but stability and reliability are well worth it.

I can also highly recommend involving Claude code to speed up development.

[brucehoult]

Seems like overkill.

It's really impossible to say without knowing exact details of what is to be run. If the person who recommended 64 GB is doing the same or similar development then it might be a good idea to take their advice. But then again they might not know.

Running WSL in Windows does effectively double the RAM requirement if both Windows and Linux are going to be running heavy things.

I went to 32 GB as my standard development setup in 2015. That's still OK for what I'm doing now (and 16 certainly isn't), but 32 wasn't enough when I was doing development in WSL. It was enough once I deleted Windows and installed Ubuntu natively on the Legion.

There are definitely many kinds of development now for which 64 GB is not overkill.

[BrianHG]

I can also highly recommend involving Claude code to speed up development.

I have a paid account for ChatGPT5.6.  When I started with 5.4, it did mess thing up, but 5.5 & 5.6 really delivered clean compile-able, functional code.
Upgrading to VisualStudio which only works in Win11 means I can use ChatGPT's integrated Codex and/or Claude.  I used a back-door technique to get ChatGPT working in Win7 and I am past the point where using this method makes any sense.

Claude would have cost me a fortune by comparison as I used a few billion tokens fooling around...
Though, still less than a seasoned SW engineer's salary.

[nctnico]

Seems like overkill.

It's really impossible to say without knowing exact details of what is to be run. If the person who recommended 64 GB is doing the same or similar development then it might be a good idea to take their advice. But then again they might not know.

Running WSL in Windows does effectively double the RAM requirement if both Windows and Linux are going to be running heavy things.
There are definitely many kinds of development now for which 64 GB is not overkill.

Maybe but you can always upgrade. With 32GB I can comfortably run a VM with 12GB and have penty left for compiling a bunch of code.

I can also highly recommend involving Claude code to speed up development.

I have a paid account for ChatGPT5.6.  When I started with 5.4, it did mess thing up, but 5.5 & 5.6 really delivered clean compile-able, functional code.
Upgrading to VisualStudio which only works in Win11 means I can use ChatGPT's integrated Codex and/or Claude.  I used a back-door technique to get ChatGPT working in Win7 and I am past the point where using this method makes any sense.

Claude would have cost me a fortune by comparison as I used a few billion tokens fooling around...

Claude uses way less tokens compared to ChatGPT. My guess is that if you try Claude, you'll forget about ChatGPT quickly. Claude can deal with pretty large codebases and not lose oversight. I'm on the US $100 / month plan and I never burned through the daily token allowance.

[BrianHG]

Claude uses way less tokens compared to ChatGPT. My guess is that if you try Claude, you'll forget about ChatGPT quickly. Claude can deal with pretty large codebases and not lose oversight. I'm on the US $100 / month plan and I never burned through the daily token allowance.

I pay 25$ a month, no limits.  However, I know I only got a few more months before ChatGPT raises the rate...
I was also told Claude would not like my prompts, like my starting SW spec as it is a 45 page spec document.  Though if Claude gave me a month free all open, I would give it a try.

[BrianHG]

For Intel based, this one is the best bang for the buck:
Intel Laptop

For AMD based, this is the best bang for the buck:
AMD Laptop

Cheaper than a laptop, but 2x faster: (recommended processor count and memory is upgradable to 64gb)
Mini PC faster

Cheaper than Laptop, around the same speed:
Mini PC slower

What should I choose?
My next step after making my multi-platform MVD will be investment, so at that stage I can get a system with all the bells and whistles, but right now, I am bootstrapping the project so I want to save money but not get stuck with a system which compiles too slow.

[abeyer]

Personally right now I'd consider trying to prefer machines w/ DDR4 instead of 5, as you'll save a bit on memory inflation, and the perf differences for dev work aren't likely to be much impact. I'd rather spend the same on more ram than faster.

[nctnico]

Claude uses way less tokens compared to ChatGPT. My guess is that if you try Claude, you'll forget about ChatGPT quickly. Claude can deal with pretty large codebases and not lose oversight. I'm on the US $100 / month plan and I never burned through the daily token allowance.

I pay 25$ a month, no limits.  However, I know I only got a few more months before ChatGPT raises the rate...
I was also told Claude would not like my prompts, like my starting SW spec as it is a 45 page spec document.  Though if Claude gave me a month free all open, I would give it a try.

I have fed Claude protocol specs spanning 500 pages to build a protocol implementation for me. Worked like a charm. Same with datasheets / hardware manuals spanning hundreds of pages. Just start with Claude on the $20 a month plan and see how it goes. You can always upgrade.

[nctnico]

For Intel based, this one is the best bang for the buck:
Intel Laptop

For AMD based, this is the best bang for the buck:
AMD Laptop

Cheaper than a laptop, but 2x faster: (recommended processor count and memory is upgradable to 64gb)
Mini PC faster

Cheaper than Laptop, around the same speed:
Mini PC slower

What should I choose?
My next step after making my multi-platform MVD will be investment, so at that stage I can get a system with all the bells and whistles, but right now, I am bootstrapping the project so I want to save money but not get stuck with a system which compiles too slow.

Why would you want a mini-PC? If you don't need something portable and speed is important, then buying a benchtop PC gets most bang for your buck. The limitation is the amount of power you can dissipate in the CPU. A bigger casing allows for a bigger cooling solution, more heat dissipation and thus more processing power.

[SiliconWizard]

And given the prices for RAM and storage, I would favor an upgradable solution instead of a non-upgradable one (such as most laptops these days, with few exceptions - maybe look at Thinkpads).

[Smokey]

If you can live with a desktop, check out https://www.ibuypower.com

[BrianHG]

If you can live with a desktop, check out https://www.ibuypower.com

Overpriced, only have windows home edition.
Separate video cards adds a cost I do not require.
8gb base versions are a joke.  Units with 32gb are over 5k$.

[Infraviolet]

SiliconWizard: "And given the prices for RAM and storage, I would favor an upgradable solution"

Older models are often better for this, which means in many cases there's a good argument for getting a secondhand or refurbished machine, then swap out all the wearable (as in wears down with time) items. So definitely put in fresh storage, whereas RAM can last forever with good luck (memory test utilities, like found on the live USB you'd make for many of the Linux distros, will let you check the RAM hasn't had any bad luck or accidents when the machine first reaches you).

[brucehoult]

For Intel based, this one is the best bang for the buck:
Intel Laptop

For AMD based, this is the best bang for the buck:
AMD Laptop

Cheaper than a laptop, but 2x faster: (recommended processor count and memory is upgradable to 64gb)
Mini PC faster

Cheaper than Laptop, around the same speed:
Mini PC slower

What should I choose?
My next step after making my multi-platform MVD will be investment, so at that stage I can get a system with all the bells and whistles, but right now, I am bootstrapping the project so I want to save money but not get stuck with a system which compiles too slow.

Modern HP is on my "do not buy" list. Certainly if you plan to use it for more than a year or two.

You've said the main job is compiling, presumably software large enough that we're not talking 0.1 seconds vs 1 second for a new vs old laptop, but 5 minutes vs an hour or something like that.

For compiling with a well set-up build system, the more cores the better. The AMD HP laptop you point to has only 8 cores.

Both HP laptops you point to look very thin. They are going to have crap cooling and the CPU is going to throttle like hell within 15-30 seconds under serious load.

The Lenovo models I've pointed you to have a lot of cores (my i9-13900HX has 24 cores) and good cooling (for a laptop) and even long all-core compile tasks only throttle back from initially around 4 GHz on all cores to maybe 3.2 GHz. That's a Legion Pro 5. The 7 and 9 series apparently have even better cooling, with e.g. the case being metal instead of plastic, bigger internal heatsinks etc.

A mini-PC will have better cooling than a "thin and light" laptop. A large desktop PC even better cooling.

In 2019 I had my personally-owned i7-8650U NUC mini-PC with 32 GB RAM, which had travelled the world with me for a couple of years, using whatever monitors I could find in the offices I visited. Then my employer gave me a company ThinkPad X1 Carbon "thin and light" which is "widely considered the ultimate road warrior laptop" with the same i7-8650U CPU.

The laptop took literally twice as long to compile the GNU toolchain (binutils, gcc, libc) as the NUC, it throttled so much. We're talking an hour vs 30 minutes kind of twice as long. Since I'd stopped travelling that's when I built the 32 core Threadripper tower (20+ kg) which did the same task in 5 minutes. And now I have the Lenovo Legion Pro 24 core i9 "gaming" laptop which is faster than the Threadripper even on long intensive tasks but I can travel with it.

[NiHaoMike]

If you must use Windows, try switching your current machine to a stripped down Windows 11? That would remove many of the problems with Windows, most crucially saving a lot of RAM use by removing unnecessary features.

[Psi]

I'm using Intel 7600K with 16GB ram for MCU and Windows app dev.
I don't have any ram shortages with 16GB, but my apps are not hugely complex.
So I would imagine 32GB is plenty.
Honestly i think having lots of browser tabs open will use more RAM than the dev does.

[Renate]

I bought my first personal laptop two years ago for traveling, a Lenovo Yoga 6 (AMD 7530, 8 GB) 13.3" for $450.
I love it. Most here would probably find it inadequate.
I do wish that I had gotten the 16 GB. I did replace the 256 GB SSD with 1 TB.
I thought that it would be practically disposable, but it's my main PC now with docking and 29".

But spend $1500+? No, thanks.
By nature I keep the simultaneous programs down, browser tabs counted on one hand and I don't build kernels (I do modify them though).
99% of the time is me staring at a screen.
My biggest make takes one minute.
Ok, doing a Vivado FPGA compile you can hear the gears grind and smoke comes out the side.

Edit: I don't do any gaming, rarely watch any video.