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Comment by pixelpoet | Hacker News Reader

I think people buying laptops for AI use are, sorry, just plain crazy. You overpay for the screen and keyboard and battery and whatever, plus you get much worse thermal performance because of basic physics (area vs volume). My Framework Desktop has a Noctua cooler which works really well.

[Tangent: all my life I've been downvoted into a smoking hole in the ground, particularly on reddit r/hardware, for questioning the wisdom of laptops for high performance computing, including gaming. Everyone insists they need the mobility, and then just leave it plugged in the whole time, absolutely refusing to admit it's about aesthetic preference.]

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I’m mostly with you but there are some people who like to use one machine for both laptop and AI work, and it’s much cheaper than buying two separate devices.

I generally agree for everything except Macbook Pros which outperform most available desktop setups for AI tasks - but they are also now out of reach for most people after the price hikes (6.7k now for 128gb, i got mine for 4.7k just about a year ago).

Honestly I think this is just a bad time to be buying hardware - everything is marked up an insane amount that doesn't really make sense.

For me the smaller footprint, lower power consumption and portability (admittedly between desks only) are the three advantages of using a laptop over a desktop for these purposes.

The Strix Halo mini PCs use the exact same chip, and have a much smaller footprint than any laptop. Have you seen the size of these machines? I can and have easily popped my daily driver computer into my very small backpack to attend a demoparty for example.

With the laptop you probably won't get silent operation at the peak 100-140w, i.e. you've now massively overpaid for lower performance.

Can you get these from vendors like Asus and lenovo these days?

The ones I've seen on aliexpress are from unknown Chinese vendors.

I have a Framework Desktop as primary PC (great cooling, beautiful case with handle) and the Bosgame M5 dedicated for AI use.

I was also a bit wary about Bosgame but TBH they've been great and the machine is rock solid, if a little noisier than and not as pretty as the FD. You can just buy from them directly and be fine, best computer deal out there by a mile.

I've had an ASUS PN-50E minipc, and its bios is broken and ASUS won't fix it, it cannot wake from sleep on Windown 11 25H2. Support told me to reinstall windows... and never got past level 1 support.

I've also got a Beelink minipc, which also had some issues, and the unknown Chineese vendor did respond meaningfully to support email, and created a BIOS update in ~2 weeks after a driver update surfaced a firmware bug.

I'd recommend skipping ASUS. Lenovo may be fine.

out of edit time: so my main point: Beelink may be new to the business and relatively unknown, but my overall experience is very positive with them so far. Fr better than with some Big Brands.

Maybe there is a reason?

It's like you are advocating for a public transport instead of a personal car but when questioned how to get to a place which is not erviced by a public network your solution is to rent a bus.

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