Need a new computer...

[DireWolf]

Just to chime back in on the build vs. buy and storage (and just cuz I'm still pretty jazzed about that new Lenovo) - for a workstation, that P330 is hard to beat...

Just for context, I've run just about every major brand (and many off-brands) of workstation/laptop at one point or another as well as custom builds (at one point I dumped about $15k into a custom liquid-cooled beast), and when my desktop puked recently I originally did a quick sanity-check on available options for buy/build, and reached the following conclusions:

1. I don't think it would've been possible to self-build something both smaller & faster than that P330 - the chassis for that is ridiculously small (smaller than a laptop, almost as small as some zero-clients w/ embedded OS).

2. All the direct/discount pricing incentives really tipped the scales on bang-for-buck

3. Regarding the storage, make sure you don't sell yourself short. That tiny system will hold 2x (internal) NVMe PCIe M.2 storage devices, which on average will come in around >5-6x faster than the fastest SSD available. I went with 1x 512gb and 1x 1TB flash drives (2x internal slots).

--With 32GB of RAM and the all-Flash storage, its "holy shit" fast with both Windows 10 and Ununtu 18.04LTS (and small enough to throw in my backpack if travelling/switching offices).

4. Setup cost about 1/2 what my Surface Pro ran me, and is by far the fastest machine I've ever personally owned.

side note: only time I would build now (since I don't do any gaming, which would be one other justification) would be for the next lab upgrade, but that's just cuz that project is looking at somewhere around 100+ cores, 1TB+ RAM, and at least 5TB of Flash...