My current Dell XPS tower is over 10 years old. Don't get me wrong, it is still a working power house. A first gen i7 it has held up pretty damn well. Over the years I've upgraded the ram (its at 12Gb), had to replace the graphics card and the harddrive..and had to add an external USB sound card to bypass the horrible latency of the once-premium audio setup built into the motherboard.
That said, I think it's time for an upgrade. And a small splurge on myself. Especially since, starting in June I'm going to be running all my major purchase expenses through my GF/Finance before I can pull the trigger so I'm considering this my last splurge of freedom. LOL
I got a bonus at work plus my parents gave me some cash for my birthday. I gave myself a $2000 budget and wanted a solid GPU, an 11th gen i7-k chip (or 10th gen i-9) and 32GB Ram. So I found another dell XPS tower, got a 10% off coupon, and went to buy it online....and my debit card flagged the transaction as fraud. So two days of dealing with my bank and Dell and I gave up on that one. I thought you know what, 2 G's is a huge chunk of change, maybe I could go a little lower on the specs to save some money. I ended up on the Dell Outlet site and found a really sweet NIB-overstock XPS for $400 less with almost the same specs AND that site lets you pay with Paypal so I could just bypass having to use my debit card. I ordered it last night. The website gave me a confirmation number but then never e-mailed any info. I called dell this morning and they said it was "on hold" with no reason code. So I canceled that order too.
In the end I thought, you know what, if I'm willing to compromise to save money maybe I could do even better. So I went to Costco and got this:
https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/Legion/Lenovo_Legion_5_15IMH05H?M=81Y6003YUSOnly 16GB Ram but can take it up to 32 when I'm ready to upgrade (only two channels though so I'd have to outright swap the 2x8GB for 2 16's) and only a 1/2-GB SSD M.2 but that's cool. The Graphics card is right in line with what I need. I don't really game (like, at all on PC) but I'm excited to have a 6-GB dedicated ram for graphics. Also, and this was probably the biggest concession.. its only 10th-gen I-7 AND its an "H" series which is only 6-cores. But I'm happy. Plus, I had assumed I was gonna get a tower but, honestly, I'm kinda excited to have a laptop that is all my own and not my jobs. Its a really sturdy build (I'm totally ok with the heavy weight) but I hope it lasts a long time. My old one is a HUGE tower and just sits in one place chugging away with a bunch of fans running. Somehow I doubt I'll get 10-years out of this new one.
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But you are right, I'll probably stick with the 16.