Hey, I have never built a PC myself.
random anecdotal history of my computer use
I had one back then, Windows 7 and Minecraft as far as I know, pretty bad, solved through Optifine (the typical “double your Minecraft performance” trick, to this day, wtf Microsoft).
Then I got a Thinkpad T430 and did some hardware “hacking”, custom EC firmware (and then a modded AX200 Wifi card and Greencell battery), custom BIOS, tried a quad core i7 CPU which was an overheating and batterydraining mess.
Then a weird “in between” Thinkpad T495 which ½ sucks (horrible firmware, very bad CPU, bad screen), ½ rocks (fprint support, best keyboard in history).
Now a friend of mine does more GPU intense stuff, mainly static Adobe design thingd, already tweaked and debloated Windows 10 but the laptop sucks extremely.
They think about getting a PC and I suppose hunting for parts could make sense? I would want to get a modern motherboard which good performance, 32GB RAM max, reasonable GPU.
And I have an AX200 (pcie) wifi card, which is the weird thing that brought me to this question: can I use that on a PC mobo, or is there a problem?
What “laptop parts” (i7 intel cpu but laptop model, GPU, LP-DDRx RAM,…) make sense in a PC?
Is a Mx mac the best option if you want Adobe stuff? I never used Apple stuff and I fear that ecosystem, but Windows is total cancer and Mac is at least kinda Unix based, so I imagine it must be way better than Windows, and the hardware is currently so much better.
There are a lot of mini PCs these days that use laptop parts. But these are pretty much pre built and all you can change is RAM and storage. Building a pc from laptop parts doesn’t really make sense, though, unless you want to hack something together from used parts.
Wi-Fi card is fine since it’s m.2 slot, I think you just need an antenna
If a MAC is going to do everything you need it’s not a bad choice. As for a PC if you want a desktop it won’t be using laptop parts. Some parts can be the same between laptops and desktops like storage and Wifi cards, but you will still want to verify. If you want to learn about building a desktop PC start by making a build on PCPartPicker. Then bring post the build to get additional feedback. If you just want a working machine check out pre-built options.
Logical Increments is also a great place to start for self-builts. They have a range of suggestions for every price bracket.
A lot of desktop motherboards have a slot for a M.2 WiFi card like that AX200. Usually though they already come with a card anyway. You can often also use the same ssd/HDDs going from laptop to desktop. CPU, RAM, and GPUs are different sizes and connectors though, and won’t be transferrable.
Main thing for choosing a mac is the personal preference for the OS / interface. Its not totally better than Windows, there’s pros and cons. You have to really want it to pay for the overpriced hardware. Even second hand they retain a lot resale value.
Thanks for the info!
I mean its not my PC, Mac is more efficient than Windows, thats it. It cant run Linux because Adobe. And afaik if you buy hardware new its often similarly priced but I suppose used it can be pretty cheap.
Imo it only makes sense when you have a laptop with a broken screen that’s in working condition otherwise, on the other side people buy framework laptop insides and put them in custom cases like the Cooler Master one, there are also PC motherboards with laptop chips, like Miniforum’s bd770i which fit perfectly in a PC case and support normal PC parts like GPU etc
