My use case #

I mainly work on a cross platform game written in C++.
With this purpose in mind this is my current dev setup as of 2026.

Clients #

Main desktop PC #

• OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
• CPU: Intel i5-8400 (6) @ 4.000GHz
• GPU: Intel CoffeeLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630]
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB VRAM
• RAM: 32GB

I do 90%+ of my computing on this machine.

Windows PC #

I use this for debugging my game on Windows and for Photoshop.
It’s a Dell 7010 Thinclient.

• OS: Windows
• CPU: Intel i5 13500 / up to 4.8 GHz
• GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce GT 1030 Low Profile
• RAM: 16 GB

Laptop #

When I travel or work not from home, I bring a MacBook Air M2.
I used to run a refurbished Thinkpad T495 (AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U) running Linux.

I switched around October 2024, because I need to have an Apple machine to be able to compile for macOS. Also the overall quality of the MacBook is much better. Especially the trackpad and display.

Servers #

Promox #

• Jenkins
• Build nodes
  • Windows 10
  • Debian Linux (Linux and Emscripten builds)
  • macOS (eventually)

I run this on a Fujitsu Esprimo E920.

• Intel Core i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
• 16GB RAM
• 1TB HDD

Gitlab #

I selfhost Gitlab on a Veriton N4640G Thinclient to be able to access my repos across devices, and to be able to build them using Jenkins.

• OS: Debian Linux
• CPU: Intel®Celeron® 3900T 2x2.60GHz
• RAM: 8GB DDR4

Summary #

I utilize cheap hardware to create selfhosted services. Most of the hardware mentioned I bought for about 100$ a piece off of Amazon. They’re not the latest and greatest, but they’re good enough for my setup.

In closing: To me infrastructure and data is more important than the machine I use to connect to it. As long as I can access my data and services I’m fine.

I plan on dowsizing my setup for future.
I haven’t fully figured out how to approach this, but I will do it eventually!