It's not the hardware per se, it's the software. On my various sysadmin forums I've never seen so many "I went full gnu/linux and am never looking back!" Posts. Windows has been shitting the bed for a long time now and 7 was just the outlier in the trend. Hardware, especially m2 and data ssd do make a difference, but it's mostly bad software people are Stockholm syndromed into using that is the problem.