> My $2000 linux desktop is still faster and snappier than the $4000 macbook, but it’s the only thing laptop sized that feels even close.

What brand?

Probably diy.

2k buys you a decent thread ripper or 59xx series and as much ram as you can throw at it.

Speak for yourself. In Canada the cheapest threadripper I can find is $2k just for the CPU. No way can I build an entire desktop for that price.

I'd be interested in hearing about the specs. Planning on building a new Linux desktop soon.

It has a Ryzen 9900X, 64GB of DDR5, AMD Radeon RX6600XT, 2x2TB Hanye NVMe, ROG B650 ATX motherboard and 850W power supply.

I bought the system mostly to increase the single core performance from the Ryzen 5 3600 I had before. As well as to get rid of all the little 256GB SSD disks I had in the previous one.

850W is an overkill and will affect efficiency. I'd go with less power.

Then you suddenly want a Nvidia GPU on the side and you need more power.

Is 850W really "overkill"? I don't know. I suppose it depends on how likely it is you will expand and add devices.

If I go look up an arbitrary 850 watt supply (seasonic focus gold), it looks like it wastes about 10% plus 5 watts anywhere from 0-60% load. So extra capacity doesn't hurt that one.

Noone would expect it to be slower.

I feel like somehow my big Linux desktop with a Ryzen 7950X and 64 GB of ram feels less "snappy" than my M2 Macbook Air running Asahi when doing lightweight tasks, despite the big Ryzen being obviously much better at compilation and stuff. I'm not sure why and my guess was the RAM latency. But maybe I misconfigured something in my Arch Linux...