I love shopping for computers: studying what features are interesting or useful or inexpensive. I like looking for deals (recreational). I've been looking for non-notebooks (usually called desktops, even though few are on desks, and they vary in size). My current fleet is either Haswell or older, or Atom-based. My my main desktop's CPU is Haswell: Intel Core i7-4770, bought seven years ago. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)> I have not seen any really compelling reason to update these, even though I want to. Here are some features that my old computers don't have. They haven't yet compelled me to buy a new computer, even on this Black Friday. Up until now, I've replaced my main desktop every two or three years. Something shiny and new would come along. The old one would be relegated to other purposes. Here's a list of the things that make me consider getting a new desktop. Have I missed any that matter to you? ==== UltraHD ==== My old computers don't support HDMI 2.9. This makes is a barrier to using wonderful and cheap UltraHD TV sets. I use work-arounds: Haswell-era DisplayPort supports UltraHD. But not HDR (10 bits per colour per pixel) at that resolution. Dongles that convert DP to HDMI 2.0 are pretty hit-or-miss. New video cards are an obvious answer, if the computer will accept them. They are often noisy, burn power, generate heat, and are expensive. It is surprising how many new computers fail to support HDMI 2.x. Even figuring out if a particular computer supports it is often quite hard to discover from the specifications. - I was looking at a great deal on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Tiny gen 2, with a very current AMD APU. But it doesn't support HDMI 2.x. <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-epp-perkopolis-796-thinkcentre-m75q-amd-renoir-4650ge-16gb-ddr4-3200-512gb-nvme-2423274/> - my XPS 15 notebook, with an UltraHD display, doesn't even support HDMI 2.x! - there has been a very good deal on a medium range notebook with the latest AMD chip. Its HDMI port doesn't support HDMI 2.x (but this isn't documented in the specs) <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-dell-15-4500u-usb-c-dp-4k60-65w-pd-649-99-584-99-newacct-526-49-newacct-rk-very-hot-2387232/> ==== faster CPUs and more cores ==== Little of what I do is processor-bound. New processors are perhaps twice as fast (my unresearched belief). Not very compelling. My main desktop has 4 cores (8 if you count SMT). I doubt that more cores would help much of what I do. ==== NVMe SSD support ==== SATA SSD seems fast enough for my purposes. NVMe would be better, but would I notice? ==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ==== This seems important, especially in notebooks, but I don't know what I'm missing. ==== hardware acceleration of crypto ==== AES and more is useful. I most want it on the little PCs I use as gateways for my networks (gateways are routers, firewalls, and more). ==== hardware acceleration of audio and video CODECs ==== This is most useful on streaming endpoints. But all desktops now seem to do some of that. DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops. We end up doing most of our TV-like streaming with a Google TV box so this takes the requirement off our desktops. ==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ==== We just use notebooks for this. ==== power usage ==== Newer desktops could use less power but probably don't.