that does kinda ring a bell wrt nvidia vs amd eGPUs. i feel like there was another gotcha but they were able to make it work. I'll have to watch/read the walkthroughs again.

the other reason I'm interested in those other OEMs is because they offer shit like 64g ram models. I dont often need it, but sometimes I'll be working on a hobby project where having a lot of ram is nice.

basically I'm looking for a desktop gaming PC / dev workstation, because thats where I spend 95% of my time.
but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of gaming performance and a bit of money, to be able to play some lighter games while on business trips, and to work on my hobbies while visiting the in-laws for a week. My inlaws have a mouse and keyboard, and i dont need a mouse and keyboard for the kinds of games I'd play on an airplane. i want to have all my files available offline, without constantly having multiple devices online and syncing.

I also have been chasing after the convenient 1-device dream for a long time, and I've always thought that portable consoles and tablets were too compromised of an experience (although the surfacebook gave me pause when it came out) - but some of these portable gaming PCs actually make me hopeful.