My desk setup

My Personal Computer

I thought it would be interesting to document my current personal computer, the only machine I currently have available for my daily tasks.

The laptop pictured above is a 2018 Dell XPS 13 9370:

  • i5-8350U (4 cores / 8 threads, 3.6GHz)
  • 16GB LPDDR3 RAM @ 2133MHz
  • 3840×2160 60Hz touchscreen
  • 512GB NVMe SSD

I bought it on eBay in 2023 for $235 shipped. It was in near-mint condition with no visible wear on the chassis, screen, keyboard, or trackpad. The only real issue was the battery. The laptop barely held a charge and had begun swelling, which caused the trackpad to sit unevenly.

Minor Refurbish

After some use, I decided to put a bit more money into the machine to address a few shortcomings:

  • Replaced the battery with a new OEM unit
  • Re-pasted the CPU
  • Added thermal pads between the heat pipe and chassis (This is a fairly common mod on these machines and seems to help with thermals and throttling.)

After about ~$340 total, I ended up with a sleek laptop that still holds up well today.

At the time of writing, I am running Fedora on this machine. I have been running the same installation of Fedora since I purchased the laptop (Fedora 39), and have gone through all of the distro upgrades along the way. Everything has been running smoothly, even through all the distro upgrades.

My typical usage includes:

  • Web browsing
  • Software development
  • Managing my homelab
  • Studying and reading

Why the XPS 13?

The XPS 13 came to mind because I had actually owned one previously. A few years earlier, I bought a new 2020 XPS 13 9380 when it released, and ran Arch Linux on it. When I landed my first contract job as a software developer, I found myself needing macOS and Xcode for iOS work, which eventually pushed me to a MacBook Pro.

After a few years of using work-provided Macs, I wanted a personal machine again, something that allowed me to run the OS that I prefer. The XPS 13 came to mind with its sleek, light-weight form factor, and I found this 9370 that ended up having better specs than my 9380 had originally.

Overall, it’s been a great machine and has served me well for over two years. I may upgrade soon, but it’s been fun seeing how much value you can still get out of older hardware with a little care.