The first is just going to be a server. I'll likely just be running windows for simplicity sake, but I've got enough experience with Ubuntu that a headless server is appealing to me as well. It's going to be mainly be serving files on my local network, but it will also be running a plex server. I'm not sure which point in the process is the most hardware heavy on plex (nor do I even really understand their tunneling process). so I don't know how much that affects things. It's gonna have 3 external hard-drives attached for about 25tb. They are all externally powered.

My desktop is running AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor 3.70 GHz, 16gb ram, and an RTX 2060. I run modern games at 4k 60fps with much higher settings than this computer really has any business doing, but somehow it manages incredibly well. My son wants a PC like the one I use, but he really doesn't have much space at all in his room. He doesn't need 4k, and he doesn't need to have all of his setting maxed out, but can we squeeze out a relatively similar experience somewhere??

Another for computing. Working with data, crunching numbers, and displaying results in a variety of different graphical diagrams. Mostly very very simple math, and we are talking in the 1,000s - 10,000s of calculations, not upwards of millions or anything like that. I am going to explore laptops for this particular task as well.