u/DemandDesigner8924

I've built before, so no need to baby me, but it's been a few years since I've paid attention to the parts market and I'm not fully sure what specs are "good better best" these days. I thought if you could help me spec a starting point that could make my research much faster.

Uses:

• Writing, including some background research that means a lot of open chromium tabs
• Gaming -- I tend to play more processor and memory intensive games vs graphics intensive (I also have a PS5, so the priority on PC is games that don't make sense on console). Think stuff like Oxygen Not Included
• Light video editing, mostly I use CapCut at the moment
• Light graphic design
• Streaming said processor intensive games would be a nice to have
• App development
  • This is probably the most intensive thing I actually do regularly
  • Need to be able to run multiple emulators/simulators at once at the same time as multiple instances of AI (Claude), who is probably running multiple agents
  • While all this is going on I ideally need to be able to casually use the machine (browser, youtube, obsidian etc) while I wait for the AI results
  • For reference, this is for side projects, I do very similar workflows on my work laptop which is an MacBook M3 Pro with 36GB memory and does it work? Yes. But the part where I'd casually do other stuff at the same time? Dicey, heavily dependent on what Claude is up to.

I'm in France, though I could order parts in the US and pick up during a visit in July (I have family there). But then with US trade relations right now idk if that's actually cheaper. I'd like to stay under 2000€ but I have no clue if that's feasible for the needs I have, and I'm an adult with adult money so I can save a bit if needed.

Other thoughts/questions:

• Smaller form factors preferred, but also, does a mini PC exist that would do what I want reliably? Only thinking mini because traveling with it could be nice (especially if I'm going home for a week or two at a time where I already have monitors).
• Are there any anticipated hardware drops this year that are worth waiting for?