well, i have a new development laptop, one that i'm actually happy will last several years and be up to the challenge of being absolutely hammered without even coming close to going beyond its design spec.
it's an 8 core 3.2ghz i7 which can be overclocked to 4ghz. RAM maxes out at 32 GB of 2400mhz DDR4 RAM. it can take *two* PCIe NVMe SSDs, which i've confirmed can run at 485 MEGABYTES per second write speed and a whopping 2100 MB / sec read speed. who designs this stuff?? it's so bonkers i'm having a hard time getting my head round the specs... which continue with a hybrid graphics setup: the Intel skylake HD 5500 normally controls the LCD, but there's a headless co-processor (using "optimus" or "primus" - apt-get install bumblebeed) in the form of a GTX 1060 with SIX gigabytes of DDR5 RAM.
3200 x 1800 14in LCD just tops off the list of insane specs.
oh, and as long as you use the 4.7.8 linux kernel under debian, *all* the hardware works. there's a few niggles but i can sort those out as things progress and become more confident with it.
full report's at http://lkcl.net/reports/aorus_x3_plus_v6.html
and yes, i used angband.pl "nosystemd" packages. i considered it to be better to be using debian with all dependence on systemd and libsystemd removed than it would be to try to convert to devuan, where they've clearly established themselves as a "Reaction Against" systemd yet their charter says "we are inclusive of all init services". i can't endorse or live with that kind of lack of integrity, despite loving everything else that they're doing and achieving (warts and all: thank you phil for sending privately that evaluation report you did of their work).
the only real niggle about using this machine: god is it way too recent hardware. 4.8.* kernels don't work fully, 3.16 kernels don't work fully, i had to go with the 4.7.8 kernel and compile it up myself from source. i also haven't had to actually use debian/sid in a long, *long* time. have to keep an eye on that....
l.