With HDD failures and an expanding battery, which lifts the keyboard and poses a safety risk, the notebook needs to go.
New one will be also a notebook due to occasional trips and energy considerations.
Recommendations taken from other threads:
16GB Ram
Nvidia
Emphasis on CPU rather than GPU
Anything else worth considering with FGFS developments in mind?
Linux of course.
Sometimes mathematically demanding software is being used , but if you let this determine hardware requirements you have to expand the budget to infinity. So something good for FGFS will do it.
As a sidenote the sheer number of CPU and GPU designations make it very hard to target something good midrange. They do that on purpose, don't they?
Looking forward to read your thoughts. Thanks!