Is it worth it to sell my laptop for a desktop?

[Sqrly]

Hi All!

I have been using my trusty laptop as a desktop replacement since 2012, and it hasn't left the house in months because I use a surface pro 2 when I am out and about.

These days I have been using it for engineering applications, adobe suite, web development, and 2 VMs, and it has started to feel a bit sluggish for me. I reformatted and stripped down the laptop to clean it, lubricate the fans, and replaced the thermal compound with Arctic MX-4, and it performed a little better, but still feels a bit slow.

Some screenshots of system load under current use case: http://imgur.com/a/PVfQA

My current laptop specs are:
HP DV6T-6000CTO
i7 2720qm
16GB RAM
500GB SSD

Questions:
1) I was wondering if it would be worth it for me to sell the laptop (for about $450?) and build a desktop with i7 4790K/32GB RAM. (I also have an ancient Q6600 machine I use as media pc/NAS)
2) Would there be a noticeable performance gain from the CPU/RAM upgrade etc?
3) Does a dedicated GPU provide noticeable performance improvements if I don't game? (A family member has extra R9 280X I could use if it does)
4) If answers to above question are "yes". Would it be better/worth it to just go straight to i7 6700K/5820K w/ 64GB RAM? I generally don't like to be an early adopter, and wait for the technology to mature a bit more and prices to come down. (Cost for 4790K would be about $210 and 6700K/5820K would be about $350+)

Thank you all so much for the help!

 

[Calculagator]

1. A desktop would certainly be better for your usage. Whether or not it is worth it really depends on how much you value performance. I doubt you can sell your laptop for $450 unless you know someone who wants to buy exactly what you have. HP's don't hold value very well at all. I quickly checked sold Ebay listings and based on them would estimate that your laptop is worth closer to $250-$300.
2. The performance difference would be significant. The 4790k can double the performance of the 2720qm.
3. If any of your applications support GPU computation or rendering the 280X could improve performance or make things display more smoothly. Otherwise, it won't really make any difference. Most adobe stuff is purely CPU limited.
4. It's really a question of budget and performance expectations. You could get more performance -especially if your applications are sensitive to RAM speed, but it will cost more. The technology is basically as mature as desktop tech has ever been. I wouldn't expect prices to come down much on new parts unless AMD can really deliver with their next CPU (and I wouldn't bet on it).

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

It might be better to sell the seperate parts, by my estimates probably about:
CPU: $175
RAM: $50
SSD: $100
Screen: $50
Motherboard: $50
WiFi card: $10
Keyboard: $5
You might even be able to sell the chassis. While the prices might actually be lower, you could almost certainly do better than selling the entire laptop if it's $300 or so.
As for a PC, an i7 isn't really neccesary, snag an i5 or a Xeon if you are video editing. The differences between Skylake and Haswell are pretty minimal although I might recommend a Skylake system so you don't have to buy DDR3. Waiting might drive prices down when Zen comes out but that old Sandy Bridge stuff will have dropped even more, so now is just as good a time to replace the system as then. And yes, GPU performance has an impact on general performance to a point where the iGPU is often a bottleneck but a discrete GPU is a bit overkill. So if you can get the 280X you will notice performance improvements.