I understand and while I find the portability of laptops really attractive (and addictive to be honest), it's been a tough sell for me because it's so hard to upgrade them (cant really upgrade their graphics cards or cpus at all).  Was that laptop priced in the same range as the MSI and other Asus laptops I looked at (somewhere between 1700-2500)? When I went to that site it didn't list a price for it.

Looks like NVidia has introduced ray tracing with its new generation of video cards but that generation has some bugs that haven't been ironed out yet.  I would be upset if I bought something now that I couldn't update with a better GPU later.

because it's so hard to upgrade them (cant really upgrade their graphics cards or cpus at all).

Yeah, that's the biggest downside. As soon as you get the latest and greatest, it becomes dated. Laptops are the ultimate consumerist computer commodity. If something goes wrong, oh well, better just get a new one if you can't fix it yourself ....

Was that laptop priced in the same range as the MSI and other Asus laptops I looked at (somewhere between 1700-2500)?

Yes, it's price on amazon is $2500, but I've found other websites who are only asking $2200. Pretty extortionate for a laptop though. The desktops I've seen that have broadly similar capabilities are usually between $1700-2000. The only problem is that I don't have a lot of room in my current mancave set-up for a whole new desk-top, so we'll just have to see. Laptops portability is ultimately wasted on me, because I'd keep it in my space anyway. I don't really like gaming in public, so it's not like I'll be hauling it around.

when you're not at your computer would you rather set it to sleep or hibernate or hybrid sleep? I turn it off when I go to sleep at night but during the day I am all over the place so i set it to sleep mode after 1 hour of inactivity.

hmm, you should always turn off your computer when not in use A-L-E-X. Prolonged periods of hibernate can mess with the BIOs and battery settings, and also sometimes burn out RAM sticks. Just as worse would be to turn it on and off every hour or so, so it's really a matter of discretion. I've seen a lot of people just let their computers (especially laptops) sleep without ever turning it off, and then they wonder why their systems begin to act up.

when you're not at your computer would you rather set it to sleep or hibernate or hybrid sleep? I turn it off when I go to sleep at night but during the day I am all over the place so i set it to sleep mode after 1 hour of inactivity.

hmm, you should always turn off your computer when not in use A-L-E-X. Prolonged periods of hibernate can mess with the BIOs and battery settings, and also sometimes burn out RAM sticks. Just as worse would be to turn it on and off every hour or so, so it's really a matter of discretion. I've seen a lot of people just let their computers (especially laptops) sleep without ever turning it off, and then they wonder why their systems begin to act up.

Oh thats a good point! I didn't know RAM sticks could be burnt out when putting the computer in sleep mode even if its only once or twice a day since I thought that RAM was made to swap data back and forth all the time.
The way I have it set up now is that the computer goes into sleep mode (not hibernate) after an hour of no keyboard or mouse input during the day but when I go to sleep at night I always do a proper shut down and also shut off my UPS.  Is that better or should I also turn the computer off during the day if I am not using it for an hour or so and just turn it back on again later?  Right now I have it set to only shut down at night when I'm sleeping.

I'm also torn about getting a new laptop to accompany my new desktop.  My issue is I have two residences that are 3 hours apart (mountains and the coast) and a laptop is more convenient at the mountain one.  But I already spent 2200 on this desktop and I'm not sure how much use the laptop would get.

when putting the computer in sleep mode even if its only once or twice a day since I thought that RAM was made to swap data back and forth all the time.

The key word here is might. Cheap RAM sticks tend to conk out easily and seem to be rather temperamental about computer settings. Same with cheap batteries. As for hibernate or sleeping, I'd say to actually turn off your computer if you aren't using it for an hour at least. Turning it on and off every ten minutes can also cause problems! So it really depends. I only let my computer(s) sleep if I'm in the middle of something, but have to leave, and can't save my data yet.  The computer at work (the one I'm writing on now) has automatic sleep settings after twenty minutes of non-use. Mind you, it's a cheap HP office desktop, so it'll need to be replaced later for some other unrelated reason.

I'm also torn about getting a new laptop to accompany my new desktop.  My issue is I have two residences that are 3 hours apart (mountains and the coast) and a laptop is more convenient at the mountain one.  But I already spent 2200 on this desktop and I'm not sure how much use the laptop would get.

Ask yourself: do you need the laptop for the mountain home? If so, what will you use it for? If you just want to stream videos and send emails, don't sink too much money into it. A cheap laptop at around the 500-800 dollar range would be ideal of course - and there are many products in this price range online. Try a Dell, my mum bought one fifteen years ago and just uses it for videos/ internet stuff and it's still ticking.

Well the laptop would actually be for running space sims since there's no light pollution there and I like to see what's out there before I bring out my telescope or sweep with my binoculars and I'd want to hook up the laptop to an astrocam to take pictures at some point.  The aforementioned old laptop actually works well with SNPP but it's only a dual core and getting rather old even though it has Win 7 on it and 3 GB of memory.  Still not sure at this point though since I only go out there about once a month for a weekend or a few days.

Okay so I should probably turn sleep and hibernate both off then?  Before, I was only worried about writing to the SSD drive, so I turned off hibernate and hybrid sleep, but now I should probably consider turning sleep mode off too, and just let the displays shut off to conserve power (and perhaps let the hard drives turn off too)?  Is there any way to move the hibernate file off my ssd c: drive to the secondary hard drive (which is a mech hard drive)- drive j:?

Okay so I should probably turn sleep and hibernate both off then? Before, I was only worried about writing to the SSD drive, so I turned off hibernate and hybrid sleep, but now I should probably consider turning sleep mode off too

If you are not expecting any computer activity in the near future, turn it off. If you plan to go back on in ten minutes, let it sleep on its own.

Okay so I should probably turn sleep and hibernate both off then? Before, I was only worried about writing to the SSD drive, so I turned off hibernate and hybrid sleep, but now I should probably consider turning sleep mode off too

If you are not expecting any computer activity in the near future, turn it off. If you plan to go back on in ten minutes, let it sleep on its own.

I have it tweaked to turn off the displays after 45 min and go to sleep after 1 hr, what do you think I should change those two settings to?
Let me give you a typical scenario.  I will be on the computer for a few hours  A show that I want to watch comes on TV for an hour.  I tell everyone I will be back later and go away to watch the show.  I come back an hour later to check messages or run a new simulation.

I have it tweaked to turn off the displays after 45 min and go to sleep after 1 hr,

This is good, but I'd set the toggle of displays to ten minutes, and the sleep function to thirty/forty minutes instead, unless you're going back on - as you describe in your example. This is my personal preference, mind you, not a professional one! However, I'm sort of like you I guess when it comes to home-computer operation, except I'm on for longer playing games if I'm not working.

Yeah I vacillate between the computer and the TV when I'm home lol.  Okay so I'll set it to turn off the display after 10 min and sleep to 30 min.  So as long as sleep doesn't happen more than one or twice a day it wont wear out the RAM?  If it does I could always switch to hibernate but I dont want to accumulate a lot of writes on the SSD, so perhaps there's a way to switch the hiberfile.sys hibernate file to my mech hard drive?

Now that I have this new computer when I am not around during the day it idles to sleep mode after 1 hour of no input (I had to disable wake on LAN and force sleep mode after 1 hour because it wont go to sleep if SE is running lol unless I force it to) but at night I shut it off before I go to sleep and power off the UPS also.

Which raises the question: When the UPS is turned off does it still protect from surges and spikes? Also do you switch off the PCs PSU 1st? I always turn off the PSU but leave the UPS on (which makes a hell of a lot of noise) because I think it protects from surges and spikes whilst on. But I know I am wearing down the battery this way - I guess you can't have everything ..
Anyway Happy New Year to everyone.

yes is does.  protection is done passively and is always in series with the connected device.

I actually have the separate PCB from an old UPS that does the protection, in this case it was a dedicated board for that protection only by using gas discharge arrester and TVS diodes, filters etc...

Now that I have this new computer when I am not around during the day it idles to sleep mode after 1 hour of no input (I had to disable wake on LAN and force sleep mode after 1 hour because it wont go to sleep if SE is running lol unless I force it to) but at night I shut it off before I go to sleep and power off the UPS also.

Which raises the question: When the UPS is turned off does it still protect from surges and spikes? Also do you switch off the PCs PSU 1st? I always turn off the PSU but leave the UPS on (which makes a hell of a lot of noise) because I think it protects from surges and spikes whilst on. But I know I am wearing down the battery this way - I guess you can't have everything ..
Anyway Happy New Year to everyone.

Happy New Year to you too!  Yes the UPS protects against surges and spikes when it is off because no electrical signal makes it past the device, so there is zero voltage output.  I dont turn off the PCs PSU- didn't think that was necessary if the UPS is shut off.
Is it good to turn off the PSU too to maximize its longevity or is turning the UPS off all that is needed?

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Interestingly v2 has double the rops and less FPUs, so it has been re-jigged more as a gaming card and bit less compute.  And it has 16GB !! 

it has 16GB

Hopefully by the early to mid 2020s we start to see this become the standard, with the flagships going for 24 or 32, that would be great.  The throughput is getting to the point now on bandwidth and latency where supporting such high amounts of VRAM is becoming increasingly more viable.