Looking to buy a new laptop, and of the model I'd like (thinkpad carbon x1), it seems like I can choose one with or without an NPU.

My surface-level understanding is they make built in AI processing and a couple other niche uses more efficient. Flip side, they're maybe a marketing gimmick?

Price aside (price difference doesn't seem too great), I'm wondering: should I buy a model with an NPU to help potentially future proof? Are there potential downsides to an npu model? Upsides?

I know there are lots of technical people here, I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

I recently “upgraded” my wife’s computer, since it was about 7 years old and I think the WiFi chip in the motherboard was starting to go (and the motherboard wasn’t Windows 10 compatible either, and she wanted to upgrade to Windows 11).

Of course, upgrading the motherboard to the latest WiFi standards meant upgrading the CPU (also swapped from Intel to AMD), which resulted in getting new RAM as well (a rough time for that, given the prices).

All of that to say, I’m now sitting on a mostly functional old motherboard, cpu, and ram. Basically an entire computer sans case and power supply (I’m sure I have a hard drive laying around somewhere).

Any thoughts on what I could do with it? I’d thought of trying to build out a NAS (or some other home server of sorts), but I’ve been thinking that for 2 years and haven’t done it yet because I haven’t really found a “need” for one. I basically just use my computer for gaming, and I don’t really have or plan to have media collections with seem to be the main use case of a hobby NAS.