An IT degree pushes a machine in ways gaming rarely does: a browser full of documentation, an IDE, a local database and two or three virtual machines all resident at once. Memory capacity and thread count decide whether that stack stays responsive.

Start from the heaviest thing you will run - nested VMs, container stacks or large compiles - and size RAM and CPU threads to it, then let storage and graphics follow. WSL2 handles most Linux work natively, so a discrete GPU only earns its place once machine-learning or graphics coursework arrives.