1. Excellent thermal management (i.e. temps under 90C at max load and fans that don’t sound like a turboprop)

2. Backlit keyboard with more than a bare minimum of key travel

3. IPS display with at least 300 nits of brightness and 100% (or close to it) sRGB coverage

4. Six core or better CPU

5. Dedicated GPU with at least 8GB of RAM

6. NVMe M.2 SSD (at least 512GB)

7. 32GB of 3200 MHz or faster RAM

8. From a major brand with decent reported reliability (e.g. Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo)

Willing to spend ~$2k, but I am very patient and good at deal hunting so I expect to get it for a little less.