While you could get one for machine learning... If you're buying an additional computer just for that I'm not sure a laptop is the most cost effective choice, though this laptop in particular seems like it could handle that just fine. Running GPU intensive machine learning seems like a really good way to find out about reliability issues before anyone else... Make sure it's covered under warranty, I don't know if you can argue that it's normal wear and tear (though I guess it might be identical to someone playing Crysis for hours and hours).

Again, I think the Oryx Pro would be able to handle it, but the use case seems just a tad wrong... Unless of course you routinely do your machine learning on the go.

Thanks for the comments. I have been buying GPU compute from Hetzner, GCP, and AWS. I am comfortable working in SSH shells and running aJupyter server on rented compute, but there is a lot of convenience of just using a local computer.

I really don’t want to be encumbered by a desktop computer, so a sem-portable laptop with a GPU makes sense to me.

In that case absolutely carry on! I didn't want to sound prescriptive since I'm not familiar with wear patterns of GPU-heavy calculations (it's entirely possible that they're built well enough to just run pegged at 100% for a very long time), and I also don't know much about GFX card durability for a card like the 1070 -- I thought it might be a pain to try and replace, with how tight the form factor must be.

iFixit doesn't have anything on the Oryx Pro yet[0] so...

I also didn't know Hetzner sold GPU compute! Is it a package or are you going to market and searching "gpu"?

[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/System76_Laptop

They have a dedicated server with a 1080 GPU, i7, lots or RAM, for about $105/month. A good deal.