Take what you have, start small and learn from it.

Old laptops are great, because they have low power consumption and even pretty used up battery will give you power redundancy.

Even a 10yo laptop is something with 4-5th gen Core cpu and that has plenty of power to get you started.

Well at least they use Signal… (half /s)

Got 3060 in a laptop. Updating is like a box of chocolate. You never know what will break.

On the other hand… 6800XT in my desktop. No issues whatsoever in the last 4 years. It just works since I installed it.