Performance wise there should be no reason to build a desktop for 'dev-work'. But as far as I understand your situation you just want to build a desktop, not us

Performance wise there should be no reason to build a desktop for 'dev-work'. But as far as I understand your situation you just want to build a desktop, not use one :D Just be aware, that you will probably end up with more than one PC when you use a desktop. Btw. I love my desktop PC and use it more than my Laptop. But I love it, because it has a passive cooling system (0 db) on an i7 CPU ;-)