Is Laptop worth the investment vs. desktop

If you value transportability, go ahead and buy a good laptop.
17" laptops will be expensive and heavy if that is an issue.

As to your old pc, do not expect much.
If you can find a buyer locally, then good; cases are heavy and shipping will cost a bunch.

A pc will usually fetch more if it is disassembled and the parts sold individually.
That is because it is unlikely that a buyer will want exactly the same pc.
Find your parts in used condition on ebay.
Then filter on completed auctions,
In green you will see what the part actually sold for.

A laptop with a GTX 1060 is a bit faster than a standard desktop GTX 970, and a bit slower than a desktop GTX 1060 GPU and it is within your budget. The following link has some potential candidates, however, in most cases you are looking a laptops with relatively short battery life especially if you are looking at MSI laptops which generally have small capacity batteries to keep the weight down. Additionally, you may want to consider a laptop with a Thunderbolt 3 port since they can technically allow you to one day attach a desktop GPU to the laptop... assuming there is an external GPU case that is compatible with whatever laptop you choose. The Razer Core is currently the only GPU case that is not proprietary to a specific brand, but it is up to Razer to provide BIOS updates to make the Razer Core compatible with other laptop brands.

http/www.ultrabookreview.com/11702-laptops-nvidia-1060/


As for your desktop, I don't think it is worth much to justify selling it. The most valuable component is your Asus Strix GTX 970 OC which can be purchased new for as low as $200 at the moment from Newegg with a rebate. Of course less tech savvy bargain hunting buyers would not know that. A new i5-3470 sells for around $245, but yours is used and it is also a older 3rd generation CPU. Additionally, a current generation Skylake i5-6600k sells for $240 which further erodes the value of the i5-3470.

I would say your system is probably worth around $500 - $550 to a tech savvy buyer.

If you need to do things on the road, laptop is no-brainer, as taking desktop with you would be, comically, inconvenient.

Next thing you need to decide how much you are willing to lug with you. This is unfortunately a hard decision if you have not done it before. I started with a 8 LB, then a 5 LB, then currently a 3 LB which am happy with. Is amazing what a couple of pound difference it makes, so if no heavy gaming, think seriously whether you want to lug a 17" "stone tablet" with u.