Recommended Specs for any decent project

Hi, I’m currently using a laptop - which ,unfortunately, is a pretty cheap one - which has a second gen i5 and a GT 525m (pretty old). Just rendering a sphere with a glass shader and 900 samples takes about 5-6 minutes. Pretty terrible in my opinion. What do you guys normally use? What is recommended for basic projects? Also, can blender utilize the Intel internal GPU and the Nvidia at the same time? Thanks.