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Steam Deck
I prefer my desktop. But I can game 6 hours of not more of my work day since my job is to make sure the Internet works and stare at an email. So 99% of my gaming is on my laptop
No hate, but I’ve never understood gaming laptops. They are noisy, hot, almost always with severely nerfed performance compared to their equivalent non-mobile components.
They are heavy and bulky with poor battery life. They are often garish, which makes them less suitable for a professional environment if you’re in a workplace where that matters.
It just seems like the vast majority of gaming laptops give you the worst of all worlds. Worse performance than a desktop rig, and none of the good things about a laptop, like portability, long battery life, etc.
To me, there are a few exceptions though:
- Gaming notebooks. You sacrifice a bunch of performance, but you at least gain back some of the benefits of a normal laptop like slimness, portability, battery life, etc. As long as you don’t play super hardcore games, the thermal issue isn’t a huge problem.
- Your work has a ton of travel and you are allowed to do it on your personal laptop. You can work and game on the same device. If you are traveling like every month flying everywhere for work, that makes sense to have a single device to do it all on.
Again, no hate, just my $0.02
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For students a gaming laptop makes a bunch of sense, since taking a PC with you back an forth every time you go back home can be a major hassle.
Eh, depends I guess. Now days I would just use my Steam Deck and be happy with that.
But back when I went to college, high powered gaming handhelds weren’t a thing.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
Well I personally need my laptop for collage as well. And it comes in handy if it has a powerful GPU if I need to do anything more intensive on it (e.g. machine learning or game dev). Steam Deck wouldn’t really be adequate there. And even if it wasn’t for my usecase (which isn’t representative of every student), most students will probably still need a laptop to bring with themselves sometimes to collage, and if they also want to game, makes sense to buy a gaming laptop instead of a gaming PC + a regular laptop.
One advantage is you get a lot of performance in a laptop form factor for much cheaper than an equivalent ultrabook
That’s why I said one of the exceptions was gaming notebooks, something like the smaller Razer Blade laptops.
I’m not sure what PCS is, but I’ve never owned a gaming laptop. I game mostly on a desktop, or play games that can run on a fairly standard laptop. Though I’ve not had a laptop since 2018, and got by with a desktop and tablet.
They meant PCs, with the context meaning desktops. Not trying to be rude, to clarify, just giving context!
Yeah I got that, I was just poking fun. Cheers :P
Both, each have their place. I have a desktop in my office. Decent recent spec and kept fairly up to date.
Laptop I have a reasonable “gaming” spec in the lounge we both use it.
The laptop will always be a compromise. You cannot shift the dissipated heat from a full power gpu at all in that form factor, and most cpus are going to also be lower power editions because they need to work on batteries as well as connected to power. But they’re still for sure usable.
Desktop will always outperform. Even the stock cpu and gpu options will perform at a higher tdp, and you can usually improve cooling in a big case to either improve stock boost frequencies, or over clock.
Physics is the limiting factor for laptops, both in terms of power delivery, and heat dissipation.
PCs. Gaming laptop underperform for price, are larger than non gaming laptops, and generally are less serviceable & durable. Just the entire market segment lags behind.
I’m also in the desktop camp. But I just purchased a Framework 16. The upgradable dGPU (assuming they release new ones) might make laptops more viable for gaming.
Gaming PCs by far.
Since some computer games require the mouse, I’d rather use a PC mouse than the touchpad or a mouse plugged to the laptop.
No particular reason, it’s just more pleasing to the eye.
Desktop. Powerful laptops don’t have enough space for proper heat management. I had a laptop with a Xeon processor and I could get it up to 100C and it would shut off.
When I get a job and settle down, I definitely plan on getting a PC. It just has so much more bang for the buck, and you can actually use the entire performance. My laptop basically overheats immediately if there’s an intense load on it, even though it has the raw power to actually run it. But the reality is that currently, as a student, a gaming laptop is a lot more practical to me.
I have use a gaming laptop since 2014 and miss being able to switch out components. The laptop I have is pretty modular and easy to service. Finding the parts at a reasonable price is not really possible anymore.
Both. I like the customizability and power of a desktop, but I like the portability of a laptop. If you can afford both, why not have both. I often have my laptop set up next to my desktop for browsing/chatting while gaming and I also often just take my laptop to game when I go to friends’ places. Also, they’re both PCs.
Laptop:
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Cheap when buying used, meanwhile used PC parts still are insanely expensive. So on the used market in my country you get the most value when buying a used gaming pc.
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Especially cheap when considering I don’t have to buy a laptop. A useful laptop would cost like 400€, I bought my gaming laptop for 900€ (3 months used, instead of 1400€), same performance in a desktop would cost 1000€+ So normal laptop + gaming desktop would be 1400€+, I only spent 900€.
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Portable. Not much to say here.
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Historically - desktops.
However - for the past ~3 years I’ve been on a laptop.
- Less power draw - if I need to run on solar.
- Data caps - run to a library if some game needs a 100gb update - this has partially been alleviated with Starlink.
- Work trips - ~2 hours of gaming on the hotel bed is needed after a day of meetings.
Gaming laptops are far too prone to overheating - either your manufacturer has drastically limited clock speed, your machine will brick itself as soon as you try to launch a performance intensive game… or you spent 7k+ on getting something from a niche company that slapped a jet engine on that sucker.
