You must log in or register to comment.
PCs. Gaming laptops kinda suck IMO, especially their cooling. They also can’t really be upgraded and are much more expensive for the performance. For mobile PC gaming I much prefer a Steam Deck.
I should have read your comment before I replied. Couldn’t agree more. Going back to a PC from a laptop soon and pretty excited about it.
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
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.
deleted by creator
Laptops are uniformly awful.
You can’t upgrade or replace the GPU or CPU, the hinge assembly is mechanically vulnerable, a cup of coffee over the keyboard is game over, the screen dies you’ve got a ridiculous cost to fix, the cooling sucks, the ergonomics suck, and you pay about double the price for half the specs.
You need a proper screen and keyboard at your desk anyway, so unless you’re hotdesking with the thing, it’s just going to act like a shitty desktop most of the time.
Have you seen the Framework 16? Not the most powerful gaming laptop, but you can replace anything (including the GPU and the mainboard).
Desktop, of course, simply for upgradability and better thermal management.
I have an AM5 system, so I’ll be able to upgrade not only my graphics card, but my CPU as well, and have a modern machine that’ll last me well into the 2030s. These days you can’t even upgrade your RAM on most laptops.
There’s also the fact that I don’t really feel the need to game on the go, and modern smartphones have fulfilled my need to have a portable computer for everything else. When I did own a gaming laptop, I paid way too much money for it, and the battery didn’t even last an hour playing something as basic as The Sims, so it had to be plugged in all the time like a desktop anyway. Within 4 years the GPU was too old to run anything at a reasonable framerate. Never buying a gaming laptop again.
Hm, Lenovo? Cus you just described my experience with them.
Dell, actually. Back in 2004 when they stated making gaming laptops with “upgradable” graphics cards. Except you could only upgrade within the same generation. So go fuck yourself if you actually wanted the latest GPU.
Also the motherboard failed twice on me. Thankfully within warranty but never again.
More like gaming desktops or laptops. Desktop and laptop are a form factor, PC is just a personal computer. Rage all you want, apple users, a Mac is a PC.
I don’t understand who you are arguing with here
Anyone who will hear me rant!
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.
PCs. I’ve been living overseas for a couple of years and using a gaming laptop. I can’t wait to start using a PC again.
Laptops can be good but in my experience for demanding games they can have thermal issues pretty easily. I’m not an expert though and maybe it depends more on the individual laptop.
Also the repairability and upgradability are huge things as well. I think desktop PC plus steam deck is my dream combo for all my gaming needs personally.
Gaming laptops are clunky, ugly, not practical (yeah, technically portable, but not very convenient), loud, hot, drink a lot of juice and always need to be connected to a giant power brick. The worst kind of computer
True, but most newer laptops aren’t repairable unless they are the gaming ones.
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.
I don’t care if they are “gaming” specific, but I like PCs because they are more customizable /upgradeable
High end gaming laptops are a curse. It’s a package that cannot be performant, you simply don’t have a good space to cool it and keep it portable. Focus on it has made a big part of development in good hardware to be restricted to space and heat efficiency in a non optimal package.
Desktop is the way to go for gaming, you get much more affordable power and bang for your buck. If you want a machine for gaming you want a space where you can chill out and be confortable, desktop on a table with a good chair and nice monitors are the way to go and cheaper than the laptop counterpart.
Laptop is pretty handy for taking it to wherever you need it. But you cannot enjoy that high end performance on a comparatively tiny screen. If you are just carrying you laptop from desk with monitors and keyboard to another, you’re just using a less effective and expensive desktop in two spots.
Even for working, it’s handy to have a way to take your stuff elsewhere, but the way workstations work you’d much more benefit from having a cheaper desktop at you office and/or home and have a notebook to stream the content you need.
All the while all the money and research spent on high end laptops and graphs cards that live in them is being used to fuel a worse product that will invariably overheat and not work at full capacity.
There are use cases though. Things like truckers.
And people who work on ships too yeah. But that’s not the norm, it’s the exception
Laptops, cuz I like to travel a lot and…4 years later now, I can still play the new games or go back to the old ones whenever I want to.
It’s very convenient.
If I was in one place, I’d probably get a PC just cuz it’s usually cheaper for the same hardware.
But I love traveling and I don’t love extra possessions! And I love playing games now and then.
Assuming that by “PC” you mean desktop computers, that’s what I prefer for gaming.
I prefer laptops, because they are mobile and doesn’t take up much space.
Desktop for sure. Though I’ve started to love using Steam Link in my home to stream to my laptop (or TV) to get the best of both worlds.
Same reasons as everyone else, it’s more powerful, better heat management, upgradeable, and still allows me to stream to a laptop when needed. (I’ll even use RDP to my desktop from my laptop most of the time to still get the power for work things too).
