Intro:
The recent news of price increases in the console space has left some gamers looking for an alternative. PC gaming is notorious for its price, but the price hike of Sony’s online services should make gamers reconsider. A $500 console, paying a yearly fee of $60-$80, and also buying a few games for $70 each puts you pretty close to the price of a gaming PC. Gamers switching to PC gaming will reignite the age-old debate of whether gaming desktops or gaming laptops are better. While many people choose laptops for convenience, a desktop is a better choice in most cases due to its performance, upgradeability, and cost.
Performance:
One of the best features of a gaming laptop is its portability, which would allow you to take it to your friend’s house or college. As convenient as it is to have a device that is portable and can play the latest AAA games, it does come at a cost. Performance on gaming laptops is not the same as their desktop counterparts even if the specs are the same. In other words, a laptop RTX 4090 is not going to perform anywhere near a desktop RTX 4090 and this is true for the lower-end cards as well. When you take a closer look at the laptop RTX 4090 you can quickly find out that the chip is based on the RTX 4080. (Cite PC Gamer) If you have ever seen an RTX 4090 you can immediately tell it’s on the larger end of graphics cards due to the colossal heatsink strapped onto it. If a card needs a heatsink that big to run at full speed there is no way it could reasonably fit into your average gaming laptop. Most gaming laptops cannot possibly dissipate the volume of heat coming from a desktop card like that. Cooling is a significant factor when it comes to performance and that’s one of the reasons why desktop 4090’s aren’t in laptops today.
Power consumption is another main factor when it comes to performance. Desktop GPUs can draw anywhere from 200 watts up to 500 watts. Laptop GPUs are not yet capable of drawing that much power while also staying cool and reasonably portable. A desktop GPU with adequate cooling and no power constraints will almost always be faster than its mobile counterpart because it can consume more power thus allowing it to push out more frames. While there are some gaming laptops with beefy chassis that can help fix the cooling and power issues, they are already so big and heavy that you can barely call them portable.
Upgradeability:
While it is true that many gaming laptops can be upgraded in some aspects it pales in comparison to desktops. Most laptops can upgrade only the memory and storage, however, there are a few that can upgrade GPUs and CPUs. While this is good it’s not nearly as easy or affordable as a desktop. When it comes time to upgrade a desktop you can unscrew a few regular screws and pop whatever component out of its socket. For example, when you upgrade a GPU in a desktop you take the screws out of its mounting bracket and press the release tab and the GPU can be removed. A laptop either requires a new motherboard because the components are soldered or it simply cannot be done by the user. Also, since you are replacing an entire board rather than one component the cost of an upgrade increases dramatically because you likely need to replace the CPU as well. When you have to replace arguably the two most expensive components, it makes it more difficult to upgrade.
With upgradeability also comes repairability. When something like a charging port stops working on a laptop it can be difficult for a user or even some repair shops to track down OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) parts because the manufacturer is not required to sell them to you. On the other hand, when a desktop component fails you can purchase a new one right off the shelf and install it on the same day. Repairability also becomes increasingly difficult when manufacturers use proprietary hardware or security screws so the average user needs to go out of their way to buy specific parts and tools. Desktops for the most part use standard components with standard screws so that gamers can easily repair or upgrade components as they see fit.
Cost:
When shopping for gaming computers you will often find that laptops with the same specs as desktops will be priced higher and in most cases perform slower. Many consumers often forget that when you buy a laptop, you are paying for the form factor. At the time of writing, on Micro Center you find laptops like the Razer Blade 14 with a Ryzen 9 7940HS, an RTX 4070, 1TB SSD, and 16GB of RAM going for $2600; when you look at a similarly configured desktop with an Intel i7 13700k, an RTX 4070, 2TB SSD, and 32GB of RAM for $1799. This desktop will outperform the Razer Blade in almost every scenario yet because of the portability of the Razer Blade it is significantly more expensive.
Conclusion:
The price-to-performance ratio of a gaming laptop will in almost all cases be better in a desktop than a laptop. In addition, most laptops also don’t last as long as desktops because they can’t be updated every few years like a desktop. For example, say in a few years from now you need more CPU cores you can drop a new one into your motherboard (Depending on the motherboard compatibility) and you’re off to the races. Most people when their laptop starts to slow down just get a new one which is much more costly than a CPU and a motherboard if needed. However, there are many cases where a desktop is just not feasible, like if they travel often. My recommendation to those individuals would be to check out a laptop like the Framework 16. It is a gaming laptop that the company encourages you to upgrade which is a very cool thing to see. While upgrades may be a little pricier at least the choice is still left to the user. Overall, most gamers will likely be better off with a desktop, especially if they are trying to squeeze every frame out of their system for a good value.