If you’re looking to buy a new gaming PC, the sheer number of options available can be confusing. The hardest part is choosing between gaming desktops and gaming laptops. Both options have huge advantages and disadvantages.
Here are the five most important categories when choosing between gaming laptops and gaming PCs:
- Hardware and features
- gaming performance
- Upgrade options
- Portability and space requirement
- Cost
These categories constitute the biggest questions a player faces when he wants to renew his gaming hardware. Of course, a laptop can be carried much more easily than a PC, but does it give the same performance; or whether it will be cheaper to buy a new gaming laptop in the long run, although a gaming PC can be upgraded much more easily.
Hardware and Features
We can say that the hardware of gaming laptops and gaming PCs is generally quite close. Interestingly, the biggest difference in this category is the first time you buy the products. When you buy a gaming laptop, you can easily go to a store and buy a laptop that contains almost everything you need, from microphone to camera, speaker to Wi-Fi card. However, when you want to buy a gaming PC, the only thing you need to choose is not a brand and model. Since gaming PCs can be customized as you wish, you need to choose many hardware such as motherboard, GPU, CPU and RAM, as well as many accessories such as keyboard, microphone, camera and so on.
Gaming Performance
In terms of gaming performance, we can say that the gaming PC has a slight advantage in general when compared to similar hardware. This is because even if the same hardware appears in the product listings for a gaming PC and a gaming laptop, there is a difference in the capabilities of the two.
For example, a laptop GPU is not the same as a dedicated desktop GPU. The capabilities of laptop GPUs can be limited for important reasons such as temperature control, and this limitation will have a minor impact on gaming performance.
Upgrade Options
Upgrade options are another category that has a direct impact when it comes to gaming performance. This category contains the biggest difference between gaming laptops and gaming PCs.
Simply put, the vast majority of gaming laptops are almost impossible to upgrade. Of course, there are some modular laptop designs, but for now, these options do not focus much on gaming laptops.
It is possible to upgrade your RAM and storage hardware on gaming laptops. Usually, however, your upgrade options will be limited to these.
When it comes to gaming PCs, the only limitations are your budget and the PC build choices you make at the beginning. As long as your other hardware parts support it, you can update the hardware inside a gaming PC as you wish. Of course, if, for example, your motherboard does not support the CPU generation you want to buy, you will need to upgrade both of them together. The same will be true for RAM. To put it simply, we can say that your gaming PC upgrades are largely dependent on your motherboard, which we can call the heart of your computer. If you feel your computer is getting old, you will probably need to at least replace your motherboard, CPU, and RAM together. However, we can say that these upgrade options are almost endless when compared to laptops.
Portability and space requirement
In the category of portability and space requirement, gaming laptops are the clear winners. While carrying a gaming PC can be quite difficult, all you need to carry a gaming laptop is preferably a bag to carry the laptop and maybe a power cord. In fact, if you do not plan to stay in one place for a very long time, you can take a fully charged laptop and carry your mouse with you to go wherever you want.
We can say that the need for space is a little more controversial. Overall, while laptops definitely take up a lot less space, most people keep their computer cases under their desks, leaving only the monitors and keyboard/mouse in front of them. In the case of monitors, naturally, a separate advantage comparison between large monitors and laptop monitors may be required.
In short, we can easily say that gaming laptops are more advantageous when it comes to portability.
Cost
Typically we can say that a gaming desktop has a lower cost versus gaming laptops. There are two main reasons for this. First of all, desktop computer hardware manufacturers have less development work to do than laptop manufacturers. While a gaming laptop manufacturer needs to do serious development work on issues such as temperature control, such problems are usually much more easily resolved in desktop PC cases.
Another reason why gaming PCs cost less than gaming laptops is due to their ability to be upgraded. Since the performance of a laptop, which is already one step behind gaming PCs, will fall further behind in time, you will have to refresh your entire device after a while. However, thanks to the advantage of upgrading gaming PCs, it is possible to use them for a much longer period of time. In short, we can say that gaming PCs are mostly the better option when it comes to cost.
But which one?
However, despite the mutual advantages and disadvantages, you should know that what will affect your choice the most is how you plan to use your new computer. If you’re mostly located outside of your home and spend more time at work, school or the like, or if you want to take advantage of the laptop’s freedom, it’s likely that a gaming laptop will be more beneficial for you.
On the other hand, if you mostly stay at home and play your games at home, a gaming PC may be the right option for you, especially if you want to take advantage of additional customization options in the accessories area.
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