Gaming Laptops vs Gaming Desktops?

Hi Sean,

This could be quite a debate but my opinion is:

I prefer desktops over laptops for gaming. My son is a heavy gamer so I built him an extreme gaming PC just over a year ago. Well, just recently he got a new game that demanded a better graphics card (I already had a 4 gb card installed with 16gb ram). This was an easy fix, a new $340 video card. Sold the old one for $180. The original computer cost around $1300 for everything. But any upgrades are easy to complete.

Hope this helps a bit

Dale

That really helped me, thank you so much!

I've also built my own gaming PC, and unless portability is a must, I definitely recommend a desktop over a laptop. As dwinhold mentioned, the fact that you can upgrade most pieces at will means that you can keep the PC "relevant" for years. I originally built mine in 2012, and over the years I've...

• Upgraded the graphics card.
• Added 8 GB of more RAM
• Installed a SSD.

If you go this route, definitely splurge on the motherboard as that will determine pretty much everything else about your computer (including the processor type, amount of RAM, etc.) and is the hardest to upgrade/replace.

This depends on portability factor and budget.  Will you need to travel with the system or can it remain in one spot?  Do you have enough money that not only can you afford to buy something very expensive but you can also afford to replace it instead of doing upgrades?

I have a brother-in-law that swears by the Alien gaming laptops, but he is a contractor that has to travel overseas and if he wants his gaming he has to have a laptop.  Luckily being an overseas contractor allows him the budget flexibility of buying a higher price item and replacing it as needed.

I have a son who insists on buying the most expensive gaming laptop he can get and then just using it until it is outdated.  I am not sure why he wants a laptop since portability isn't needed and honestly most gaming laptops are so big and so hot that they really don't work well in your lap, but that is his choice.

I have a brother who goes out and buys the best built desktop you can find (for his modest income) that allows upgrades and work from there.  That way you can go with better SSD, better memory, better graphics as time progresses and not have to replace the whole system.  I lean toward the desktop solution since I don't travel that often now and honestly when I did I wasn't doing it for gaming or had the time for gaming.  :-)

There's a lot of good sentiments here.

I'd say that generally, desktops are much much easier to upgrade the parts in. Laptops can be quite fiddly to take apart and upgrade a component, and you tend to have much less options in what components you can put in.

Desktops on the other hand you have plenty of room, and can put pretty much anything in there.

I'd agree with e14megan about spending your money initially on your motherboard - it's the one part that if you need to upgrade it, it can be a real pain. I'd also say that your power supply is something that you want to do some research on - you want forwards compatibility, but also look into how much noise they make - cheap powerful PSUs can make a ton of noise!

Lastly, if portability is a concern, you can get some pretty small desktops these days. They have a lot less space (which means you might be more limited with your upgrades), but you can fit a lot into a small space.

My brother for example has something like this: