With the ever-expanding gaming world, we find in today’s time it is extremely competitive and gamers are constantly looking for the best form factor in a computer to enhance their PC gaming experience and achieve better performance than traditional desktop computers or laptops. Gaming performance will have multiple metrics to measure by, and both gaming desktop and gaming laptop computers can come with the high-end specs you are looking for.
Getting your hands on one of the top gaming PCs is paramount to obtaining an advantage in gaming, especially competitive online gaming. Hence, your high-end gaming device should come with different configuration options to suit each individual gamer and their style and mode of gameplay. Typically, when discussing a gaming laptop vs desktop, we like to highlight multiple factors which each configuration may have in common and what sets them apart from one another.
Setting up your gaming rig with a gaming desktop will require you to have peripheral devices to attach in order to achieve the gaming experience that you desire. Keep in mind that with some of the best gaming laptops, you can attach these devices (such as a gaming monitor, gaming mouse) and still maintain the portability that you have become used to with laptops. The best gaming laptops can also be used as an all-in-one solution to the obtain best gaming experience, as they may contain similar CPUs, GPUs and a motherboard capable of expanding your RAM or swapping any of the components you may find on a desktop PC.
As we can also see having the right hard drive on your gaming desktop or gaming laptop, a powerful CPU processor powered by Intel or AMD, a top-notch graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 4080 or RTX 4090, are all part and parcel in gaming. These will help you get the best frame rates and refresh rates for those fast-paced action games, resulting in a smooth, low lag PC gaming session.
Whether you are getting a Windows based gaming laptop from manufacturers like the Dell Alienware, Razer, MSI, Lenovo, Asus, or even an Apple MAC OS laptop, you will want to see specs that will rival that of their desktop counterparts in an all-in-one form factor. One thing to keep in mind with gaming laptops as opposed to gaming desktops, is that if you are using the laptop on its battery versus being plugged into an outlet receptacle, you want battery life that can handle the power consumption needed for gaming.
So, what type of configuration best suits your needs? Let’s take a deeper look into some of the similarities and differences between a gaming desktop and a gaming laptop. We will also examine some wonderful products that should fit your gaming needs.
General Features Desktop vs. Laptop
Cost
As with traditional desktop PCs, we find they are more customizable than laptops, and the cost of having a custom-built gaming desktop will be significantly lower than a custom-built gaming laptop. That comes with a caveat in the sense that a gaming desktop will require peripheral devices to be purchased separately to complete your gaming rig. While some of these items would be useful in a laptop configuration as well, it isn’t required as gaming laptops are all in one solution to getting a great gaming experience. However, even with having to get those additional items, gaming laptops can run at higher price points than gaming desktops. Also, with the holidays approaching you can expect discounts on some of the best gaming desktops and gaming laptops available. Winner = Gaming Desktops
CPU
Making certain that your gaming desktop or gaming laptop has one of the latest Intel core processors like the Intel core I9 or the latest AMD Ryzen 8th generation processors to power your gaming PC. Your CPU should be capable of overclocking its normal running speeds, this will provide an increase in performance and notice a significant bump in your gaming. However, if you are overclocking the CPU processor on a gaming laptop, you should be aware of the risk of overheating the computer. We recommend getting a good cooling solution for your gaming laptop, such as an under-computer mat with liquid cooling providing adequate airflow to ensure that no damage occurs to your gaming laptop as it heats up and could possibly degrade the battery life during intense gaming. Winner = Even
GPU
Running almost congruent with your configurations CPU is the GPU or graphics card that is contained within your PC. Asus is one manufacturer that makes the ROG (Republic of Gamers) software on their routers, gaming desktops and gaming laptops. The ROG software is dedicated to gamers to help ensure that their gaming desktop or gaming laptop is at peak gaming performance. Which means you can expect your graphics processing unit (GPU) to render your gaming graphics for a more immersive and smooth gaming experience with great refresh rates to hit the FPS or frames per second to give you the edge in fast paced online multiplayer gaming. So having a great GPU like the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090, which can be found on gaming desktops and gaming laptops is the perfect complement to your powerful CPU. Plus, the Nvidia GPU chipsets found on desktops and laptops should have the capability for ray tracing which will render how the light from the gaming source interacts with your environment and obstacles to get a lifelike picture in your games. Winner = Even
Hard Drives
With both gaming desktops and gaming laptops you should opt for an SSD or Solid-State Drive versus a HDD configuration or Hard Disk Drive. Newer PCs normally come standard with an SSD drive boasting superb read/write speeds, with at least 256 gigabytes of storage as your computers main boot drive. These types of drives will speed up boot times, and over all booting efficiency. On gaming laptops this may be the main and only hard drive that is contained within the device. Gaming desktops, however, will most likely have multiple storage bays for a secondary hard drive such as an HDD to be used for storage and backups. HDDs are more prone to failure over time than SSDs because of degradation to the HDD platters, including failing of the spinning platters and the actuator arm which controls and moves the heads around the spinning disks. Therefore, SSD disks are better options for your CPU as the boot and main drive that you will use. Winner = Even
Connectivity
Many desktop PCs do not come with a built in Wi-Fi card or the latest bluetooth standards for connectivity. Whereas laptops will come standard with these features as they are needed for connectivity on the go. While the latest and best gaming desktops should have these features included, you may find that some of them only support Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi AC to access the wireless spectrum. While the newest and best gaming laptops would include Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi AX which opens the 6hz channels for faster connection through your ISP. Many of these configurations will support even newer standards like Wi-Fi 6E. This is the next evolution of Wi-Fi 6 as this is meant for usage near your router as signals on the 6E band will have more trouble penetrating walls, ceilings, glass and other obstacles. Winner = Gaming Laptops
Portability
This category is a bit more straightforward as there is no question laptops will be more portable than gaming desktops. And that is one of the main reasons many people choose laptops over desktop PCs even in the business world. There are some challenges that come with portability of gaming laptops in the fact that if you are using the laptop while on the go, you are relying on the laptop’s battery to power your gaming needs. The battery life on these may not be up to par to handle intensive gaming, so either access to a power supply such as a charging outlet, power bank or spare larger sized batteries would be needed. Winner = Gaming Laptops
Form Factor
We previously discussed the differences in form factors between gaming desktops and gaming laptops. As gaming laptops are an all-in-one solution to all your gaming needs with an included touchpad or trackpad which can be used in lieu of a traditional mouse. Some people prefer the simple setup of just a gaming laptop while others who utilize their gaming pc usually in the same area, like on a dedicated gaming desk with a full gaming rig including a complete gaming system of their own set up. Plus, if you want to build a more personalized and customizable configuration of the internals of your gaming PC than a gaming desktop is what you need. And peripheral devices like a gaming monitor can produce faster refresh rates than a native screen on a laptop. Since they can be attached to both a gaming laptop and gaming desktop you can use them in both types of configurations of your gaming PC. Winner = Customer Preference
Recommended Gaming PCs
There are several gaming PCs that are new to the market which we will look at, as these PCs will cater to your individual preferences and meet the needs of the best gaming desktops and gaming laptops for you. We will look at some of the tremendous new products available for gamers.
Gaming Laptop
The announced Acer Nitro Gaming 16 R7P7840HS 11P is a wonderful 16” gaming laptop that has powerful specs and features to meet gamers needs in a laptop form factor. Featuring a 16-inch WQXGA 2560 x 1600 IPS display up to 500 nits, with Acer Comfy View LED backlit technology, this laptop has refresh rates of up to 165 Hz for an amazingly smooth and crisp gaming experience. This is also helped by the AMD Ryzen Octa core processor with up to 8 Megabytes of L2 cache, and up to 16 Megabytes of L3 cache, an extremely powerful 3.8 GHz with boost overclocking speeds up to 5.1 GHz. There is a powerful 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe which handles the duties as the main boot and storage drive. Besides for accessing cloud services like Microsoft OneDrive through Windows for additional storage, you can always look at external hard drives as well. External hard drives which you may use for storing and playing your games through, should have plentiful storage with speeds of up to 1000 MB/s (read/write speed) via a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (USB Type-C) connection port.
You also get a good graphics card with this laptop in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM. This will have your gaming image appear with improved graphics, resulting a cleaner, more vibrant and accurate gaming experience.
With the included 1 GB RJ-45 Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 standards, you get some of the latest technology in connectivity. These should result in a more stable connection to your network and peripheral devices. Ultimately, the best set up recommendation would be to hardwire the gaming laptop to your router via a CAT 6 cable (minimum) for the fastest connection with the lowest lag in fast paced online multiplayer gaming.
The warranty is provided by Acer USA.
Gaming Desktops
Option #1
Our first choice for a top notch gaming desktop is the Asus ROG Strix G15DS Gaming Desktop. Utilizing a Windows 11 Pro OS, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU has 8 cores and 16 threads with a maximum boost clock of 5.4GHz for a blazing fast responsive gaming performance as well everyday usage. You can equip this desktop with up to 64 GB of DDR5-4800 memory so you can not only handle those intensive gaming sessions, but your PC can multitask as well. So, while, you are gaming you can have multiple windows open doing various tasks in the background without interrupting your gameplay.
A 1TB NVMe SSD and 2TB HDD configuration of this gaming desktop, gives you an extremely powerful and large storage main drive with a huge 2 Terabyte HDD acting as a storage drive. Smaller hard drive configurations of the PC are available as well, which would lower the cost.
For graphics you get the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card which contain features like programmable shading, real-time ray tracing, and A.I. which cater to the newest games giving them a lifelike feel with deep immersion into your gameplay.
As we mentioned on gaming laptops previously that as your gameplay intensifies, you may feel the PC heating up which would impact its performance and longevity. This applies to gaming desktops as well, as they need a good cooling solution to help keep up peak performance. This desktop has widened vents and directs airflow through a multi zone design, resulting in better performance and less thermal interference.
The audio on this gaming desktop gives you an immersive high definition 7.1 studio type sound. And the Sonic Studio III software allows you to switch between professionally tuned presets or manually customize your own listening EQ settings.
You can bundle this top tier gaming desktop with other ROG peripherals, such as the Strix Flare RGB mechanical gaming keyboard with Cherry MX switches, a customizable illuminated badge visible on the exterior of the desktop, and dedicated media controls for seamless control while gaming. ROG accessories like this are Aura Sync compatible; so, you can customize and coordinate RGB lighting across all of your ROG accessories. This gives off a very cool and personalized vibe during your gaming sessions.
Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi AX plus bluetooth 5.3 give you some of the latest and best connectivity options for smooth low lag gameplay with your PC and connected peripherals. These will come in extremely handy in online multiplayer gaming as well.
Option #2
We would be remiss without mentioning another great gaming desktop option in the Asus ROG G22CH Small Form Factor Gaming Desktop – G22CH-DS564. Featuring up to an Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU processor and paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card while gaming on Windows 11 Pro make this a tough gaming desktop to beat in such a small form factor. You will get amazing performance and graphics with this set up. In addition, you can equip this gaming desktop with up to 32GB of 4800MHz DDR5 RAM for great multitasking.
In order to keep this small form factor gaming desktop from overheating there are two cooling options. Either chose a more traditional air-cooled solution; or you can get a custom liquid cooler for the CPU.
As with our first option, this gaming desktop offers immersive 7.1 channel Dolby sound with configurations for Dolby Atmos immersive surround sound.
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) in a (Dual band) configuration and the included Bluetooth 5.2 Wireless Card, you can rest assured that you will get wonderful download speeds (depending on your ISP plan and router capabilities) and fast, responsive low lag and jitter free gaming sessions. Rear I/O ports include an HDMI 2.0 port, a dedicated RJ-45 ethernet port for the fastest wired connections, 4 USB Type A ports, and support for 7.1 channel surround sound audio. While the front panel has an audio combo jack, 2 additional USB Type A ports and a USB-Type C port. So, there are plenty of both wired and wireless connectivity options.
This is a great small form factor desktop gaming PC with dimensions of 4.53 x 12.72 x 11.30 in should meet all your intensive gaming needs in a more ergonomic easily placed PC. Perfect for dorm rooms, your bedroom or more limited spaces at home.
Besides for the warranty provided by Asus, you get some perks like a 1-month trial for new Microsoft 365 customers when purchasing this gaming desktop.
Conclusion
Depending on your budget and usage needs will ultimately decide whether a gaming desktop or a gaming laptop is best suited for you. While from a cost perspective gaming desktops will usually be more attractive than a gaming laptop, remember, you may want to take advantage of the portability of a gaming laptop. If you are going to be using your gaming PC in a more stationary aspect and portability is not a concern to you, then a gaming desktop may be more suited for your needs. Some of the best gaming PCs could be desktop PCs as the performance may just edge out a laptop in certain regards. Review the specs of each option and the decision will fall to what type of gaming PC and configuration you desire.
Happy Gaming!
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